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OTTAWA — The high-powered Toronto FC took the Canadian part of the Canadian Championship series to heart.

The Ottawa Fury FC, who are built around their Canadian talent, just couldn’t take advantage after the defending MLS champions left most all of their international stars back home.

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Canadian Championship rules call for teams to start as least three Canucks and Toronto FC went three better, almost matching Fury FC Canadian-for-Canadian in their starting lineup where they would normally only start one.

Still, with the Fury FC just outnumbering Toronto on their CanCon eight to six, the Fury FC offence was missing and Toronto took the first leg of the semifinal 1-0 on an early goal by Canadian Jonathan Osorio before an impressive crowd of 6,057 at TD Place on Wednesday night.

The two teams will complete the series next Wednesday at BMO Field with the winner to advance against the winner of the all-MLS-series between the Vancouver Whitecaps and Montreal Impact.

The Impact won the first leg of that series 1-0 in Montreal, also Wednesday night, and will play their second leg next Wednesday in Vancouver.

As for the Ottawa-Toronto matchup, those half dozen Canadians in the Toronto FC lineup had a combined 15 starts all season in MLS competition with Osorio responsible for nine of them. And half of the six had not started a game all season for the Reds, who have played 19 regular-season games to date.