Valour FC excited for chance to play

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This article was published 30/07/2020 (2212 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Jets won’t be the only local sports team living in a bubble this summer.

After two months of radio silence where rumours constantly swirled, the Canadian Premier League finally came out on Wednesday and announced the eight-team league will play the 2020 season as a tournament format based in Charlottetown. The tournament, which kicks off on Aug. 13 with Cavalry FC taking on Forge FC in a rematch of last year’s final, is being called the Island Games.

The season will start out as a round-robin where each team plays each other once. The top four clubs will advance to a second-round group phase. The top two from the second-round group will then advance to the single-game championship final which will take place in September. In addition to being handed the league’s trophy, The North Star Shield, the winning team will also receive a 2021 CONCACAF league berth. Schedules for Winnipeg’s Valour FC and the rest of the teams will be revealed in the coming days.

“Let the games begin,” said Valour head coach Rob Gale in a conference call Wednesday afternoon. “Exciting for everybody: players, coaches, ownership, fans. This is what we’ve been waiting for and looking forward to and hoping that everything could be organized. Now we have a road map and we’re hoping to start full contact training tomorrow so that we can get these preparations ramped up for the middle of August.”

Players and staff around the league, who have been training together for weeks, have been tested for COVID-19 and all the results came back negative. The teams have been self-isolating in their home markets since the weekend and will do so until they hop on a charter plane to Charlottetown on Aug. 8. Everyone will be tested once more before they leave and then another two times once they get to P.E.I. before they can begin play. As of Tuesday, there were no active COVID-19 cases in P.E.I. The province has had a total of 36 reported cases and requires visitors from outside of Atlantic Canada to self-isolate for 14 days.

“So, we’re creating a bubble within a bubble,” said CPL commissioner David Clanachan in a Zoom call with reporters from across the country.

“So we have the Maritime bubble and we’re creating our own bubble around the facilities where we’re housed where all of our people are together. Now, it doesn’t mean we’re on lockdown, but it does mean we have to practise that distancing away from everyone else. They can’t interact with other people on the island at all. That’s part of the protocol and we think that’s the wise thing to do.”

Before the pandemic put everything on pause, teams were scheduled to play a 28-game season starting in April.

“The key here was we weren’t rushed,” said Clanachan.

“We didn’t have to rush back into it because we hadn’t started our season. That’s the key thing. A lot of the other leagues are trying to finish seasons that they already started. We hadn’t begun so we were fortunate in the sense that we were able to take our time at it and go at it with a methodical approach but doing it in an appropriate manner.”

The matches will be played at the University of Prince Edward Island and no fans will be allowed. Clanachan said they’re currently in talks with two of the linear broadcasters in Canada about showing some games on TV, but nothing has been confirmed. All matches will be aired live through the league’s broadcasting partner Mediapro on their streaming service called OneSoccer.

Valour captain Dylan Carreiro said the consensus from the players is they’re excited and itching to play, even though they’ll be living in a hotel for potentially a month or longer.

“It’s a bit difficult obviously for some people that have kids especially, but we’re all looking forward to it. We’re all excited that there’s a tournament and we’re able to play some games,” said Carreiro.

“So, there’s times where we have to sacrifice things and this is a time where we sacrifice and we make sure we go there not only to be playing for Valour FC, but we go there to win games and come back with the trophy.”

While Valour finished in the basement of the CPL’s inaugural season last year, Carreiro is confident this squad is capable of writing a different story. Carreiro is one of only seven players left from the 2019 roster.

“Many, many, many people from the outside have doubted us just because of how we were last year. But the amount of quality players the gaffer and the coaching staff have brought in is a big, big, big change in the environment, the competitiveness and everything from last year,” said Carreiro.

“They’ve done a great job in the offseason bringing in the right characters for this group. So, I think a lot of people will be surprised with the quality that we bring and the results that we’re going to bring as well.”

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.

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