When the Fort Lauderdale Strikers come into St Petersburg on Saturday it will be the first action of the 2015 Florida Derby. It will also be the first taste of the rivalry for Farrukh Quraishi as an executive. Quraishi, the current Rowdies President and General Manager, played for the Rowdies when the rivalry first formed, before the Strikers were even called the Strikers. Despite the passage of decades and an unexpected new role, Quraishi is just as enthused for the match as he would have been suiting up to take the field back in the 70s.

“I attended as many Rowdies games as I could since the new era of the NASL, but I never thought about being involved in the rivalry in the capacity in which I am now,” says Quraishi. “I’m enjoying it very much. Gamedays are as exciting to me now as they were when I was playing. I still get butterflies. I still look forward to the game and kickoff regardless of who we’re playing.”

In Quraishi’s opinion, the rivalry was established only four minutes into the first ever match between the two regional adversaries in the Rowdies inaugural season.

“Before the Strikers became the Strikers, they were the Miami Toros, and we played them in 1975 for the very first time. I can remember playing them down in the Orange Bowl,” recalls Quraishi. “It was a very, very fierce and hard-fought game. There was a huge brawl in that game. We had a player sent off for each team, Mark Lindsay for us and for the Toros it was their midfield general, [Esteban Aranguiz]. He was an outstanding player, he controlled the game for them. I love Mark Lindsay, but it was a greater loss for them than it was for us, and we still went on and beat them 1-0 in that game. But we then had to turn around and do it again the very next week in Tampa and they came here and beat us. From that moment I think the rivalry was really born. We played so many games against them, and every game was a battle.”

The Rowdies and Toros finished that season as the two top teams in the Eastern Division and met again in the semifinal round of the NASL playoffs. On that day the Rowdies bested the Toros 3-0 on the road to their Soccer Bowl triumph over the Portland Timbers. The South Florida side would play one more season as the Toros before pulling up stakes and making the short up to Fort Lauderdale and rebranding as the Strikers for the 1977 season. That first season for the Strikers is when the term Florida Derby began to take hold.

Although the intrastate rivalry kicked off with some fisticuffs, Quraishi believes that at its core, the rivalry was based on mutual respect between the players and supporters. The competition on the field was closely contested and fans in either market didn’t want to give the other side bragging rights with a weak showing in the stands.

“One of the things that I recall vividly was there was so much respect between the two teams,” says Quraishi. “Players like Ray Hudson, and Teófilo Cubillas, and Jan van Beveren. They had so many outstanding players, Thomas Rongen as well. The games were very hard-fought, but there was always a good deal of sportsmanship, I felt, between the two teams, and between the fans too. I think it made for a good spectacle for the fans, but they were also good games to play in.”

For Quraishi, a rivalry is only as strong as the level of competition on the field. Every other aspect of the contest begins and ends with what happens on the field. The fans won’t respond or engage with ho-hum players or styles.

“I think [strong rivalries] are about having some kind of competitive balance, where the result isn’t always a foregone conclusion,” says Quraishi. “Fans want to see hard-fought games, and sometimes they like to see villains as well. We certainly had our share of players you could call villains, we also had exquisite players as well, as did the Strikers. Like George Best when he played for them, to give an example, or Rodney Marsh when he played for us, these guys were exquisite players. Fans enjoy seeing games in which the teams try to play good soccer, or open and attacking soccer. I always thought the Strikers did that and so did the Rowdies. And I believe the same is true today.”

The Florida Derby hasn’t reached the same zenith that the clubs enjoyed in the original NASL, but new ownership and significantly increased investment for both sides could mean 2015 is the first step in the direction to reach that heyday once again.

An interesting wrinkle to this year’s derby is that multiple players from both sides switched allegiances in the offseason. Two players from the Rowdies 2014 roster made the move down south, while five players from last year’s Strikers roster signed up to wear the green and gold hoops. Quraishi is quick to point out with a laugh that no roster raiding or theft took place. All the former Strikers players were free agents who chose to swap coasts because of the opportunity presented by the Rowdies.

The Rowdies General Manager is equally as quick in giving credit to the Strikers for the squad they have built after a late start in the offseason. Fort Lauderdale sits in a tie for third place on the NASL Spring table, only two points back from the Rowdies who are in a tie for second place.

“It’s a critical game for us, especially in a 10 game season and this being our seventh game,” says Quraishi. “There’s everything to still play for and we can’t afford to slip up, but neither can they. Those are all the ingredients for a good game.”