“It’s gonna be a short summer

A new season has begun”

These are exciting times for soccer in Canada, and with CPL just around the corner. what better way to warm up for the big day in 2019 than by getting stuck into the new League 1 Ontario season kicking off this weekend.

By all accounts last year was the league’s biggest and best season to date, helped in part by players coming back to the league to put themselves in the shop window for the CPL and various other professional leagues. This was my first season following the league closely and I was largely impressed by the standard on show. I was tasked with following the Mississauga based powerhouse Sigma FC in their ultimately slightly disappointing end to the season, having lost only one game all year but missing out on the grand final by 1 point.

This season I will be taking on a new task, not solely following one team around the province but writing a feature on a specific game of the week. I hope this will bring more exposure to different teams around the league.

Preview? What’s new?

It’s difficult to preview every team in the league without knowing which players are where and what new players are coming in or out for a lot of teams, so I’m just going to go with what I know and the information that has come out from the league this off season and give my opinion on these developments.

So what’s new this season?

Well, there has been expansion in the league with three new women’s teams in Hamilton and Oakville and DeRo United, and three new men’s teams in Darby, Unionville/Milliken and Alliance United FC. Unfortunately, we did lose two teams in the men’s; Durham United are taking a break for a season, and North Toronto Nitros have not renewed their license.

The latter is a particular disappointment to me, with NTN being my local team that I could walk to on a lazy afternoon and watch some enjoyable football. There were some very good players at both these sides so hopefully they have been retained by the league. It will be interesting to see where they turn up when teams are released.

On the other side of this coin, however, is the exciting and intriguing introduction of the Unionville Milliken Men’s team who look to threaten the established order. UM become the second full professional team in the league after TFCIII. To back this up, they have brought over the 2016 League 1 MVP Joseph Di Chiara and Tre Crosby over from rivals Vaughan Azzuri, potentially weakening the opposition, though Crosby played just 54 minutes last season.

They’ve also tempted Michael Fayehun away from that great Woodbridge defence of 2017, who also incidentally may have lost starting goalkeeper Quillen Roberts this off season. Though I’m not sure what happened with the trial at LAFC, his twitter still says LA as his location and he is not on the Woodbridge roster on the website. Finally, ex-TFC player Sergio Camargo has gone back to where he played growing up to bolster the midfield. UM could have a solid squad going into this year and could cause some upsets. They have lofty goals to involve the local community and ‘attract thousands of fans’ to games, which would be great to see; though I am skeptical whether this can be achieved.

One question I have that could probably be easily answered is around the fact that a lot of clubs in the league do not declare as professional to retain the eligibility for players to go into the NCAA. UM says that they want their players to pursue university, but by declaring professionally this may hinder recruitment for those types of players. I believe USports allows L1O play but after reading the eligibility rules, I’m still not 100% on that. UM are being extremely ambitious, and I really hope they succeed and other clubs in league 1 follow suit.

Finally, Master Futbol has recently added 35yr old ex-Sp*rs, TFC and PTT Rayong player Rohan Ricketts to their squad to add experience to the young team along with the L1O Young Player of the Year 2017 Cyrus Rollocks, coming off the back of 17 goals in 17 games last season for TFCIII. Master has stated that they hope to challenge for the league this season, maybe these signings signal a successful 2018.

Format?

Also new this season is the revamped schedule. Gone are the east and west conferences, replaced with a single table format where the men will play each other only once for a total 16 regular season games. Following this, the top 8 teams will go into a group based format playoff. Split into two groups of four, the teams will play three games with the top team from each group playing in the grand final to crown the champion. Regular season record decides who plays at home in these group games.

You can probably name most of the playoff teams now; the big 5 plus probably TFC V: London Edition and new boys UM, but we will see how the season pans out and re-evaluate at a later point.

Speaking of FC London, in a disappointing move they have changed their identity to become more under the umbrella of the evil overlords TFC. They have a new badge kit with colours that are more a part of the TFC ‘brand’. As much as I appreciate the money TFC is probably putting in to improve the standard of Canadian players, and it will help; I’d rather London and Windsor keep their own identities.

On the women’s side of things, there are 13 teams in a single table that will play each other home and away with a four-team playoff finish. London will be looking for the three-peat this season, which is partly why I think the league brought in the playoff system for both men and women to try and give other teams the opportunity to win in a one-off match, giving more opportunity for different teams to win. This is not a bad thing. It also gives more teams something to play for deeper into the season, making games towards the end more important.

Future?

What I’d like to see this season, and I know the league would like to do this as well (though I understand the constraints), is transparency of players moving clubs, suspensions and injuries. Obviously, some of this is much easier elsewhere due to the media attention and it doesn’t necessarily affect the casual viewer, but if you follow the league closely and the league wants to be seen as serious, this information should be publicly available. The main issue for me is suspensions. In England, the FA publicizes suspensions so maybe this should be something the CSA or OSA should be doing for L1O?

This season could also be a preview of what’s to come in the CPL, with different Supporters Groups around the GTA linking with their local L1O team in preparation for 2019.

It’s tough to predict what will happen this season as there are too many unknowns at this point, though I suspect the aforementioned eight teams will be the playoff favourites on the men’s side. There will still be an imbalance between the ‘haves’ and have nots’, but there could be a couple teams that cause an upset.

Opening weekend

Sigma have a bye week right off the bat and will begin their season next weekend.

On Saturday, Masters travel north to Aurora where they will be looking to get off to a good start in a big season for them. Aurora will want to do a lot better than last season where they finished bottom of the eastern conference and will be looking at Masters as a team they could challenge, especially early on while the teams are gelling.

The second game that day sees last season’s finalists Woodbridge go to the new boys Darby. Woodbridge only have 11 players listed on their website, though needing at least 14 according to the rules, so there may be a number of young call ups for the first part of the season. [Update: Woodbridge added more players to their squad since this article was released, they now have a full squad]

First game on the Sunday sees the first TFC derby of the season; TFC V:London are at TFC III. Last season’s top scorer Elvir Gigolaj doesn’t appear in the London roster so they will have to find someone to replace those goals. Though TFC also lost their top scorer, I assume they will be able to fill that hole reasonably easily.

Toronto based Sanjaxx have a tough start away at Vaughan Azzuri who will be strong as ever going into the season and will expect to beat Sanjaxx comfortably.

UM begin their first season with a long trip West to Windsor, and I’ll be intrigued to see how UM get on. Also travelling a long way west but from a more eastern starting point are OSU Force playing Pro Stars. The Brampton outfit will definitely be wanting to improve on a pretty bad season last year where they picked up just 1 win and 1 draw, and a home game against Ottawa should be seen as winnable.

The other new team this year, Alliance United, kick off their season at home to North Mississauga Panthers, with the NMP looking to build upon their successful debut season. NMP will definitely look the part in their lovely new uniforms.

I will start the 2018 season where I started last year, at the home of the champions, Oakville. This year they will begin their defence against Toronto Skillz; I expect a comfortable win for the home team, and for them to have another successful year.

These are exciting times, and I fully expect L1O to come through with a more exciting season than the last. I will do my best to relay that to you.

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Dan Baldwin Dan joins us to finally get involved in doing something about the sport he loves. Born in England he has played and followed the game his whole life. After moving to Toronto in 2014, he immediately began to learn about the local soccer scene and is passionate about the development of the sport in the country. However, he can still found cheering on his beloved West Ham each weekend morning at the Dog and Bear pub.

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