Firstly, I’d like to apologize to Toronto FC supporters for the title. I know Jerm – he who must not be named for fear of double-decker bus-sized disappointments – was a flop, and the slogan affiliated with his signing brings back terrible memories, but Ottawa’s second-year pro club is truly a bloody big deal.
Now, to the real story.
A club with a salary ranking in the bottom-third of its league, with a (relatively) brand-new supporter culture, and fighting its status as the new, alternative kid in Ottawa’s sports market, will be hosting a home playoff game. In mid-November. In Canada.
Kudos to you, Ottawa Fury FC.
What has been accomplished on the pitch, specifically since the mid-season break in June, is nothing short of a miracle. Manager Marc Dos Santos – along with a staff highlighted by former Canadian international Martin Nash and Liverpool legend Bruce Grobbelaar – put together a squad filled with question marks on a budget less than conducive to producing a title challenge. However, the promising young Luso-Canadian boss cobbled together a squad, and proceeded to coach it to a regular season NASL championship.
Now, Ottawa is getting set to host its first postseason professional soccer match since the mid-80s. Even better, the match could take place in 8-degree (that’s mid-40s, for you Americans) weather.
The Nov. 8 semi-final will offer something unique in Ottawa: a professional sports team playing a meaningful game, and fans having access to said game at affordable prices. Tickets for Fury FC’s semi-final start at just $14.
Likely against one of the league’s top two Floridian franchises – Tampa Bay and Ft. Lauderdale – the game is a very winnable one, which makes the prospect of the postseason even more enticing. If Ottawa can maneuver past its semi-final, it will likely (dependent on earning at least a draw in its final match away to Atlanta) host the league’s ‘Soccer Bowl’ final on Nov. 14.
The incredible thing is that, after a disappointing Spring Season and an ugly first-round exit from the domestic cup, the club is here at all. Postseason success will be seen as gravy for those supporters who haven’t had their expectations bloated by unlikely victory upon unlikely victory on the ‘back nine’ of the regular season.
At this time last year, Ottawa was quietly forgetting about Fury FC while getting back into NHL hockey mode. In 2015, well, the city if still getting back into a mad hockey craze, but Fury FC is more than a footnote on the hourly sports radio news updates. It is grabbing the headlines in local sports sections.
For the first time in well over twenty years, Ottawa has a winning sports product that isn’t playing out on ice. While OSEG will obviously trumpet its largest, most profitable team – the CFL’s Ottawa RedBlacks football team – more as it enters a postseason of its own, that’s previously-covered ground. Football in Ottawa has been big before. What’s unique about this November is that, for the first time in a long while, a soccer team will be playing elimination games in the nation’s capital.
Kudos to you, Ottawa Fury FC.
Photo by Richard A. Whittaker
