"Whenever people talk to me about the weather, I always feel quite certain that they mean something else," says Gwendolen Fairfax, the aristocratic love interest in Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Importance of Being Ernest’. If she’d been in DC over the past few weeks, she would have heard her worst fears confirmed. People have been talking about the weather, but what they really meant was DC United’s now mercifully broken winless streak.

So when the guys installing the new fence at my neighborhood pool said, "We just can’t finish the job on time because of the rain," they really meant to say, "We’ve been too depressed at the Black-and-Red’s poor form to get out of bed the past few days." And when the waitress at the Tastee Diner in Bethesda remarked that summer "sure is coming late this year", she really meant to say, "If Ray Hudson’s boys don’t register three points this coming Saturday I’m going to drown myself in the swollen brown waters of the Potomac."

If DC United has cited bad luck, bad calls and badly bouncing balls to explain its lack of success from April through May, surely it can call on the weather too. Throughout spring, the gloom and the clouds and the uncharacteristically endless days and nights of precipitation have dampened spirits and souls across the region. Our players could hardly be expected to perform to their highest levels when the grey elements were calling on them to stay home, wrapped up warm in front of a roaring log fire and watching video replays of the 1999 MLS Cup Final.

The question was, which would break first? The miserable weather or the winless streak? If sunshine came, would goals follow, or vice versa? It was beginning to seem as if we were doomed to spend the summer in long pants, with long faces, and with a long way to go before we reached fourth place in the Eastern Division.

In the end it needed just one man to loosen the stranglehold of defeat. For weeks Ray Hudson had talked about bringing on Hristo Stoichkov late in the game in the outside hope of "a little bit of magic". Yet the only trickery the veteran Bulgarian managed was by using his miraculous vocal powers to make the referee reach in his pocket for a yellow card. The coach was looking down the wrong end of the bench and the age scale. Step forward Ali Curtis.

Now Curtis was not solely responsible for Saturday’s defeat of Chicago, by any means. Hudson had "had words" with a number of his players during the week, and although he didn’t name them, it was clear from the improved performances of Ben Olsen and Dema Kovalenko that some squad members were playing with lighted dynamite strapped to their inner thighs. Their danger on the flanks, coupled with Bobby Convey’s second successive performance as a midfield boss, meant that for the first time at RFK this season DC looked like a team on the offensive.

It was Curtis, however, who set the tone. Not that the omens were any better than the weather when the starting striker’s pre-match complementary soccer ball failed to find one of the 55,000 seats he had to aim for, and landed several yards short of the outstretched arms of the nearest spectators. But once the game proper started his impact was immediate, and within thirty seconds his quick cross had almost found Olsen right in front of goal.

This directness was typical of the dash and zip that Curtis brought to the DC attack on Saturday. He made himself available to the midfield and held the ball up in a way no other forward has managed this year. On some occasions he took defenders on to set himself up, on others he played the perfect through ball, as he did for Eliseo Quintanilla’s thwarted shot 20 minutes in. Although he didn’t score, his industry and distribution led to Olsen’s cross for Kovalenko’s neatly taken goal just before half time.

Along with the rest of the players on both sides, who seemed to be almost visibly sinking into the boggy, re-laid turf in the latter part of the second half, Curtis tired as the game went on. Like the defence that looked so solid throughout the night, he had done enough by then. And although it’s far too early to say if the first victory of the year will usher in a successful run to the play-offs, it surely can not be a coincidence that as I type this on the following Monday morning, the skies are blue and the muddy ground is drying out. Are sun and success here to stay?