The Canadian Premier League is walking softly and letting their potential customers carry the big stick.

All quiet on the CPL front, but only in the way the visible part of a floating duck is quiet. If this thing is a go for 2018 — and the few public indications we've had certainly point that way — then there's a lot of furious churning going on beneath the surface.

While CPL organizers are currently mum about the Tier 1 domestic pro league that likely launches 14 months from now, there's a lot of forward-looking talk everywhere else in the Canadian soccer world, particularly in the rise of supporters groups for teams that don't formally exist.

That happened in Hamilton with the Barton Street Battalion, whose black and gold scarves are popping up all over the city. The group started more than a year before this spring's official announcements that the CPL has official status. Hamilton will indeed have a team and so will Winnipeg. So the Battalion was in on the ground floor before there was even a basement, selling the team one heart at a time.

It's been trending that way right across the country.

Supporters groups — known as fan or booster clubs in other sports — tend to be more important in North American soccer than in those other sports, because the game and its leagues are newer here. The diehard groups are usually vocal salespeople for their teams, partly to ensure their survival, and tickets are often sold through them.

Winnipeg had Red River Rising as a supporters group before the Bombers and Canada Soccer announced that they would join Hamilton in the CPL's official Original Two.

Halifax had a large supporters group (Wanderers SG) off and running, even though there was an owner (Hamilton's Derek Martin), but no official team nor place to play. Last week, city council agreed to let Martin's group use the downtown Wanderers Grounds for a pop-up stadium suitable to the CPL; and one support group tweet referred to it as the team's first win, by 16-0.

And Pile O'Bones SG says it has "slowly but steadily prepared for the arrival of CanPL in Regina. But we know who we are."

And so do the Roughriders, should they decide to join the Blue Bombers and Tiger-Cats — and at least three other CFL ownership groups — in the league. A fraternity that will handle much of the from-the-bottom-up marketing — as the Red Patch Boys do for Toronto FC — can only have a positive influence on the purse-string holders.

The Foot Soldiers Supporters Group posts that it's "anxiously awaiting the arrival of an CanPL club in Calgary, and will be supporting that club when it arrives."

And that will probably be next summer, along with Hamilton, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Ottawa and Halifax.

Just down the road, the Grand River Union is scarf-waving at K-W United FC games (in the USL Premier Development League), but are "pining for the days we will be in the CanPL."

They probably won't have to pine long. Two years at the most, is the guess here.

Soccer fans in Mississauga have also glommed onto the league, which will need a GTA presence, and they'll probably pressure politicians about a stadium and an owner.

Most tellingly "The Voyageurs," the well-established national supporters group of all Canadian soccer, is encouraging the formation of CPL supporters groups across the country. On their website, they pledge to assist any new group in raising seed money.

Ottawa and Edmonton, which already have pro teams, also already have supporter groups.

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Meanwhile, cyber space has ventured way beyond where the league itself has. Soccer sites and blogs are already dissecting a near-future of 16 teams, with divisions that have relegation and promotion; which players from League 1 in Ontario and Quebec would be prime CPL candidates; steps the league should and shouldn't take in player recruitment; and on and on.

All of this helps market, free of charge, something which isn't yet on the market.