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Ottawa CPL Club


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2 hours ago, JamboAl said:

@Ansem, you assume the NCC is a rational business decision maker.  And you also assume there is someone with hundreds of millions (or more) that will sway the NCC.  If there were, someone would have done something with Lebreton Flats by way of sports, retail, condos, anything!  It’s sad to see it doing nothing other than Blues Fest two weeks a summer.  And never mind the local populace (including possibly yours truly) unhappy over yet another sports facility in town when there are two decent outdoor facilities already (TD Place and the baseball stadium).

IMO, the only viable option in Ottawa is TD Place - and to get there, OSEG will have to be dealt with whether people like it or not.

Same issue in Canada today as always, venues.  Too big, too small, or not practical to get built in less than a decade.  Some surprisingly inventive solutions can happen some times but you have to be willing to make nobody happen to do it.  

Recognize dollars and cents is allways a factor but I'm surprised at how a newer venue like IGF isn't more adaptable for something like soccer.  Don't get me wrong, it's actually a pretty good host it's just that it wouldn't have taken much to make it a really great building for Valour if it had a more soccer friendly configuration available.  But again, dollars and cents and plain and simple practical sense.  A soccer friendly configuration for Valour and a soccer friendly configuration for the WWC are not the same thing.  

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@Ansem you don’t know the NCC, they don’t work well with anyone. It took almost 10 years for Mill Street Brewery to secure a lease at a property at the edge of Lebreton. Look up the NCC bistros and read what a nightmare it’s been, especially at 
Patterson Creek. 
 

The idea of something temporary would be more palatable but anything on NCC land would be a looooooooong shot.

I think the only viable spot other than TD Place right now is Keith Harris at Carleton.

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17 hours ago, longlugan said:

And you are driven by your trolling nature and MLScentric views. But please, continue to drive people away from here. I'm close to done with this place...due to your ******** and the weakass and completely ******* useless moderators on here.

See ya.

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17 hours ago, longlugan said:

And you are driven by your trolling nature and MLScentric views. But please, continue to drive people away from here. I'm close to done with this place...due to your ******** and the weakass and completely ******* useless moderators on here.

Just put the guy on ignore. 

Or do what I do. Laugh at his blatantly bad takes. 

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4 hours ago, Ams1984 said:

Yes, I think we all dodged a bullet with OSEG. They’re either amateurs or scumbags, probably the latter. I’d much rather we get an earnest good faith ownership group, really in it for the long haul. 

I may not agree with OSEG but I would never call them that.  They brought professional soccer to this city and yes, they have made mistakes, some major ones too.  But they are still in credit in my eyes and remain one of the candidates to bring a CPL team into the city.

Edited by JamboAl
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1 hour ago, JamboAl said:

I may not agree with OSEG but I would never call them that.  They brought professional soccer to this city and yes, they have made mistakes, some major ones too.  But they are still in credit in my eyes and remain one of the candidates to bring a CPL team into the city.

They need to seriously clean their act with a huge personnel turnover...otherwise, I wouldn't be surprised that CPL "open door" statement was just a PR move while having moved on from them for good.

I got heat saying that before but if they ever did a 180 and got a CPL club, extremely doubtful that they aren't made to rebrand the whole thing and change names. They lost all leverage and the league will not want to drag the Fury drama going forward.

Still think that they'll pursue like minded owners instead

Edited by Ansem
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8 hours ago, Ansem said:

I'm talking temporary structure like Halifax that they would have to tear down after each season. You have your precedent with Blue Fest.

As for TD, with Rugby coming in, squeezing in 14 home games + V Cup + potentially CONCACAF League + potentially CPL Championship might not even be doable even if OSEG was in good faith.

I disagree that there's no other way than TD place. 

To be its the baseball stadium, unless a deal is made to keep the Champions in the Frontier League the stadium is going to be empty. 

 

2 hours ago, JamboAl said:

I may not agree with OSEG but I would never call them that.  They brought professional soccer to this city and yes, they have made mistakes, some major ones too.  But they are still in credit in my eyes and remain one of the candidates to bring a CPL team into the city.

I completely agree, there is a lot of irony here considering one of OSEGs five owners is on the board of the CSA. I have a hard time believing that a CPL deal in Ottawa being done without OSEG being involved a lot of ways. Ottawa is a government town, there is some old money, but does not have a huge corporate base. I wonder if say something like rugby league gets a footing in the market, if there will be enough dollars to go around. That will be key. 

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4 hours ago, JamboAl said:

I may not agree with OSEG but I would never call them that.  They brought professional soccer to this city and yes, they have made mistakes, some major ones too.  But they are still in credit in my eyes and remain one of the candidates to bring a CPL team into the city.

Might sound harsh, but I think that OSEG killed the Fury. I view them as a disingenuous bad-faith party; their interest in soccer had dried up, they wanted out, and they were just waiting for this opportunity to get out of the soccer business whilst blaming others for their own lack of commitment. We’d all be better off with an ownership group that is actually committed to the CPL and to soccer in Ottawa. We dodged a bullet here. If OSEG had been brought in to the CPL, my view is that they would’ve caused drama and instability. 

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33 minutes ago, Ams1984 said:

Might sound harsh, but I think that OSEG killed the Fury. I view them as a disingenuous bad-faith party; their interest in soccer had dried up, they wanted out, and they were just waiting for this opportunity to get out of the soccer business whilst blaming others for their own lack of commitment. We’d all be better off with an ownership group that is actually committed to the CPL and to soccer in Ottawa. We dodged a bullet here. If OSEG had been brought in to the CPL, my view is that they would’ve caused drama and instability. 

Will have to agree to disagree.  Unless there is a new ownership group identified (still early, but no proof so far), I'd be happy with OSEG, warts and all, resurrecting the Fury, or whatever club, in Ottawa in the CPL.  There's no rationale for OSEG coming in and causing more drama.  As you can tell, I'd rather OSEG than nothing.  And is nothing in Ottawa is better for the CPL than OSEG?  Cause if the answer is yes, then I'd be questioning the CPL big time.

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I think the boat has sailed on OSEG being involved with a CPL club in Ottawa in an ownership role and imo that's good. Looking at the CPL statement re the Fury basically folding, the league is really looking at going forward without OSEG from the wording.

A CPL club in Ottawa really needs a fresh start, with a fresh ownership group and identity. Name wise would like to see something like Capital City FC.

 

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5 hours ago, Cblake said:

To be its the baseball stadium, unless a deal is made to keep the Champions in the Frontier League the stadium is going to be empty. 

I remember a whole lot of talk taking place about this around the time of the Lansdowne development vs. Melnyk projecf in Kanata. If memory serves me right, the angles of the stands make a soccer field there very oddly angled. There basically wouldn't be a single good seat in the house.

Out of all the existing sports infrastructure, for me it's easy: Frank Claire is the only good option. Any other is just "make do". And will likely be seen as minor league by local residents.

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10 hours ago, JamboAl said:

...As you can tell, I'd rather OSEG than nothing...

Judging from the ransom note quote attributed to Mark Goudie and perhaps more importantly the emergence of the rugby league team as secondary tenants to the Redblacks, it's probably going to be nothing in Ottawa in the short to medium term, unfortunately, unless Omur Sezerman is likely to want to get back into soccer again? That's who I would be contacting if I were CanPL and they will no doubt already have and don't need somebody on a messageboard to point out the blindingly obvious.

Edited by Ozzie_the_parrot
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8 hours ago, Sébastien said:

Out of all the existing sports infrastructure, for me it's easy: Frank Claire is the only good option. Any other is just "make do". And will likely be seen as minor league by local residents.

Doesn't 4000 people watching soccer in a 25,000 football stadium also smack of 'minor league'?

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58 minutes ago, grasshopper1917 said:

Doesn't 4000 people watching soccer in a 25,000 football stadium also smack of 'minor league'?

Nah, playing in a small stadium in some random outlying neighbourhood or suburb would seem minor league. Playing at Ottawa's best sports facility, the Mecca of sports in Ottawa for nearly 150 years, is how a field sport gets taken seriously in this city. Heck, even the Senators played there for a short time in 1904. There's no good reason to not play at Lansdowne unless you can't afford to and you'll get better attendance than playing anywhere else.

I don't understand how anyone could think that a club might be seen as "minor league" for playing at the best available facility, if anyone is going to call your club "minor league" it'll either be because they play at a smaller, crappier facility or because their actual attendance numbers are low, not because they're low relative to the stadium's capacity.

When the Fury turned pro in 2014, they started playing at Keith Harris Stadium at Carleton University while renovations at Lansdowne were being completed. Despite being pretty central, well-connected to public transit and only a short distance from Lansdowne Park they only sold out the 3,000-seat stadium twice in five matches. When they moved to Lansdowne at mid-season, the opening match drew 14,500 and even excluding that match, they averaged well over 4,000 a game for the rest of the season.

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3 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

Probably noted previously (can't remember), but there is an #Ottawa2CPL movement on social media (not Fury affiliated).  For anyone who wants to see Ottawa get a CPL team ASAP, it wouldn't hurt to hit them up on FB/IG/Twitter and share, like, follow...

Just to clarify slightly, they are Fury neutral, neither pro nor anti OSEG and unwilling to discuss who is to blame, etc. They just want a pro team and recognize that the CPL is the only place that will happen at this point, whether that's OSEG+Fury or not.

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1 minute ago, Viruk42 said:

Just to clarify slightly, they are Fury neutral, neither pro nor anti OSEG and unwilling to discuss who is to blame, etc. They just want a pro team and recognize that the CPL is the only place that will happen at this point, whether that's OSEG+Fury or not.

Yeah, I wasn't implying they were anti Fury.  Just want a solution.  Too bad there isn't enough critical mass to crowdfund...

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3 minutes ago, dyslexic nam said:

Yeah, I wasn't implying they were anti Fury.  Just want a solution.  Too bad there isn't enough critical mass to crowdfund...

Ya, I didn't think you were, just felt there was a chance some might think you were saying that.

As for crowdfunding, I'm a socialist, I think most (all?) sports teams should be community owned. Like, the Montreal Canadiens were sold to Geoff Molson for $500mil. There are some 3mil people in Montreal, levy $150-200 each and voila, the city owns the team. I know it's not actually that simple, but at the same time, why not?

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11 hours ago, CDNFootballer said:

I think the boat has sailed on OSEG being involved with a CPL club in Ottawa in an ownership role and imo that's good. Looking at the CPL statement re the Fury basically folding, the league is really looking at going forward without OSEG from the wording.

A CPL club in Ottawa really needs a fresh start, with a fresh ownership group and identity. Name wise would like to see something like Capital City FC.

 

Just wondering if the owner of this team when it was in CSL a few years back would have the money or interest in runnibd a CPL team. I remember that they were well run a had pretty good team including Clint Irwin in goal.

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15 minutes ago, to70 said:

Just wondering if the owner of this team when it was in CSL a few years back would have the money or interest in runnibd a CPL team. I remember that they were well run a had pretty good team including Clint Irwin in goal.

Good thought - apparently he (Neil Malhotra) is VP of Claridge Homes and wanted to put a NASL team in the baseball stadium: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/neil-malhotra-wants-to-put-pro-soccer-in-ottawa-stadium

Further to that, an article after his CSL team folded, suggests he is very much interested in what the CPL has to offer - a professional environment to develop Canadian talent: https://www.pressreader.com/canada/ottawa-citizen/20120331/282067683902186

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Converting this stadium to a proper soccer specific stadium won't be cheap...

baseball.jpg

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Location is amazing though

Highway + the LRT station 

Screenshot_20191112-110720_Maps.thumb.jpg.14751912f1d319fa80711d6c8ba00d74.jpg

Maybe there's some redevelopment opportunities available in the area around the station, tons of parking lots... doesn't look like residential zoning either.

Screenshot_20191112-111157_Maps.thumb.jpg.d722e7f6f1478855a7692d00d7d9f8d7.jpg

 

Edited by Ansem
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40 minutes ago, Ansem said:

Converting this stadium to a proper soccer specific stadium won't be cheap...

To be fair, that plan was from 2009, when Lansdowne redevelopment was just a proposal being considered by the city and a year before the Fury were added to OSEG. I think it's more useful in pointing out that Malhotra could be a good fit for the CPL, if he was interested / had funding that could have led to a NASL franchise at the baseball stadium - whether he would still want to put a team there now is not as important as whether he would have the money and interest to lead a CPL team.

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5 hours ago, Viruk42 said:

To be fair, that plan was from 2009, when Lansdowne redevelopment was just a proposal being considered by the city and a year before the Fury were added to OSEG. I think it's more useful in pointing out that Malhotra could be a good fit for the CPL, if he was interested / had funding that could have led to a NASL franchise at the baseball stadium - whether he would still want to put a team there now is not as important as whether he would have the money and interest to lead a CPL team.

As you say, that plan is from 10 years ago. Who knows if that party is still interested.

I really shouldn't say this, but as someone who has worked in a professional capacity (non-soccer related) with both OSEG and Claridge, I would by FAR, FAR, FAR prefer a potential Ottawa CPL franchise to be in the hands of OSEG.

And as JamboAl says, it's pretty much Lansdowne – and some kind of relationship with OSEG – or nothing when it comes to a future professional soccer franchise in Ottawa

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