How Gavin Wilkinson gets ready

Timbers coach arrives at PGE Park 11 hours before kickoff

By Steve Brandon

The Portland Tribune, May 8, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Gavin Wilkinson, coach of the Portland Timbers, will include a run in his long day as he burns off some of the nervous energy building up for tonight's home game against the Rochester Rhinos.

GREG WAHL-STEPHENS

Portland Timbers skipper Gavin Wilkinson arrived at PGE Park Thursday in plenty of time for his team’s soccer game against the Rochester Rhinos.

Wilkinson walked into his office at 8 a.m.

Kickoff is at 7 p.m.

Nervous energy will do that for a second-year coach and general manager.

Wilkinson wakes up at about 5:30 a.m. every day, anyway, and his team typically trains from about 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at the downtown stadium.

But on game days, the coach is more by himself, which is probably a good thing.

“I get away from as many people as possible,” he says. “I’m not a nice person.”

He’s exaggerating the last point, but you get the idea: he’s a bit edgy, even though the Timbers are sitting atop their league at 3-0-0 and facing a Rochester team that is 0-2-0.

“I’ve known many teams and been a part of many teams, unfortunately, that have started off great and not finished great,” says the 34-year-old Wilkinson, a 13-year defender from New Zealand who played for the Timbers from 2001 through 2006.

“Obviously, right now we’re very, very confident,” he says, “but we really cannot start taking things for granted. You get out of the sport what you put into it. The moment you stop thinking that way, people catch up to you.”

So Wilkinson will spend much of this game day at the park – and not one with flowers and trees and ducks in a pond. He’ll continue to ponder the possibilities for tonight’s 90 minutes with the Rhinos.

“I actually started to think about the game and began processing things when I woke up at 5:30,” he says.

People call soccer a beautiful, simple game, but coaches have a way of seeing all the complexities.

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