What now?
That is the biggest question that the Canadian women face now that the London Games are over (once the post-Bronze, well-deserved hangover passes). Sadly, despite the massive amount of attention the team received over the last week, they will return to normal life facing an uncertain future.
As always, the biggest question will be their club team future and, by extension, money.
Let's address the former point first. Money, we will tackle after.
Just prior to the Olympics the second attempt at creating a professional women's league in the United States failed. Badly. It left the future very much in doubt and if it wasn't for the Olympics to distract them, the summer of 2012 would have been a very stressful one for several of Canada's biggest stars.
Although only a few of the Canucks were in the WPS – notably Christine Sinclair – the loss of the league has a deeper impact. It takes away opportunity for the players to eke out a living, forcing players down a level into the amateur W-League.
That, in turn, takes roster spots away from players that would benefit from playing at that level, which ultimately means players are getting forced out of the game.
The lack of a pro league is a big deal, especially when the money is limited in Europe and roster spots are at a premium.
In what was likely a deliberately timed coincidence, several of the former WPS teams announced last night that they were working on establishing a new league, which would be good news for the top 5-6 Canadian players. However, without pro options in Canada, the amount of roster spots would be limited for the Canucks. Sinclair will be fine (although it would be nice to see her try to land in Europe somewhere in a more established and stable league), but the Brittany Timkos of the team would be faced with difficult financial choices to make if they are to stick around until 2015.
That would be different if there was a fully pro option in Canada. Sadly, the three MLS teams have no desire to make that happen. Vancouver has a W-League team, but has shown limited to no interest in moving to a professional set-up and TFC has point blank told CSN it's uninterested. Montreal's interest is less known, but there has not been any public chatter about it.
So, where else might a pro team emerge from? The most likely place would be Ottawa, where the Fury just captured its first championship earlier this month. By all accounts the Fury are a professional operation that is truly first class in all ways. But, they aren't a professional team.
It would seem like this would be a good time for the Fury to take a risk and change that. A WPS team in Canada would provide a natural home to many of the national team players and would be the biggest single factor in taking the program to the next level.
Apparently, the Fury are already on record saying that they are uninterested. It's always easy to spend other people's money, but that's a shame. Without more pro opportunity it's going to be very, very difficult to emulate the bronze medal performance and pretty much impossible to improve. Someone – be it the Fury, or another club or sponsor – is going to need to step up and take a risk.
That needs to happen because it is unrealistic to think that the CSA can directly fund the athletes – not because the CSA is cheap or incompetent, but rather because the money simply isn't there. If the men make the Hex – and every Canadian should absolutely and desperately want that – then the CSA will especially not have the money.
It took all of 30 seconds before a "proud sponsor" of the Canadian women had an advertisement running that attempted to attach their company's name to the team. They didn't indicate what that proud sponsorship meant in dollars and cents. What we do know is that there are five national team members on the waiting list to get supplementary funding through CanFund. So, how valuable can any sponsorship really be?
The Canadian women have represented the country well. It's only fair that the country repay that debt by taking a little risk and trying to advance the sport.