St. John's CPL

[Zem]

For some reason I only just noticed that St. John's doesn't have its own thread.

 

Just to summarize some relevant points about Newfoundland soccer, both for reference and for curious mainlanders:

• Newfoundland has a long soccer history dating to the 19th century, and many of the relevant soccer clubs of old (such as Holy Cross, Feildians and St Lawrence) still exist today. I would argue that St. John's has one of the most active soccer communities in Canada relative to its size and the provincial men's amateur league, the Newfoundland and Labrador Challenge Cup, is easily one of the best supported in the country.
• St. John's has the unusual advantage of its stadium being one of its biggest strengths, rather than an obstacle to joining the CPL. King George V Park was built in 1925 as Newfoundland's national soccer stadium and is the oldest extant soccer-specific stadium in North America. KGV is already around the size the CPL is looking for (between 6k-10k depending who you ask, it's all bleachers so it's a bit vague) and is in a good location just north of downtown. The stadium is most famous for hosting the 1985 WCQ match against Honduras which clinched Canada's spot in the 1986 World Cup. An estimated 13,000 people attended that game.
• I reckon the only thing holding St. John's back from the CPL is investment. There aren't many people on the island who have the kind of deep pockets required for the CPL. The owners of the St. John's Edge (the new local NBLC basketball team, and soon the new ECHL team) have mentioned the possibility however: http://www.cbncompass.ca/sports/edge-owners-now-focusing-on-bringing-qmjhl-team-to-st-johns-also-considering-pro-soccer-or-football-for-city-168323/ I'm not sure what kind of money the group has altogether or if they've even contacted the league at all, but it feels like they could be the only group with both the money and interest to make it happen in the near future.

TLDR: The culture is here, the stadium is here, we just need an ownership group and some public support to make it happen.

 

On that note, I've noticed over the years that there's a remarkable number of Newfoundlanders active on the forum, perhaps we could meet up and get a CPL supporters' group on the go at some point?

[Greatest Cockney Rip Off]

Nice one Zem. I was thinking about starting this thread today but thought it would be best to leave it to someone from Newfoundland. 

Whay does KGV currently look like?

[Copes]

Great to see this! I'm about to run out the door (to play my men's league game at KGV no less) so I'll comment a bit more later. At a high level though, I 100% think St. John's COULD support CPL. However, I think we need to see how the league works in the first year or two first. Obviously with the island aspect of Newfoundland, everything is more expensive. Before it would make sense for someone to develop a business case for a local team, some economic data on other league teams would go a long way!

[Zem]

2 hours ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

Whay does KGV currently look like?

It's a bit of an unusual set-up, the main entrance and another stand are behind the camera in this image, but there's no stand to the right because there are private homes there. So it has stands behind each goal but on only one side of the pitch. The field is currently artificial turf, which is generally for the best given Newfoundland weather. The on-site facilities are decent; there are permanent changing rooms, a concession window and a bathroom. I believe it was last renovated in 2006.

[Greatest Cockney Rip Off]

12 minutes ago, Zem said:

there's no stand to the right because there are private homes there.

Are they close enough that the residents would object to increased use?

[Copes]

47 minutes ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

Are they close enough that the residents would object to increased use?

Depends. I know one or two of the residents who say they live there because they love the soccer. I've also kicked balls over the fence and had to get into people's backyards, everyone there seems best kind.

Buuut... who knows. That's pure speculation. 

[Zem]

1 hour ago, Greatest Cockney Rip Off said:

Are they close enough that the residents would object to increased use?

Maybe a bit, but KGV has hosted high-attendance tournaments in the past including the 1987 U16 World Championship, the Challenge Trophy and numerous NL Challenge Cup Playoffs, so higher attendances wouldn't be a new thing, just the frequency. The stadium is also right next to a large park where Canada Day celebrations are held every year and right across from Lake Quidi Vidi where the Royal St. John's Regatta is held every year, so it would be hard to argue that this kind of thing wasn't what they signed up for when they moved in.

[BringBackTheBlizzard]

Can remember crazily high crowd numbers like 8000 being reported in the London Free Press when London Portuguese competed for the Challenge Trophy there. I'm surprised the St John's angle hasn't been pushed a bit harder than it has been given how much of an outlier that is in statistical terms when it comes to people showing up for soccer games involving elite amateur level Canadian players.

[Copes]

2 hours ago, BringBackTheBlizzard said:

Can remember crazily high crowd numbers like 8000 being reported in the London Free Press when London Portuguese competed for the Challenge Trophy there. I'm surprised the St John's angle hasn't been pushed a bit harder than it has been given how much of an outlier that is in statistical terms when it comes to people showing up for soccer games involving elite amateur level Canadian players.

I truly think it is simply a matter of operational cost more so than concern about revenue generation. 

I can think of only 4 or 5 people in the city who MIGHT have the means or interest to run the team. More if we start talking groups. However, the biggest challenge with any business in Newfoundland is the cost of being on an island. When the business actually travels to make money. Costs skyrocket. 

It makes a completely unknown league rather risky. I am of the mind that St. John's will be a heavily talked about expansion in the next five years at most, provided the league is a success. Given the history of soccer leagues in Canada, I suspect very much that any ownership groups wants attendance numbers, online viewership info, sponsorship deals, and all other arrangements. It makes developing the business case so much easier. 

[mpg_29]

1 hour ago, Copes said:

I truly think it is simply a matter of operational cost more so than concern about revenue generation. 

I can think of only 4 or 5 people in the city who MIGHT have the means or interest to run the team. More if we start talking groups. However, the biggest challenge with any business in Newfoundland is the cost of being on an island. When the business actually travels to make money. Costs skyrocket. 

It makes a completely unknown league rather risky. I am of the mind that St. John's will be a heavily talked about expansion in the next five years at most, provided the league is a success. Given the history of soccer leagues in Canada, I suspect very much that any ownership groups wants attendance numbers, online viewership info, sponsorship deals, and all other arrangements. It makes developing the business case so much easier. 

I get this issue but people make Newfoundland to be some extreme far away place. Flight time from St. John's to Toronto is 3.5hrs....Vancouver to Toronto is 4.5hrs....

I use Toronto because lets face it the bulk of teams will be in Ontario...and this isn't even factoring in potential Quebec teams which would be even closer to St. John's and further from BC....not to mention Halifax, potential NB team.

[1996]

I remember going to a men’s national amateur championship in Nova Scotia and when our team played the team from Newfoundland there was a radio broadcast team from Newfoundland broadcasting the game  live back to Newfoundland which I found pretty cool.

[Copes]

1 hour ago, mpg_29 said:

I get this issue but people make Newfoundland to be some extreme far away place. Flight time from St. John's to Toronto is 3.5hrs....Vancouver to Toronto is 4.5hrs....

I use Toronto because lets face it the bulk of teams will be in Ontario...and this isn't even factoring in potential Quebec teams which would be even closer to St. John's and further from BC....not to mention Halifax, potential NB team.

It's not a distance thing, its a cost and logistics thing.

Newfoundland is ridiculously expensive to fly to, for whatever reason. I have family in Toronto and fly there often, its not uncommon for it to be $400 - $600 per seat. My fiance actually flew to London last summer cheaper than most of our Toronto flights. Even Halifax tends to hover around $300 round trip. Most teams will be able to utilize buses for SOME games during the year. St. John's will be flying every... single... time. 

Logistically there are tons of problems too. Most flights need to reroute through Toronto, so you have layovers and wait-times. Or you take the milk-run which touches down in every city. St. John's is notoriously foggy and windy too... lots of unexpected cancellations. And part of the island just got hit with 30cm of snow yesterday. Flights cancelled for a day or two in May because of snow is not unreasonable, and I suspect the league will be in full swing by then. 

So its not flight times that make it tough to have a team in St. John's. It's flight cost and flight uncertainty.

[m-g-williams]

1 hour ago, Copes said:

It's not a distance thing, its a cost and logistics thing.

Newfoundland is ridiculously expensive to fly to, for whatever reason. I have family in Toronto and fly there often, its not uncommon for it to be $400 - $600 per seat. My fiance actually flew to London last summer cheaper than most of our Toronto flights. Even Halifax tends to hover around $300 round trip. Most teams will be able to utilize buses for SOME games during the year. St. John's will be flying every... single... time. 

Logistically there are tons of problems too. Most flights need to reroute through Toronto, so you have layovers and wait-times. Or you take the milk-run which touches down in every city. St. John's is notoriously foggy and windy too... lots of unexpected cancellations. And part of the island just got hit with 30cm of snow yesterday. Flights cancelled for a day or two in May because of snow is not unreasonable, and I suspect the league will be in full swing by then. 

So its not flight times that make it tough to have a team in St. John's. It's flight cost and flight uncertainty.

As much as I want to see a team in town, I'd have to agree. I've written on here before about the fact that even a sport like hockey doesn't seem to work for St John's. Despite great support (and attendance) for the St John's Maple Leafs, the Fog Devils and the Ice Caps 1.0 and 2.0, none of them have stuck around, primarily due to the costs and logistics. Hell, MUN doesn't even field a university hockey team because it's too expensive for them to compete with teams from the mainland. If hockey can't make a go of it there, I'd be very skeptical that footie would somehow find some magical formula.

And before someone else beats me to it, yes, town did recently get the Edge in NBLC. But it took them seven years after the launch of the league, and I wouldn't make any bets that they'll be around for too long.

[mpg_29]

1 hour ago, Copes said:

It's not a distance thing, its a cost and logistics thing.

Newfoundland is ridiculously expensive to fly to, for whatever reason. I have family in Toronto and fly there often, its not uncommon for it to be $400 - $600 per seat. My fiance actually flew to London last summer cheaper than most of our Toronto flights. Even Halifax tends to hover around $300 round trip. Most teams will be able to utilize buses for SOME games during the year. St. John's will be flying every... single... time. 

Logistically there are tons of problems too. Most flights need to reroute through Toronto, so you have layovers and wait-times. Or you take the milk-run which touches down in every city. St. John's is notoriously foggy and windy too... lots of unexpected cancellations. And part of the island just got hit with 30cm of snow yesterday. Flights cancelled for a day or two in May because of snow is not unreasonable, and I suspect the league will be in full swing by then. 

So its not flight times that make it tough to have a team in St. John's. It's flight cost and flight uncertainty.

eh...it's an issue but I think you are exaggerating things a bit. I'm from there as well and it's unlikely that flight cancellation will be much of an issue. St. John's has had and has pro sports teams that operate during the winter....which is worse for travel. Also because it's an island the airport is fairly high volume relative to the city size and gets a lot of investment. 

http://www.thetelegram.com/business/first-phase-of-st-johns-airport-expansion-ready-to-open-within-weeks-208985/

There were only 16 missed flights due to fog in all of 2017 after the new instrument landing system was installed. A 99% accessibility rate.

Also when it comes to flight costs yeah it's expensive but compared to a team operating out of BC? I'd say it wouldn't be a massive difference. Remember this is a Canadian league....not a North American league. Travel is only East-West/West-East and if things take off the bulk of teams will likely be in Eastern Canada.

 

That being said this isn't really a general comment on whether a St. John's overall would be viable. I can't think of any rich enough people that would be interested. The only group that has expressed interested is the  owners of the NBLC team...and now they are involved with the hockey team as well. So I doubt they would take on a 3rd pro sports team in such a short time.

[Unnamed Trialist]

I have been to Newfoundland and travelled a bit, been to St. John's, so I am not entirely clueless. But I do think that the stadium needs a serious redo, the stands are fairly basic, there isn't a proper covered main stand, the facilities are a bit bare bones, the stands that are there have a feel of impermanence. There are no separate seats, which means you are in a general admission mode for most if not all of each stand. The corners do not wrap around so each stand is isolated. It needs a solidly structural reworking, and likely enlargement. 

IMO that would require a cost, and someone would have to put it up, and we are talking about maybe 3-5 million.

Apart from that, I have no real knowledge of whether a team could work, but for the numbers we are talking about a crowd of 5-7 thousand 15 times a year or so does not seem unreasonable.

[mpg_29]

58 minutes ago, Unnamed Trialist said:

I have been to Newfoundland and travelled a bit, been to St. John's, so I am not entirely clueless. But I do think that the stadium needs a serious redo, the stands are fairly basic, there isn't a proper covered main stand, the facilities are a bit bare bones, the stands that are there have a feel of impermanence. There are no separate seats, which means you are in a general admission mode for most if not all of each stand. The corners do not wrap around so each stand is isolated. It needs a solidly structural reworking, and likely enlargement. 

IMO that would require a cost, and someone would have to put it up, and we are talking about maybe 3-5 million.

Apart from that, I have no real knowledge of whether a team could work, but for the numbers we are talking about a crowd of 5-7 thousand 15 times a year or so does not seem unreasonable.

Honestly I never thought KGV field would be usable in CPL but now I'm looking at what the other teams are using and thinking...well if this is the bar then yeah maybe. Swap the bleachers for seats and it might be one of the better looking spots.

[Obinna]

2 hours ago, mpg_29 said:

The only group that has expressed interested is the owners of the NBLC team...and now they are involved with the hockey team as well. So I doubt they would take on a 3rd pro sports team in such a short time.

St. John's Edge FC

Imagine how horrid the logo would be...

*shudder*

[Obinna]

Just now, mpg_29 said:

Honestly I never thought KGV field would be usable in CPL but now I'm looking at what the other teams are using and thinking...well if this is the bar then yeah maybe. Swap the bleachers for seats and it might be one of the better looking spots.

This.

[Copes]

13 minutes ago, mpg_29 said:

Honestly I never thought KGV field would be usable in CPL but now I'm looking at what the other teams are using and thinking...well if this is the bar then yeah maybe. Swap the bleachers for seats and it might be one of the better looking spots.

Yeah, I think KGV could work but it would need some upgrades. Individual seat for sure, updated locker rooms and bathrooms. Maybe even an expansion (which might require some purchasing of parking lot from Loblaws). Regardless though, we are quite far ahead of most of the other cities I think. 

I stand by my comment about cost, but I've also commented often that I don't think travel costs are prohibitive. In my previous post I was simply trying to explain why St. John's hasn't been talked about as a team to date - we simply need to see some revenue and attendance numbers from the rest of the league.

I think I said it here. Or in another post. 5 years or so and you'll hear rumblings of it in St. John's, at most. 

[Unnamed Trialist]

To be fair, regarding cost, enabling a road trip with a weekend in St. John's and a mid-week in Halifax, or vice versa, would actually save costs. It would eliminate Halifax as the isolated extreme to travel to. Québec City would help too. 

But I don't think that, thinking about a starting 8 or ten teams, that NFLD would be amongst those with the highest odds.

[Shortdutchcanuck]

Thinking  down the road though, for the sheer fun of it, it is interesting to theorize how the league might get to 16 or 20 teams.  There are 2 ways to go once the obvious are filled.  One is more teams in major metro areas: additional teams in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver.  The other is less obvious choices that might just work if done right with the right owner: Okanagan FC has been mentioned  elsewhere, St. John's, maybe a Windsor or a Thunder Bay (which despite its size has supported PDL reasonably well).

The original 8:  York, Calgary, Halifax, Winnipeg, Hamilton, Victoria/Surrey, Edmonton, Ottawa

Obvious expansion candidates: Quebec City, Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Saskatoon/Regina (or both), Victoria/Surrey (whichever is not Port City FC).  That gets you to 13 or 14, then where?  Laval?  Mississauga?  Or some fun less obvious candidates?

[Keegan]

Gotta throw the soccer capital of Canada in there with Brampton.. big population and tons of players. 

[Yohan]

St. John's? Thank goodness for those new discount airlines?

[Gian-Luca]

54 minutes ago, Keegan said:

Gotta throw the soccer capital of Canada in there with Brampton.. big population and tons of players. 

Would be nice but main problem is that it's literally next door to Vaughan where the York 9 team will ultimately play once they leave York University,  as such is closer to York 9's home field than much of York Region actually is. It would be great if we could one day get to a point like London England where every region/town can support its own team in the GTA but I'm not seeing that likely being the case for the foreseeable future.

[Obinna]

On 5/24/2018 at 6:19 PM, Zem said:

It's a bit of an unusual set-up, the main entrance and another stand are behind the camera in this image, but there's no stand to the right because there are private homes there. So it has stands behind each goal but on only one side of the pitch. The field is currently artificial turf, which is generally for the best given Newfoundland weather. The on-site facilities are decent; there are permanent changing rooms, a concession window and a bathroom. I believe it was last renovated in 2006.

This turf would absolutely have to get upgraded, if it hasn't been already. It is not even the best Turf in the city (Mount Pearl and especially CBS are better), let alone being suitable for the CPL.

Also we should note the lack of parking in the area. Memorial Stadium Dominion essentially cut the parking in half and even if they didn't i'd be a bit of a hassle to get outta there after games.

Does anyone remember watching the Challenge Cup final there in back 2002, when there was like 10,000 people? Getting out of that parking lot was a nightmare i'd never wish upon my worst enemy.