Carolina Lightnin'
After the Lightnin' folded, much of the front office staff and some of the players joined a new club called the Charlotte Gold that played in the United Soccer League in 1984.
So when an investment group headed by local businessman Bob Benson called Carolina Professional Soccer decided to pursue a franchise, they chose to apply for membership in the ASL.
[1] Unlike many of the expansion teams of the period in both the ASL and NASL, Benson's group gave themselves a long time to assemble a strong front office, line up sponsors, publicize the existence of their new club, and encourage the growth of soccer in the region before opening the gates for their first match.
In September, the team announced that its first head coach would be Rodney Marsh, an English Premier League veteran who had played for the NASL's Tampa Bay Rowdies from 1976-1979.
[4][5] The Lightnin' managed to take advantage of the changing landscape by scooping up the league's leading scorer in 1980, Mal Roche, and all-star Don Tobin when the teams they had played for shut down.
[6][7][5] Watching Tony Suarez outrun opposing defenders would turn out to be only one of several things Carolina fans would love about coming to Lightnin' games.
The majority of American soccer fans, they reasoned, did not know much about the nuances of the game yet; but, if they had a great time, they would become repeat customers who would eventually learn more about the on-field product.
In the playoffs, they defeated the Rochester Flash and then the Pennsylvania Stoners to earn a place in the championship game against New York United on September 18th.
[9][8] The Carolina front office only had two weeks for promotion between the vote and the game itself, but they still set an ambitious goal of drawing 10,000 fans.
They also signed two accomplished veterans from the shrinking NASL: Derek Smethurst (who had played with Marsh at Tampa Bay) and Paul Child.
But after a promising start in the MISL (scoring four goals in eight games), he suffered a devastating knee injury that forced him to miss the rest of the indoor season and all of Carolina's 1982 campaign.
Carolina did attract some attention by hiring Bobby Moore, captain of the World Cup winning English team in 1966, to assist Rodney Marsh on the coaching staff.
The 42 year-old Moore even suited up for eight games when the team was left short-handed by injuries, allowing younger players on both the Lightnin' and their opponents the bragging rights of saying that they played with/against the English legend.
[11] In October, Rodney Marsh accepted the invitation of a new ownership group to return to Tampa Bay as the Rowdies' new head coach.
The new franchise only had about six weeks to get its operation up and running before the first game of the season, and they were able to pull this off, in part, by hiring most of the Lightnin's front office staff.
Initial league plans also called for teams to field a mostly American roster and play an indoor season in the winter so that they would be better connected to their communities year-round.
[14][15] The Gold were in the league's Southern division along with the Jacksonville Tea Men and the Fort Lauderdale Sun (the team whose contested franchise rights had been the catalyst for the formation of the USL).
NASL and U.S. National Team veteran David D'Errico led the club as a player-coach, and the roster featured five former Lightnin' players, including Pat Fidelia and Tony Suarez.
[16] While the season featured some uplifting moments, such as when the PA system would play "Let's Hear It for the Boy" from the recently relasted movie Footloose whenever Suarez would score a goal, the Gold did not succeed in creating the atmosphere that the Lightnin' had enjoyed.
