CPL can be in a league of its own

FIELD OF DREAMS...the home of HFX Wanderers in Halifax, Nova Scotia...stunning place

By IAIN KING, Toronto, March 19, 2019

A VISION of professional football in communities who crave it, pioneering souls swimming against the tide of scepticism to make the dream happen.

Next month my adopted homeland will see the birth of the Canadian Premier League (CPL).

On Saturday April 27 they now hope for a sell-out crowd of 23,218 fans at Tim Horton’s Field in Hamilton for the inaugural fixture between the hosts Forge FC and York 9 from the suburbs of Toronto.

Across Canada in the seven cities who host the new franchises, seven years away from the World Cup coming here, the excitement is rising.

In the land where ice hockey is king “soccer” is planting its studs firmly in the ground. I can’t wait.

Within the football community here there remains some cynicism over whether this brave experiment can work.

It sends my mind careering back to the summer of 2013 when the Lowland League was dragged kicking and screaming into the consciousness of the Scottish game.

No-one gave it much of a chance.

I was lucky enough to be part of that revolution as head coach of East Kilbride FC, one of the founder clubs.

They said it was a flash in the pan, an idea that would crash and burn.

Six years on EKFC - now standing on the brink of their second Lowland League title - have made world soccer history by eclipsing Dutch giants Ajax’s record with 27 consecutive pro league wins.

They have faced the mighty Celtic in a Scottish Cup last 16 clash live on TV and only lost 2-0.

They’ve been managed by the likes of former Celtic and Scotland no2 Billy Stark and once more stand on the brink of making the SPFL proper.

My hometown club can be proud of how they have grasped the opportunity and I pray that this season they can complete the job in the play-offs and take the next step in the pro ranks.

Throughout Canada from Calvary FC in Calgary, to FC Edmonton, to HFX Wanderers in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Pacific FC on Vancouver Island and Valour FC in Winnipeg.

Their eyes will all turn to Hamilton on opening day as the Forge FC-York 9 opener gets underway.

I know the feeling, it’s something to treasure and from League Commissioner David Clanachan to President Paul Beirne and the imaginative media and marketing staff behind them they should savour the day.

It’s far easier to accept the status quo in this game than have the guts to drive a new idea forward.

In my old line of work, as first Chief Football Writer then Head of Sport at the best-selling Scottish Sun, contacts were king.

Yet managing relationships with the top figures in the Scottish game was like juggling hand-grenades.

Through all the trials and tribulations, though, I maintained a friendship and a sound working trust with Scottish Football Association (SFA) Chief Executive Stewart Regan.

I did once have to portray him as a PARROT on the back page of the Currant Bun after one magnificent rant from the late Raith Rovers chairman Turnbull Hutton.

The colourful rent-a-quote firebrand said Regan, Scottish Premier League (SPL) chief Neil Doncaster and Scottish Football League (SFL) supremo David Longmuir had botched reconstruction and that our top league was a “dead parrot”.

It was a homage to the classic Monty Python sketch and for a tabloid sports editor it was an open goal - I had to do it.

All three had their heads photo-shopped onto parrots on their perch. Stewart saw the funny side.

Regan’s reign had been a crash course in fire-fighting.

The once mighty Rangers crumbling into financial disarray and falling into Division Three. Dunfermline Athletic and Heart of Midlothian going bust.

It’s hard to follow your vision for the game when the blind are leading the blind into financial oblivion.

Englishman Regan, though, remained committed to his dream of a footballing pyramid north of the border.

Six years ago in the summer of 2013 the idea had been bubbling under amidst the name-calling and feuding between the SPL and the SFL.

In truth I always felt that Stewart’s vision of a Lowland League would be thrown overboard once the big boys had finished moving the deckchairs.

Yet he simply refused to give up and that left me sitting alongside EKFC club secretary Dave McKenna and chairman Mike Peden in the Hampden Park lecture theatre.

It had been just four days since our club had been announced as members of the South of Scotland League.

Now we were being asked the question: “If the Lowland League were to start tomorrow would you be interested in playing in it?”

I raised my hand on behalf of EKFC, I had to.

We had no choice, if the club’s ambitions were to be met we had to aspire to the highest level possible.

Just 96 hours had elapsed since we had posed with SOSL banners after our acceptance to the league.

Now we could be out of it without kicking a ball or playing a game.

MAN WITH A PLAN...SFA chief Stewart Regan (left) alongside Lowland League chairman Andrew Waddell as my old paper the Scottish Sun backed the Lowland League Cup

That didn’t sit well with any of us but we were caught between a rock and a hard place.

Within days South League side Abbey Vale - whose chairman Andy Brolls would become a friend and someone I hugely respect - called to cancel our pre-season friendly with them.

He sighed: “After what has happened out committee couldn’t countenance bringing the team up.”

That stung, I was bitterly disappointed but I understood.

We had to live with the consequences of a bigger dream becoming reality.

The truth was that if any of the clubs in the SOSL back then had EKFC’s structure and facilities and were offered the Lowland lure they would have bitten the SFA’s hand off.

Now look where Kilby are and community clubs in Canada like the fledgling HFX Wanderers have the chance to emulate days like EKFC’s famed clash with Celtic.

The 13-club coast to coast Canadian Championship sees HFX play League One champions Vaughan Azzurri with the eventual dream of progressing to meet Major League Soccer’s 2017 winners Toronto FC.

I have a vested interest now in following the Wanderers, my daughter Caitlin has settled in the beautiful city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, with lawyer husband Mike and I can’t wait to see how the story unfolds for their local team.

Already the 6,000-capacity Wanderers Grounds looks like being sold out for their home matches with fans snapping up season tickets that go for around $400 with your new home replica jersey thrown in!

The Canadian Premier League faces a far tougher journey than we ever did with the Scottish Lowland League.

I recall now putting together a case to convince my bosses at the Scottish Sun to sponsor one of the inaugural season's competitions. I was high on passion for the project and low on facts as to what we could achieve.

Gladly, though, they listened.

The CPL has enviable business brains behind it, a league-wide kit deal with Macron, a TV contract, the lot.

Yet they are operating in a country where Toronto Maple Leafs’ local hero John Tavares can sign a seven-year contract worth $77million and no-one blinks an eye at the salary.

Basketball, baseball, the NFL, there are so many sports competing for the attention here.

Yet on April 27 my own thoughts - wherever I am coaching with North Toronto Nitros as we prepare for the launch of the Ontario Player Development League the following weekend - will turn to Hamilton at kick-off time.

I yearn to see the CPL work and I wish them every success. Canadian soccer needs a pathway for its gifted young players.

As men’s national team coach John Herdman said: “If not you, then who?”

Everyone invested in the Beautiful Game here has a duty to get behind this project.

I lived in one country where a fledgling league proved the doubters wrong and became a part of the football landscape. I’d love to live in another.