Bob Rohrbach

Bob Rohrbach
Personnel
Surname	Robert James Rohrbach
birthday	April 2, 1955
place of birth	Garden City , New York ,  USA
size	188 cm
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
1973-1976	Dayton Flyers
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1977	New York Cosmos	0 (0)
1978	Colorado Caribous	26 (6)
1979	Detroit Express	8 (4)
1979	Columbus Magic
1980	Columbus Magic
Indoor
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1979-1980	Detroit Express	4 (4)
1979-1980	Pittsburgh Spirit	13 (2)
1979-1980	Hartford Hellions	3 (1)
1 Only league games are given.

Robert "Bob" James Rohrbach (born April 2, 1955 in Garden City , New York ) is a retired American football player on the position of a striker . Shortly after his 25th birthday, he ended his career as an active soccer player due to an injury and began a career in the oilfield service industry.

Career

From basketball player to soccer player

Bob Rohrbach was born on April 2, 1955 in the Long Island community of Garden City in the US state of New York, where he grew up and attended, among other things, the Garden City Senior High School . In his childhood and youth he was particularly inclined to play basketball and later developed an interest in football . So it happened that after a successful time as a basketball player in high school, he got a sports scholarship, but subsequently no university showed any interest in the young player. He then decided to enroll at the University of Dayton , where he wanted to join their men's basketball team. While he was still training for the upcoming freshman season, he also completed a trial session with the men's soccer team and then decided to play for it at short notice and for this reason left the basketball team again.

With the footballers he completed several successful years and quickly became one of the most successful football players in the history of the Dayton Flyers , the sports division of the University of Dayton. Even today (as of 2016) he holds the records for the most goals in a season (1975, 31 goals in 14 games) and a college career (69 goals from 1973 to 1976). In the ranking with the most goals in a game, he is in first place with Pat Obiaya, who succeeded in this in 1966, with seven goals. In the course of his college career, he completed 61 championship games, in which he contributed 69 goals and 14 assists in a total of 172 shots on goal. This is a total of 152 scorer points, as well as 1.13 goals per game and 2.49 scorer points per game. In each year of his participation, different selections were made; in 1973 he was in the All-Ohio selection , received an All-Ohio Honorable Mention in 1974 , was in the All-America Second Team in 1975 and also received an All-America Honorable Mention in 1975 . In 1993, the 1978 alumni, who studied at the university until 1977, was elected to the University of Dayton Athletic Hall of Fame for his achievements . After Pat Obiaya, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1979, he was the second football player to receive this honor.

Start of professional career

His success in college football did not go unnoticed in the North American Soccer League (NASL), the then highest North American football league. So he made the leap to New York Cosmos in 1977 , which from that year and for another year came under the name Cosmos . At Cosmos he was in the squad of many international top stars such as Franz Beckenbauer , Pelé or Giorgio Chinaglia , to name just a few. However, he was hardly noticed by this consistently experienced squad and was not used in any competitive game by coach Gordon Bradley or his successor Eddie Firmani . In the following year he switched to the newly founded Colorado Caribous , which existed only for this season and are still known today for their idiosyncratic outfits . With the Caribous he was one of the regulars and brought it as a striker in 26 championship appearances to six hits and two assists. Since the team was dissolved again at the end of 1978 for financial as well as sporting reasons and subsequently moved to Atlanta and continued under the name of Atlanta Chiefs until 1981, Rohrbach did not have a long future ahead of them either. In 1979 he moved within the league to the Detroit Express franchise , which had been founded a year earlier , in which he subsequently acted in a dangerous manner, but hardly ever came under the English coach Ken Furphy . By the end of the game year 1979 , he had made eight championship games in which he scored four goals and remained without assists. For the team he also appeared in the NASL Indoor , the indoor soccer league of the NASL, where he scored as many goals in four games in the 1979/80 season and also contributed three assists.

From NASL to ASL and MISL

In the game year 1979 he withdrew from the North American Soccer League and instead switched to the American Soccer League (ASL) at Columbus Magic , where he was used from then on. In his first year with the team, he reached first place in the Eastern Division with the team at the end of regular time and thus moved into the play-offs at the end of the season with Columbus Magic. In these, the team around the 1.88 m tall attacking player prevailed against the Pennsylvania Stoners in the two semi-finals with 2: 1 each and moved into the subsequent final. Magic was only barely defeated by the Sacramento Gold franchise with 0: 1 and was therefore only allowed to call themselves runner-up at the ASL at the end of the year. After he had also been a member of the Pittsburgh Spirit team with play in the Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL) in the 1979/80 season and had contributed two goals and two assists in 13 appearances from the beginning of the season, he ended the indoor soccer season 1979 / 80 at league competitor Hartford Hellions , where he only played three games and scored one goal. As in 1979 , Rohrbach was also used for the Columbus Magic team in 1980 , the second and last year of its existence. In the, compared to the previous year, greatly shrunk and completely revised league, he only reached fourth and last place in the table in the National Conference . During the game year 1980, however, he had to end his career as an active football player after he sustained a serious injury in a collision with another player shortly after his 25th birthday in April 1980. His head collided with that of an opponent, whereupon Bob Rohrbach was in a coma for four days, resulting in an early retirement.

Career after that

Subsequently, he largely withdrew from football and began a career in the oilfield service industry. In the 1980s or at the latest in the 1990s, he was a partner in the company R&R Procurement Inc. Even today (as of 2016) he is still active in this industry, but mostly works for other companies such as the manufacturer Venture tech .

Web links

• Bob Rohrbach on NASLJerseys.com (English)
• Dayton Flyers - Men's Soccer - Record Book (2015) (pdf)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ HALL OF FAME / TRADITIONS (English), accessed on September 14, 2016