The Real Marc

This looks bad on everyone. Bush league

1200 for Vaughan Azzurri is impressive

I have great memories of grandmothers swearing at Bulldogs games!

That has gotta be the most obscure club we've ever had

Why are they not filling the seats on the TV-facing side first?

Generally agreed - professionalism has nearly taken over Tier 5, although FGR and Salford are outliers in terms of budgets. People forget, too, that in addition to being a national league system all the way down to tier 5, all of those lower English leagues are importers of talent - they attract not only the English players from the Premier league that have been displaced by foreigners post-Bosman, not only the academy players that don't crack Premier league/Champ lineups, not only the Premier/Champ league loans, but also players from all over Europe due to their decent wages. I mean, heck, Stanley have five foreigners. To me, it makes sense that our league, with its pro-but-only-just salaries, players drawing from USL, more marginal Canadian pros, guys playing PDL, etc. would be generally equivalent to Tier 5/6 UK. I mean, look who came back? Not Hainault and guys like that but Haber (on the downslide in Tier 2 Scotland), Issey (on the downslide in SE Asia), Tyson Farago (couldn't get a game in Ireland), Legerwood (ending his lower league career), etc. Obviously not directly related, because it's a lower level, but there's an article about how every year a bunch of even lower level players (Tier 6/7/8) shift over to Australia to play semi-pro. https://www.bbc.com/sport/football/47334814

Pretty good for a weekday game!

How many of those clubs have gone under?

Bournemouth and Burnley are awful examples because in both cases their history has been a) largely lower league, b) Premier league participation is sustained only through crazy amounts of money from TV rights (and, in Bournemouth's case, being bought and funded by a Russian petrochemicals billionaire in 2009.) It's like people don't know that Bournemouth was bankrupt ten years ago before a flood of foreign money.

I don't want an MLS. TO, Mtl, and Van can stay there. I want a league that's truly national and is close to truly professional and relatively, if possible, even in resources and support. I want a league where 2500-3000 is the floor attendance we can expect for each club, not the max. We couldn't convince the team in the country's sixth (?) largest city to ditch their hokey pokey league for the Can PL. Three of the seven teams don't have real shirt sponsors. Where will the franchise fees come from? The investment? The stadium or upgrades? The sponsorship? The resources for multiple years of losses? Where will the interest in a mid-week match between Penticton and Windsor come from? What happens to the league's national profile and coverage if one of the non-ON teams goes kaput? I get that everyone wants a team in their town. It's understandable, and endearing. And maybe London is actually one that sorta works - once Ottawa, the major places in the Prairies and Québec and the east are taken. But if, early on in its life, our national league needs places with the limited financial resources of a Windsor or Oshawa, or the weak regional and media identity of a KW or Niagara we are being short sighted and unstrategic - or are up the creek. A league with 40-50% of the teams from one isolated area is a regional league with western and eastern outposts.

It's not about TFC's shadow, it's about demand for a professional soccer team in those local communities and the perception of relying on third tier markets in a national league this early. The league should be focusing on other markets within Canada that cement the national (not regional) footprint of the league, before going to regional route.

Let's just see how well York does over the course of the season before expanding in the GTA. I find Toronto, Niagara, Durham and even Peel a stretch.

What is embarrassing about an attendance of 3500? For this level of soccer in these communities, attendances like these have to be expected. Embarassment will come into play once we hid mid-week games at the 1500 level.