HALIFAX—It was a boisterous and excited crowd that gathered in downtown Halifax late Friday afternoon for the city’s new professional soccer team kick-off announcement.

The hundreds of fans packed into Rogers Square at the Nova Centre erupted in chants and applause as Derek Martin, founder and president of Sports & Entertainment Atlantic, revealed the club would be called Hfx Wanderers FC.

“This is a name that respects our past. Respects how Halifax was created, how we got to where we are. But it also embraces our future. It’s about where we’re going as much as where we’ve been,” Martin said.

“We’re all wanderers in our own way, and this club will strive to represent our collective spirit wherever their soccer travels take them as they cover the globe wearing our colours.”

The Canadian Premier League’s professional men’s soccer team in Halifax will call the Wanderers Grounds home. The team will play out of a 6,000-plus seat stadium with a world-class natural grass pitch on the historic downtown Halifax site.

The Halifax Wanderers Support Group has long lobbied for a professional team in Halifax. With the new team adopting the Wanderers name, they’re now changing theirs.

James Covey, a member of that support group, was called up to the stage to unveil the new name for the Hfx Wanderers’ fan club.

“This league has really positioned itself as having supporters as its lifeblood from day one … They came and met with us. (We) told them we’ve been using this name Wanderers, but we just borrowed it,” Covey told the crowd.

“It’s been in this city, it’s been the centre of sports in this city since 1882, and we said that if you feel the need to take that name for the club we’ll find a new name, we’ll pass it forward. We’re just carrying on a tradition.”

To great applause, Covey revealed the new name for the Halifax soccer team’s support group will be Privateers 1882.

The event also was a chance for organizers to unveil the team’s colours and its logo. Inspired by the Atlantic Ocean, the club’s official colours are aqua ocean, harbour blue, and naval grey. The club’s literature describes the colour scheme as “representing the sea and the region’s steel-toned skies, which come together like the Halifax community.”

The team logo recognizes the role the harbour has played in Halifax’s history and incorporates the Citadel and the Macdonald Bridge. The club’s motto “Ar Cala, Ar Dachaigh, Ar N-Anam,” was inspired by Halifax Harbour. It means “Our Harbour, Our Home, Our Soul” in Gaelic.

Delali Motey and his five-year-old son, also named Delali Motey, were excited to be on hand for the announcement.

“I play soccer, he plays soccer, and we are big fans. We’re just excited to have a team in Halifax that we can support. I think it’s just good for the social aspect of it, the economic aspect of it, and then just something for kids,” Motey said. “It’s something local for our kids to get out and do and watch. It’s also going to inspire them in their own games as well to try to play harder, and I think that’s important for kids like this coming up.”

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Meera O’Neill, 13, and her brother Iasan O’Neill, 14, have both played soccer from the age of three. The Bedford teens described the news as “amazing.”

“I play with the Bedford Titans. I think it’s amazing because it’s such a small place here,” Meera said. “I think it’s a really great name and really like the logo. Let’s go Wanderers!”

The league is expected to begin play in the spring of 2019.

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