It was on August
20th, 1997 that the Ontario Soccer Association officially
announced the formation of a long awaited new venture
into premiere league soccer in the province of Ontario,
the Canadian Professional Soccer League (Ontario
Division). This new CPSL, the result of a merger
between the established but struggling Canadian National
Soccer League and the still-born Ontario Professional
Soccer League, was designed to help solidify the overly
shifting nature of semi- professional soccer in the
province and further, to lead the way towards a new
“national” soccer entity consisting of CPSL
divisions across Canada.
The CPSL (Ontario Division) would consist of five clubs
from the old CNSL - Toronto Croatia, Toronto Italia,
London City, St. Catharines Roma Wolves and North York
(formerly Scarborough) Astros plus four clubs that had
planned to be part of the OPSL - York Region Shooters,
Toronto Olympians, Glen Shields Sun Devils and
Mississauga S.C.
However noble the OSA’s motives, the road to
stability for this league has been rough, rocky and
strewn with controversy. When it became known that
the Canadian Soccer Association had not been consulted or
even informed of the OSA’s plans for the CPSL, long
suffering soccer fans were forced once again to shake
their heads in dismay.
The head shaking continued when it came to light that
Toronto Italia, formerly one of the strongest franchises
in the old NSL but now only a pale shadow of its former
self, was involved in a war of words with the OSA and
CPSL regarding its territory and league policy. In
the end, this once proud franchise would withdraw from
the league and may have actually disappeared forever.
As spring fast approached and the Italia issue remained
unsolved, the league was not even able to finalize its
schedule for the 1998 season. Finally and with only
two weeks notice, the league released their schedule and
things started to look like they were falling into
place.
The CPSL was embarrassed by their late start, League
Chairman Bill Spiers stated “Ideally, we would have
liked all those things settled before Christmas and spend
January, February and March doing promotion. We
just weren't able to do that and it turned out that we
finalized the schedule and the number of teams then the
season opens two weeks later. It was most
disappointing.”
League Director of Operations Voja Jurisic concurred
stating, “Every new league and every new business is
going to have it successes and failures and we had our
fair share of both.”
Sadly, although play on the field was able to maintain a
high level of quality throughout the season, attendance
figures dramatically reflected the league’s
inability to publicize itself.
London City’s Harry Gauss left no room for doubt
regarding the crowds at City’s “Cove Road”
facility stating, “This has been the lowest
attendance in our 25 year history. We can live with
600 but what we want is 1000. We were well below
that. This was as bad a year as you would ever want to
have.”
He continued “We do our job locally here but we've
got to know what we're dealing with. How many teams
there are and who they are and know that well in advance.
You can't have a schedule released for your first game
and we didn't even have that. We were supposed to
kick off without schedules, without anything and it's
pretty hard to market that.”
While attendance is the most visible area of weakness,
there are other areas of concern. At matches this
reporter has personally attended, problems included
matches starting 30 to 45 minutes later than their
publicized kick-off times, non-functioning scoreboard
clocks, the non-availability of printed team line-ups to
spectators and teams changing uniforms and colours at
half time.
If the league wishes to be known as professional, these
types of problems just cannot occur, ever. The
increasingly sophisticated sports fans of this era will
simply not accept it.
The use of the term “professional” in the
league title has come with some controversy in
itself. It is well known within circles that
approaches have been made to the league regarding the
changing of its name to the “Canadian Premiere
Soccer League”. The clubs have not reacted well to
this proposal with Gauss being the most outspoken, “We
are not going to agree on a name change. I feel
sorry for whoever wants us to change our name because
it's not going to happen. I'm very adamant about
it. We're tired of changing our name. You
can't change it every two weeks. What's next?
Enough is enough.”
While the clubs might balk at any name change, many
observers feel that the very use of the term “professional”
does more to illustrate the “wannabe” status of
the league rather than the reality of the situation
especially in light of the fact that the majority of
players are either amateur or at the low end of the
semi-professional scale.
With the 1998 season now having concluded with Toronto
Olympians taking the League and Cup but with St.
Catharines Roma Wolves upsetting them in the Play-off
Final, speculation has now begun in regards to the 1999
season and possible expansion.
“We've spoken to various new groups that have
expressed an interest in getting into the league”
said Spiers. “We have some difficulties in that we
are trying to avoid becoming a Toronto based league but
its very difficult when most of the interest is from the
Toronto area.”
An outspoken Gauss is not in favour of expansion in the
Toronto area , “I'm hoping that common sense is
being used. (The league) is really Toronto based
right now and
that makes it tough on a London and St. Catharines for
travelling. If we get 12 more
applications and they're all from Toronto, I don't want
to see (it).
On expansion, Jurisic stated, “The league position
and my personal goal is to expand the league by four more
clubs. We have eight so four (expansion) clubs
would be perfect. We'll have a stronger league.”
One more area of controversy in the CPSL’s inaugural
season was the touchy issue of the Ontario Soccer
Associations status in regards to the running of the
league.“They shouldn't be involved in running
leagues. I was never comfortable with that, I'm
still not comfortable with that and this year is living
proof of that.” said Gauss. “What really
has to happen is that the teams grab the bull by the
horns and run their own show because the people that are
involved now have no idea what this
actually takes.”
Not surprisingly, the view of Bill Spiers was a bit
different. “I think that was perhaps blown out
of proportion.” explained the League Chairman,
“I certainly will admit that there was a split in
the league between the former CNSL teams and the
new teams. I think the CNSL clubs kept thinking
back to the problems they had in the past and were
projecting them into this year. The newer teams
were a bit more realistic and said this is a joint effort
and everybody's got to pull together here.”
Jurisic simply said with some bitterness and irony “There
were no stormy relations with the OSA, there were no
relations!”
So with the 1998 season virtually complete and with
plenty of work needed to be done prior to the 1999
kick-off, the political world of soccer is as twisting
and turning
as ever.
The jury is still out on the future of the CPSL but it's
all we've got and so the soccer community must hope that
the “powers that be” are able to put aside
their differences or at least learn to live with them, in
order that soccer doesn’t receive one more in a long
line of black eyes.
Late breaking news:
The proposed CPSL Winter League has been cancelled.
According to Jurisic, “(the clubs) can’t afford
it - no other reasons”. The league was to have
played out of the Ontario Soccer Centre with London and
St. Catharines sitting out. |
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