Ready to hit the road

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This article was published 20/07/2021 (1854 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Despite winning six of seven games, Valour FC cannot wait for The Kickoff — the name of the Canadian Premier League bubble in Winnipeg — to be over with.

First-place Valour are happy to be playing in front of their fans, unlike the other seven clubs, and to be piling up wins, but they’re eagerly looking forward to Saturday when they can check out of the Radisson Hotel downtown prior to playing HFX Wanderers FC in the afternoon. All CPL teams will return to their home markets after this weekend and play their final 20 regular season games as normal.

“People are saying ‘You must be fearful of going to other teams’ (stadiums) and worried about playing outside of IG Field,’ and we’re like ‘Bring it on.’ Bring on some kind of normal life, please, where we can travel, train, and experience life and see our families again, see our kids, spend time with them to decompress,” head coach Rob Gale told the Free Press on Tuesday.

“It’s so intense when you’ve got nothing else but your work in the environment and everything around you… for 24/7, for five weeks in a row, it’s all about your job. We can’t wait and that’s no disrespect to anybody with the schedule, or the hotel staff as they’ve been amazing, the league staff have worked their socks off to get this to where it is, but yes please, we can’t wait to get out.”

But post-bubble life will present Valour with some challenges as they might be without their star player — defender and co-captain Andrew Jean-Baptiste. The New Yorker with MLS experience was carted off the field early in Sunday’s 3-0 win over York United FC and was seen on crutches after the match. Jean-Baptiste went for an MRI and the team is currently awaiting the results.

“That’s a good question. I guess we’ll find that out,” said right-back Stefan Cebara when asked if Valour can stay at the top of the table without Jean-Baptiste. With Jean-Baptiste leading the defence and rookie goalie Jonathan Sirois excelling between in goal, the team hasn’t surrendered a goal in any of its six victories.

While Valour is crossing their fingers for positive news on Jean-Baptiste, Gale’s not down on his squad as he believes they had their best performance yet on Sunday. Gale said even before the injury, the team was working on a signing who could be introduced as early as this week. They’re also set to receive a boost on their back end from Arnold Bouka Moutou as he’s nearing the end of a 14-day quarantine. The former Ligue 1 left-back had some visa issues that forced him to miss The Kickoff.

“I’m really proud of them, to be fair. You find out more about your team when things don’t go your way… One leader goes down and another leader has to step up,” said Gale.

“We gave the arm band to Stef (Cebara). I thought that he was the most (ready) player on the field and I thought he was flawless from then on. Not just on his goal, but his blocking, his defending, he was excellent and the team rallied around that.”

Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise to see a player such as Jean-Baptiste get hurt on a non-contact play as The Kickoff has hit all clubs with brutal schedules. Teams sometimes find themselves playing three times in seven days which is even tougher considering Winnipeg’s recent stretch of scorching hot weather.

“In any normal circumstance, there’d be one game a week over 28 weeks and we haven’t had that, even in the first season. We’ve yet to have a Canadian Premier League where the schedule’s been equitable or fair across the league for everybody,” Gale said.

“We had five games in 15 days in the first season and lost Josip Golubar to a major knee injury. You can see players going down left, right and centre. It’s physically gruelling.”

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But with or without Jean-Baptiste, it’s hard not to question what Valour will be able to accomplish when they’re not the only team in the league playing at home. Cebara said they’ve heard talk from around the league that Valour won’t be able to live up to their current hype once they have to leave IG Field. It’s a sentiment that Cebara firmly disagrees with.

“We started off the season with no fans and we were playing in an empty stadium so I don’t understand how other teams could think that’s an advantage,” Cebara said.

“Yes, I know the stadium is a bit bigger than some stadiums in the league, but again, in the end it’s still 11 versus 11 on a pitch. I don’t think about fans and there wasn’t any advantage in the first four games. I can say that, but will they believe me? Probably not. So, yeah, we’re looking forward to going to away games and proving to the other teams that it’s not about home field advantage.”

taylor.allen@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @TaylorAllen31

Taylor Allen
Reporter

Taylor Allen is a sports reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press. Taylor was the Vince Leah intern in the Free Press newsroom twice while earning his joint communications degree/diploma at the University of Winnipeg and Red River College Polytechnic. He signed on full-time in 2019 and mainly covers the Blue Bombers, curling, and basketball. Read more about Taylor.

Every piece of reporting Taylor produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.