League 1 Atlantic

[narduch]

 

 

[EnigMattic1]

#RiseAsOne..... Unless you are from the Prairies 🤣

Apparently, this would also include PE and NL.

Edited March 14, 2023 by EnigMattic1

[Watchmen]

So who gets to claim L1A? Alberta or Atlantic? Need a winner-takes-all match between the top clubs here.

[Bison44]

Oh...I have a good joke, but out of my respect for my Atlantic homies (fishermen/stumble jumpers unite!) I'll keep it to myself.  Better we act together and focus on dumping on Ontario.  

[Cblake]

5 hours ago, EnigMattic1 said:

#RiseAsOne..... Unless you are from the Prairies 🤣

Apparently, this would also include PE and NL.

Highly doubt you are going to see L1 Atlantic cover all of the provinces, the travel would very much be a challenge. May even turn off some from playing it in. Any league will have Halifax as a centre and go out from there. 

[EnigMattic1]

7 minutes ago, Cblake said:

Highly doubt you are going to see L1 Atlantic cover all of the provinces, the travel would very much be a challenge. May even turn off some from playing it in. Any league will have Halifax as a centre and go out from there. 

From what I saw on the tweet when asked if it would include NL and PE, the reply was "Yes".

[Cblake]

6 minutes ago, EnigMattic1 said:

From what I saw on the tweet when asked if it would include NL and PE, the reply was "Yes".

Yes, PEI and NL could be the north conference and NB and NS the south. All regular season play would be in the conference I would think. The winners play in a final to be crowned Atlantic Champions. 

[EnigMattic1]

1 minute ago, Cblake said:

Yes, PEI and NL could be the north conference and NB and NS the south. All regular season play would be in the conference I would think. The winners play in a final to be crowned Atlantic Champions. 

Sounds like a good format to me. One would assume that the Canadian Championship would need re-formatted in order to include the winners of L1 Alberta and L1 Atlantic.

[rydermike]

2 hours ago, Watchmen said:

So who gets to claim L1A? Alberta or Atlantic? Need a winner-takes-all match between the top clubs here.

I guess they could always call it League1 Maritimes

[Califax]

Halifax to Charlottetown 3.5 hours

Halifax to Sydney 5 hours

Halifax to Moncton 2.5 Hours

Halifax to Fredericton 5 hours

Halifax to Saint John 4 hours 

Saint John to Fredericton 1.25 hours

Fredericton to Charlottetown 3.5 hours

Fredericton to Sydney 6.5 Hours 

 

I imagine you'll see a scenario where Halifax is the London of this league and a 1/4 of the teams are there to start. Newfoundland teams will be hard pressed to get over here without a significant additional investment. Gotta be flights, the ferry isn't an option. 

[Unnamed Trialist]

Could anyone in the know give us a review of the strongest amateur clubs in the region, overall, in terms of members, youth, senior teams?

Women also, since the model in BC was that for a team to participate they needed to field men and women's teams.

Then, if they were to follow part of the BC model where university programs participate, which would be the possible U-Sports teams that could enter, if that were the way to go.

I personally prefer to see clubs not university teams, filling in the L1 structure.

[narduch]

Figure Wanderers would put their U23 team in this

[Kingston]

1 hour ago, Califax said:

I imagine you'll see a scenario where Halifax is the London of this league and a 1/4 of the teams are there to start. Newfoundland teams will be hard pressed to get over here without a significant additional investment. Gotta be flights, the ferry isn't an option. 

I suspect it will end up being L1M.  Newfoundland is really just St. John's and travel is way too far for everyone else to include a team in St. John's.

[Califax]

Could always call it Atlantic and leave the door open though. L1EC works too. 

If it looks anything like L1O, NS clubs that will be targeted - I imagine - will be: 

Suburban FC

Dartmouth United

Dunbrack 

Halifax City

Halifax County 

Valley United (Kentville / Wolfville) 

[Unnamed Trialist]

2 hours ago, Califax said:

Could always call it Atlantic and leave the door open though. L1EC works too. 

If it looks anything like L1O, NS clubs that will be targeted - I imagine - will be: 

Suburban FC

Dartmouth United

Dunbrack 

Halifax City

Halifax County 

Valley United (Kentville / Wolfville) 

Very concentrated near Halfax or not far, then.

[Obinna]

Wow League 1 Canada really getting a head of steam here. League 1 BC last year and now there is serious talks of L1 Alberta and League 1 Atlantic Canada. Fantastic stuff!

[Obinna]

3 hours ago, Califax said:

Could always call it Atlantic and leave the door open though. L1EC works too. 

If it looks anything like L1O, NS clubs that will be targeted - I imagine - will be: 

Suburban FC

Dartmouth United

Dunbrack 

Halifax City

Halifax County 

Valley United (Kentville / Wolfville) 

These seem like good predictions based on what I know of the NS landscape, but I wonder if Cape Breton will feature in here for some geographic spread. I can imagine them prioritizing that. 

Some thoughts on Newfoundland:

1. Holy Cross
2. Fieldians
3. Something out on the West Coast

 

1. Holy Cross is a very old club based on St. John's, dating back to the early 1926. The men's and women's teams are historically and currently dominant, with the women winning the National Jubilee shield last October. The men regularly qualify for the National Challenge Cup. The team would play out of KGV near downtown, which has artificial turf and holds roughly 6K. This is their current home and would more than meet the League 1 Canada requirements. 
2. Fieldians (FAA) are another very old club based in St. John's, formed in the late 1800s (1899?), and are historically far less successful than Holy Cross, but have put a lot of work in recently to be competitive with them. Unlike Holy Cross, they now have their own youth program and academy which has allowed the FAA youth teams to regularly win provincials over the St. John's Soccer Club, the historic heavy weights in Newfoundland youth soccer. This has also provided a feeder to the FAA senior team, who are now solidly no. 2 behind Holy Cross on the Newfoundland Challenge Cup circuit. The FAA has their own fields for training but share KGV with Holy Cross for games. 
3. The West Coast of the province is not very populated, with the biggest population center being Corner Brook at roughly 30k, which is a small town by most standards. However, League 1 Canada may want to put a team here to cut down on travel. It's a 1 hr. drive down to the ferry, then a 6hr ferry ride to North Sydney, Cape Breton, NS, which would be close to where a Cape Breton team would presumably play. I doubt this happens because the player and population base are not there to support it, but you never know. They do have a nice field that would support such a thing, though.

At the end of the day, I only see a single team coming out of Newfoundland, but these are just some of the possibilities I see if there are multiple teams. Multiple teams may be better than a single team, since it would possibly ease the travel. I am not fully convinced the talent base is there to support multiple teams, but like I said in the League 1 Prairies thread, the talent could eventually take care of itself down the road.

Perhaps League 1 Atlantic should start with the 2 St. John's based teams and work from there. Holy Cross and FAA could enter their Challenge Cup teams in League 1 Canada to start, then run their reserve teams in the Newfoundland Challenge Cup league, essentially adding another layer to the local pyramid. 

Edited March 15, 2023 by Obinna

[Obinna]

14 hours ago, rydermike said:

I guess they could always call it League1 Maritimes

They could, but Newfoundland is technically not part of the Maritimes. It's like saying Finland is part of Scandanavia. It's a Nordic country, but technically not Scandanavian. 

[Unnamed Trialist]

52 minutes ago, Obinna said:

They could, but Newfoundland is technically not part of the Maritimes. It's like saying Finland is part of Scandanavia. It's a Nordic country, but technically not Scandanavian. 

Since it seems they fudged the referendum to get Newfoundland into Confederation, we could fudge a few things to get them into League One Maritimes.

[P-O]

Really wishing a a league over there.

I live at the NB border on the Quebec side and would drive to see this. 

[Cblake]

Would Newfoundland clubs make more sense playing in the PLSQ? The QMJHL has Atlantic based teams and then have L1 Atlantic for Newfoundland and New Brunswick. Junior has a commercial aspect to it that a league like this would not, would be similar out west. Travel all over the Atlantic region would not be ideal at all. Halifax should be the centre and build out from there. 

[dyslexic nam]

Late to the convo so will just make a few comments.  

First, damn this is a cool development.  Love to see it.  

Second, PEI has had a team that has historically played in the (amateur, obviously) NS Premier League and the NB Premier League to maintain a high level of competition.  All to say that travel within the Maritime provinces is definitely viable. 

…which raises the issue of NL.  First off, the idea of pairing NL and PE as a “Northern” conference may seem to make sense on paper but in reality it would be a poor solution.  To get to NL from PEI you have to get to and drive through through NS unless you are flying - and this won’t be an airline league.   To get to the NL ferry in Sydney NS, it is a 4.5 hr drive from Halifax   To get there from PEI takes about 5hrs 15 minutes and involves a ferry ride and two separate legs in the car.  Bottom line is that it is faster to get there from Halifax.  In fact, it takes less time (5hrs) to travel there from Moncton.  And just to add as a data point, the ferry from Sydney to St John is another 16 hrs…

The reality here is that NL is far removed from the 3 Maritime provinces and it presents significant logistical challenges that wouldn’t be present in a Maritime league.  And these challenges could even be turn out to be fatal if you assume that the demographics of the 3 Maritime provinces mean that this would be a budget league. 

 

[Kingston]

18 hours ago, Cblake said:

Would Newfoundland clubs make more sense playing in the PLSQ? 

There is no model where Newfoundland makes sense for D3 soccer.  

[Unnamed Trialist]

4 hours ago, Kingston said:

There is no model where Newfoundland makes sense for D3 soccer.  

The only way to do it, would be to do a one-off tournament. Like an invitational, where they brought in a few Maritimes L1 teams to play in Newfoundland. Just to let Nfld clubs test themselves against the L1 clubs, to gauge the level and have the experience. 

It is not the same but would just be a way to make connections between a formal structure that would be viable and other less viable structures.

If we were ever to get to a point where the NFLD SA thought they'd like to compete to get into the Voyageurs Cup, you could also think about a better side going into a preliminary round. But not at the expense of the top L1 Maritimes team directly qualifying for the V-Cup.

[Cblake]

6 hours ago, Kingston said:

There is no model where Newfoundland makes sense for D3 soccer.  

I agree, the D3 level would need a commercial aspect to it. Maybe have something like in Greenland. Maybe NFLD had a small 4 team league that played among themselves and then joined the rest of the Atlantic League in the post-season?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenlandic_Football_Championship