Cunningham's Milestone Night

It was a record setting night for FC Dallas striker Jeff Cunningham on Saturday. He scored four goals in a regular season match, also known as a beaver trick. That's only the tenth time in MLS history a player has achieved that feat. It's been three years since Brian Ching was the last to do it in the Houston Dynamo's first ever match. However, that's not what I meant by record setting. I'm sure most of you know that Clint Mathis holds the record for most goals in a single match with 5. When I say Cunningham broke a record, I'm referring to something else. Last night, Cunningham played in his 306th regular season match. As mentioned in the MLSnet match report linked above, he passed former Dallas star Jason Kreis on the all time list to move up to third. However, he also passed Kreis on another list: Cunningham now holds the league record for the most regular season games played without ever playing in an MLS Cup. It's good that he was able to mark the occasion with a stellar performance. Kreis was the "missing out" record holder from July 4, 2006 until August 1, 2009. The previous record holder before him was Mark Chung, who's now third. Here's the top 25 post-2008. Cunningham now joins the likes of fellow athletes Gary Anderson (NFL), Dale Ellis (NBA), Mike Gartner (NHL), and Rafael Palmeiro (MLB). All those players currently hold the distinction in their respective leagues.

What's a Beaver Trick?

That's the question I asked myself when I came across the term on Bigsoccer the other day. All sports fans know that three goals, regardless of the sport, is called a hat trick. Hardcore soccer fans know the term brace as well, which refers to scoring two goals. That's common knowledge to readers of this blog. But in years of following soccer, reading countless articles and posting thousands of messages online, I had never heard of the term beaver trick before. It turns out that a beaver trick refers to scoring four goals in a match. This came up in a message talking about the Caribbean club championship taking place, which also qualifies their representative to the CONCACAF Champions Cup for next year (the Colin Clarke-led Puerto Rico Islanders have reached the semifinals). If you do a search on Google, "beaver trick" only yields 618 results, so it's not widespread. Looking more closely, this appears to be a Caribbean term. The first results all come from sources in Trinidad & Tobago, but going deeper shows other countries from the region using the term too, especially Barbados. It was also used on the CONCACAF web site back in June 2000. What's fascinating is that this isn't just a soccer term. It's also used here to describe cricket ("he went on to take a 4th wicket in a row (called a Beaver Trick)," here in a non-goal scoring context ("beaver trick of titles for Simpson"), and lastly here on a site for petroleum engineers ("The burning question is can they make it a beaver trick, four in a row?"). It appears that four of anything can be a beaver trick. This is a phrase that simply can't be ignored any longer. It sounds much better than quartet, and it's hip and fresh. I can picture the Sportscenter guys eating it up (Steps up and finds Moss yet again, Tom Brady with a ~BEAVER TRICK of TD passes. Pats up by 20...). And despite the fact that I have no clue as to its origins, it already makes as much sense as can of corn, flea flicker, nutmeg, and many other of our commonly used sports phrases. From now on, remember that four goals = beaver trick. Spread the word.