The Carolina RailHawks will play its former coach and a former Division 2 foe when they host Vancouver Whitecaps FC of Major League Soccer March 4 at WakeMed Soccer Park. 

The match will open the RailHawks 2012 preseason and marks the return of former head coach Martin Rennie, who spent the last three years with Carolina before departing after the end of the season to coach the Whitecaps.

A report by the Independent Weekly's David Fellerath goes hand-in-hand with something RailHawks coach Martin Rennie and I talked about last week.

If you've been a witness to the RailHawks labor somewhat at home this year (1-2-1, including the Mexico match), you're probably stoked that the team has gotten off to a 2-0 start to a four-game road trip.

Sports Editor J. Mike Blake was on hand for the Carolina RailHawks' season-opening 2-0 win over AC St. Louis. He found out the key to Josh Gardner's improved play and what coach Martin Rennie plans to do with his goalkeepers. He couldn't understand, however why any coach would rather play down a player for 30 minutes unless he's waiting for the best player in the league to show up (tisk, tisk Claude Anelka). Read more on these and more below.

First-year RailHawks coach Martin Rennie is ready to introduce his style of play to the area this year. But what exactly is that style of play?

Midfielder Brian Plotkin described it as a “quick, clean, attacking style of soccer.”

Carolina RailHawks brand new Head Coach Martin Rennie was honored as the USL-2 Coach of the Year by FieldTurf Tarkett this week.

The Carolina Railhawks named 33-year old Martin Rennie their head coach at a press conference today.

Rennie spent the last two years coaching Cleveland's USL-D2 team where he was named Coach of the Year in 2007, his first year on the job, and then won the USL-D2 title this past season.

In fact, everywhere Rennie has coached his teams have won and won big, and that's a great sign for a franchise that has never come back to win after allowing the other team to score first.

Rennie is of Scottish descent but met his wife in Charlotte 12 years ago and is excited to be back in the area and ready to build a winner here in Cary.

Here's the audio from the day, starting with the bagpipes that played before the ceremony:

http://www.newsobserver.com/content/media/2008/11/13/interview.mp3