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BarrieCityFC

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Hello guys,let me introduce myself. I am an Irish immigrant who has been in Canada for the last 11 years. I grew up supporting soccer and some of my earliest memories were on the terraces of my Dad and I's favorite team Shelbourne F.C (who just got promoted from the Irish First Division this week and my Dad now that he is retired writes for their program). I am a third generation Shelbourne F.C and Manchester City fan( My Grandfather spent some time in Manchester in his youth). My Dad and I regularly watched Shels and we also went to England to watch Man City play a few times a year. Since moving to Canada I have tried to immerse myself in soccer over here and when I lived in Toronto I used to watch TFC. I moved to Barrie 6 years ago and I dont get down to TFC much and do most of soccer watching on TV (I have DAZN and love it). I am very interested in the Canadian Premier League and its development but have yet to see a game( I have watched highlights and bit and pieces on youtube etc) . York 9 FC would be the nearest CPL team to me but I have felt no affinity to them but I will do my best to get down to see a couple of next season.
I would love to start a supporters group for my new home city Barrie,Ontario and would love some advice from you guys on how to start one. Being a guy in his late 30's and not growing up in the city my social circle would be small. I would like to find like minded individuals who would love to see a CPL team come to Barrie.

Thanks in advance and I look forward to hearing from you.

Edited by BarrieCityFC
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Welcome @BarrieCityFC

Best advice I can give you regarding starting supporters group is just to get involved in as much local soccer as you can. Meet people with that similar interest and start spreading the word. Some people will gravitate to it, other will ignore you. Don't force it on those people or worry about them. Those that are interested will give your group the passion it needs to grow and succeed.

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Thank you very much for your kind words. I have found a few guys who want to get involved and we are at the beginning stages of a supporters group. We will have all the social media up this week. Our aim will be at the start is getting Barrie a League 1 Ontario or a Canadian Soccer League(if i can get them to ever answer my emails) team.Our group name is Kempenfelt Crew, named after the bay which Barrie is built on.We also hopefully will run the group as a social club, somewhere barrie soccer fans can meet up ,make new friends and share their interests.

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The CSL is an unsanctioned & rigged gambling league. Unless you're planning to rig matches, I wouldn't waste time discussing anything with them.

In a recent episode of Forge's Board, the L1O Commissioner stated they wanted to expand into Huronia (Barrie area) before entering Northeastern Ontario. From the way he approached it, I suspect you may have an L1O side to cheer for sooner rather than later.

Let me know if/when you get some scarves done up. I'll be good to buy a pair.

Best of luck!

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14 hours ago, BarrieCityFC said:

Wow...I didn't know that about the CSL.I also contacted the NPSL and the USL.Both would be expensive and there would be a load of travel expenses.

NPSL doesn't have any cross-border teams, so that's likely a dead end. Could be interesting though...

As for USL... Well, USL-1 is trying to grow and there's no equivalent league, so maybe.

USL-2 is a non-starter, Ontario Soccer & Canada Soccer have both stated there will be no waivers signed for any Ontario teams in USL-2 (except Thunder Bay, for obvious reasons). They even dismantled K-W United to demonstrate they were serious about the moratorium. League1 Ontario is deemed its equivalent, and, as I previously indicated, it looks likely Barrie will get a team in the next year or two.

USL-C is also a non-starter, as Fury are trying to show CONCACAF that there's a legitimate difference between the USL-C and CPL so they can be allowed to remain in the league. With the performances, gates, etc demonstrated by the CPL this past year, Fury can (at best if they want to remain part of USL-C) hope they get grandfathered due to laziness from CONCACAF. For its part, the USL-C has given Fury a special exception, allowing them to provide less notice of departure from the league than they typically require. I think the writing is in flashing neon lights here: USL-C won't be in Canada too much longer.

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On 10/29/2019 at 8:29 AM, Rintaran said:

NPSL doesn't have any cross-border teams, so that's likely a dead end. Could be interesting though...

As for USL... Well, USL-1 is trying to grow and there's no equivalent league, so maybe.

USL-2 is a non-starter, Ontario Soccer & Canada Soccer have both stated there will be no waivers signed for any Ontario teams in USL-2 (except Thunder Bay, for obvious reasons). They even dismantled K-W United to demonstrate they were serious about the moratorium. League1 Ontario is deemed its equivalent, and, as I previously indicated, it looks likely Barrie will get a team in the next year or two.

USL-C is also a non-starter, as Fury are trying to show CONCACAF that there's a legitimate difference between the USL-C and CPL so they can be allowed to remain in the league. With the performances, gates, etc demonstrated by the CPL this past year, Fury can (at best if they want to remain part of USL-C) hope they get grandfathered due to laziness from CONCACAF. For its part, the USL-C has given Fury a special exception, allowing them to provide less notice of departure from the league than they typically require. I think the writing is in flashing neon lights here: USL-C won't be in Canada too much longer.

Yeah you are right. USL -2 is a non starter as they wont take a Canadian team.USL Championship and USL 1 are well beyond what we ever could hope to raise and are for bigger cities then ourselves. NPSL were happy to let us know their fee's and minimum standards, not sure its any more than a pipe dream. 

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I dont know if this is against the rules or not but we have now set up a facebook page and a petition and I was hoping that some of you could please like it and sign the petition.
Thanks
https://www.facebook.com/kempenfeltcrew/
https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/bring-professional-soccer-to-barrie?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=email_thank_you&loc=view-petition
Having numbers would really help our cause.

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The petition has gone really well and we have been able to get some big names to sign it including Niall Quinn ex Arsenal,Man City,Sunderland and Republic of Ireland legend, Danny Dichio ex Toronto F.C,QPR and West Brom and Tom Saintfeit current Gambia National team head coach among others.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hey everyone, just wanted to give a quick update! We were featured in our local news and were interviewed about the initiative. It would mean a lot if you could have a quick look at it and of course sign the petition we have linked in the article. Any and all help is greatly appreciated! https://www.simcoe.com/news-story/9734887-does-barrie-need-professional-soccer-these-guys-are-making-their-pitch-for-a-team/ 

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I just wanted to come back to my very first post.Its been a whirlwind time since we kicked this into motion.It started just as a dream, we never expected to get this far so early.I am so overjoyed that we now have a club and Julian DeGuzman as a co-owner.It all started from one post on reddit, unbelievable.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/22/2020 at 12:51 PM, BarrieCityFC said:

I just wanted to come back to my very first post.Its been a whirlwind time since we kicked this into motion.It started just as a dream, we never expected to get this far so early.I am so overjoyed that we now have a club and Julian DeGuzman as a co-owner.It all started from one post on reddit, unbelievable.

Funny, just read this thread for the first time. So give us a bit of history on how the initiative ending up so successfully, who were the players, what made the difference. Thanks.

Maybe, if you want, it would work better as a new thread on the subforum for Canadian leagues.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We have an 1812FC sub forum up.

I would like to sit down one day and write my experiences of how all this came about as it's quite an unusual story.

https://northerntribune.ca/1812-fc-founding/

 

This probably explains it better than I can.

It all started from a post on reddit about how I would love to see a team in Barrie.I got a response from Jacob,we started a petition,from that we got an article in the local paper.That lead to an interview on CBC radio which in turn lead us to a few other stories on various online media.

We needed advice so we reached out to Andrew and the rest is history.

 

 

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