What’s behind Sacramento Republic’s recent success? A look at why Irish eyes are smiling

Through March and April, it looked like Sacramento Republic was dragging their feet again. The losses and draws piled up more than the wins, and like last season, they looked like a team without an identity.

The switch flipped in May and the rest was quite literally history. The Quails went on a tear, winning eight of their next 12 games, including beating two MLS teams en route to their first U.S. Open Cup semifinal berth. The streak came not by blowing their opponents off the field with a spectacular attack, but with stellar defense.

At the heart of the resurgence are three names coach Mark Briggs now always puts on his team sheet first: Conor Donovan, Lee Desmond and Dan Casey. That’s Sacramento’s back three and the core of the defense.

The new formation was a change Briggs pondered when overhauling last year’s roster.

“I wanted to play this system originally, but we got a few injuries early in preseason,” Briggs said. “Once we got Conor back, we knew that they were the three we wanted to go with.”

“They allow us to play out of the back when we build, but they also give us protection from a defensive standpoint. From set pieces, they’re also very threatening, as well as going forward and giving us the opportunity to score goals. I’m just pleased with their overall game and what they bring to the group.”

Together, the three have logged the most starts and minutes played of any group on the team. Barring injury, they are hardly ever subbed off and Briggs has yet to rotate them, even during a congested schedule. Their 15 goals conceded through 16 games is third-best in the USL.

“We sort of knew in the back of our minds that this would be the group once we got the guys fit,” Casey, the Dublin, Ireland native said. He is the longest-tenured Republic player of the three, joining Sacramento last season as a free agent from Bohemian FC. “We haven’t really looked back since.”

His countryman Desmond joined the team just ahead of this season after winning the Irish FAI Cup with his previous club St. Patrick’s Athletic.

“I actually didn’t really like playing the formation at my previous club,” Desmond said. “But it’s working now, and long may it last.”

“Playing in a back three is completely different from playing center back in a back four, just in terms of you end up getting pulled out wide a lot more and even some of the running stats are crazy when you look at them because you just normally wouldn’t be covering that much distance.”

In the middle of the three is “the adopted Irishman”: Conor Donovan. The North Carolina native bounced around various MLS and USL clubs before settling in Sacramento in January.

“The back three just lets guys like Jack (Gurr), (Ferrety) Sousa, Duke (Lacroix) and Dami (Viader) be aggressive,” Donovan said.

“Sometimes that means us going three-versus-three and having to break up plays, but it’s letting the boys in front of us do what they’re good at, knowing that they can have confidence that we can handle what is in front of us.”

Regardless of formation, the defensive back line in soccer requires intricate timing and trust in your partners. Defenders have to just know their teammates will cover for them when they step up to join the attack or engage an opponent.

The three men all credit their chemistry off the field for strengthening their play on it.

“I think of course there’s always gonna be a selfish side in football where you really want to do well yourself, but I think there is a genuine happiness when we see each other doing well,” Desmond said. “I don’t think I’ve ever really had that before in my career.”

Donovan said a healthy competition is what drives the group’s success. Sacramento’s defense has kept a total of nine clean sheets across all competitions this year.

“It’s friendly,” he said. “We’re not necessarily competing against each other in this formation, but we want to do better for each other. It’s the love of competition that stuck out to me. Not everyone has that.”

Casey said he is relishing the joys of success this year. When he joined the team in 2021, the USL was still limited due to the pandemic and most of his teammates were nearing the end of their contracts.

“Obviously, having another Irishman come over has been nice,” Casey said. “And with quite a few Europeans on the squad too, we’ve been able to laugh together and just have common things to talk about which you miss (moving to a new country).”

Sacramento will face its toughest test July 27, when the team hosts MLS giant Sporting Kansas City at Heart Health Park for a U.S. Open Cup semifinal.

In the meantime, they said that they are not resting on any of their laurels. They all point to a recent game at Monterey Bay as an example. Three nights before, they came off the high of upsetting the L.A. Galaxy in the Cup, which they said was the highlight of their careers.

“We’re a goal down at halftime and it would have been easy to say ‘Look, we won the big game already. We’re tired and we’ll probably get away with this,’” Desmond said. “But to come back and win that one showed me how much character this team has. So that’s never going to be a question.”

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