ACHARYA: STEPHEN HART, MONES CHERY, ONSTAD AND DE ROSARIO

Co-Blogger Neil Acharya weighs in following Canada's 2-0 win over Haiti last night in their final group play match at the CONCACAF Gold Cup.

Goalkeeper Pat Onstad provided Canada with the spark they needed to beat Haiti in order to advance past the Gold Cup group stage for the first time since 2002.

Onstad, who logged his 18th career international shutout to move within one of Craig Forrest's Canadian record for clean sheets, probably had the most tumultuous day of any player on the Canadian side as he flew in from an MLS game in Columbus and arrived several hours before game time. One thing he did not expect to find was that the field condition in the goalies box was worse than when he played in the first game vs. Costa Rica. Just prior to kickoff, Onstad was tearing out loose patches of sod and throwing them into the back of his net -- hardly what you'd expect at this level of competition. During a halftime interview Onstad alluded to the fact that he thought something would have been done about the grass in the box. Evidently, nothing meaningful was done to remedy the situation.

Onstad made a brilliant save at the 40 minute mark as Canada seemed to all asleep after they went up on two goals by Dwayne De Rosario, who became Canada's active leading scorer with 10 international goals. It wasn’t until about the 62nd minute when Canada finally seemed to wake up.

During that span of 20 or so minutes, Onstad was run over during a lazy touch back to him which defender Andrew Hainault left for Onstad. Haiti's Ricardo St. Louis went hard at the ball which Onstad kicked away just before he was leveled. The keeper's head hit the ground and it took well over 5 minutes for him to regain his composure.

He stayed in, and came up with a big save in the 61st when Haiti had their best chance to get back into the game. A Haitian striker had his shot partially blocked, but the ball bounced to forward with a point-blank shot just off the left post. Onstad stood straight up against the post and the shot went off of him and then the post and out of bounds.

Haiti was in contention until the 80th, when Pierre-Richard Bruny was red-carded. They probably should have more than two minutes of injury time at the end of the match,

Onstad gets my vote for man of the match, despite De Rosario's two goals. He was very vocal with his teammates for all 90 minutes and provided a much-needed spark after being absent for Saturday's near-disastrous loss to Guadeloupe.

The work of Issey Nakajima-Farran was the other big key -- he drew the penalty for De Rosario's second goal by getting taken down in the box after he flicked the ball ahead to spring him free from coverage. It was good move by coach Stephen Hart to get him in there, since he added some quickness that was absent vs. Guadeloupe in their second game.

Quickness is probably going to be Word One for the Canucks the rest of the way in this tournament. Their quarter-final game on Saturday (4 p.m. Eastern, Sportsnet) vs. the second-place team from Group B is going to be at Foxborough, Mass., instead of Miami; perhaps the somewhat cooler weather in New England will give them more energy.

(No, that's not a typo -- Mones Chery is No. 20 for Haiti.)

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neil__acharya@hotmail.com.