Timbers' Totori won't play Sunday

Team hopes his knee injury is only a sprain

By Steve Brandon

The Portland Tribune, May 31, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Portland Timbers forward Benjamin Totori has been ruled out of Sunday’s game at Rochester after injuring his right knee Friday at Montreal.

His long-term status won’t be known until doctors examine him next week in Portland, but the team is hopeful that he suffered nothing worse than a strained medial collateral ligament.

“There’s no swelling at the moment, so it doesn’t look too bad, and he’s had no knee problems before,” Timbers coach Gavin Wilkinson said Saturday night from Rochester.

Totori, a 22-year-old promising rookie from the Solomon Islands, has been with the Timbers for only a week. He has appeared in two games for Portland and went down late in Friday’s 1-0 victory over the Impact.

“His leg just buckled when he went to change directions,” Wilkinson says.

Wilkinson and forward Takayuki Suzuki were automatically suspended from the Montreal game when they were ejected from Monday’s 2-0 home loss to Miami. They watched Friday’s game together from an empty corporate suite in one corner of the stadium.

“It was good to sit with Taka and explain some of the things I want from him and that I think he could bring to the team,” Wilkinson says.

Assistant coach Rod Underwood coached the Timbers from the bench in Wilkinson’s absence.

“Rod did a great job,” Wilkinson says.

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