Tuesday was Canadian Soccer News' one year anniversary. I let the day pass unceremoniously because the I'm not much for online retrospectives. They're too often a horrifying act of self fellatio and designed to get others to join in the circle jerk of self congratulations. Plus, there happened to be a Canada game on the same day and it seemed a bit rude to interject in the proceedings of a World Cup qualifier with the lighting of birthday candles.
But for those that have given so much time and energy writing for this site (as well as for those that have given so much time and energy writing about the writing on this site) I did want to share a few of my favourite moments and give a brief look ahead to the next year on CSN.
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1) Alberta/CSA reform
For me, with CSN still in its early days, this story immediately gave us national exposure and has come to define what this site can be about. Ben Knight's work during that sixth month period, that saw, first, Alberta's old guard tossed on its head and kicked out the door, simultaneously served as a reference for the mainstream media to find understanding of the issues and as as a rallying platform for those seeking to make meaningful change in the grassroots. The success seen there carried into the New Year when the CSA voted in the board reforms that we all knew needed to happen. To underscore how difficult that vote was and how monumental the moment, let me clarify what it meant: voting in the changes that occured essentially meant convincing those in power to vote on getting rid of, or threatening their own jobs. In a beaucractic heavy country, it's nothing short of a minor miracle getting an old guard, middled in protecting their position, to do anything other than that. Voting those jobs out of relevance was the Apocalypse.
Months later, Mr. Knight would be paid a visit from as influential and reclusive a character as there is in Canadian soccer. I've been asked not to reveal who that was, but I can share that he asked to meet with Ben personally to congratulate him on his coverage and tell him just how much his efforts meant to seeing through the reform.
Ben has been one of the longest serving writers of the game in this country. If he was to retire tomorrow, I think this would stand out as some of his best work. And that says something.
2) Support Local Football
This video started the same way most of our ideas do - over beers. The conversation centred around what we could do to raise awareness for the national team but mostly about our disgust over seeing opposing fans outnumbering the home fans at national team games. What started as making a few phone calls to media friends to help make a small video, snowballed into a rallying cry for long suffering national team football fans. It didn't hurt that some of the local club supporters had been planning a similar movement to inspire fans to come out to TFC Academy games at the same time. But the video would go viral, get air time on most of the national broadcasters and be played at BMO Field throughout the CONCACAF qualifiers for Toronto FC.
It's hard to quantify how much influence it had on getting actual butts into seats for those games, but I like to think that it served as a spark to inspire those in charge to start thinking about some of the solutions needed to see it happen.
3) Going against the grain
This one is more general, but it's something we all seem to pride ourselves on. If you look at every writer on this site, each one of them has a unique style and opinion on the game. We don't bother with boring match reports or asking questions that every reporter before us has asked into the ground. CSN has found new ways to cover the game and unearth information previously unknown. It's what keeps us relevant and what keeps people coming back.
There are a whole list of stories that we have broken on CSN this year - of varying importance - but the two that stand out the most actually come from a little covered area - the women's game. And they don't jump out for that, the mainstream press always gets on board during big events, they set themselves apart from anything anyone else was doing at the time because they provided a fresh look or a critical analysis.
The first was Daniel Squizzato's #ChristineSinclair Twitter campaign. If you aren't on Twitter, or somehow missed it, he took an old Chuck Norris gag and applied it to Sinclair following her world class free kick in the Germany game at the World Cup. What started as a joke, turned into a full-on media spectacle and landed Squizz on CBC's the National talking about the Canadian Women's national team. What made this special, was that while the National and most other media were doing straight edge stories - Ra Ra! cheer on this little team stuff - Squizz took a popular meme and helped relate an relatively unknown athlete to a more general sporting populous. It was hugely popular and became a point of conversation over the course of a two or three day news cycle (no small feat for the women's game which remains under covered.)
Squizz will never call it his finest work - because it isn't (Taste the Soup anyone?) - but for me it showed me how powerful that relatable approach is.
The other comes from the completely opposite end of the relatable spectrum. And it was one that got us all in trouble (no, I'm not talking about the lawsuit threat from a well known local soccer agent) for going so far outside the conservative line of thinking.
Duane's coverage of the women's national team head coach Carolina Morace and her souring relationship with the players was one that, at the time, seemed to come from left field - but only because no one was talking about it.
Yes, there were some minor mistakes in the coverage but largely the reporting of her attitudes and actions was spot on in reflecting the coach and the climate around the team and the CSA. And since her departure, and as more as come out, that early portrait - one that lead him to be accused of hating the women's game and called every name in the book - has proven pretty accurate. He doesn't get enough credit for it, but while others continued to paint her as a respected genius in the face of an obvious contrast, he stood in there and took the shots - not flinching from his assessment. In the end, after her abrupt departure and subsequent childishness, I think most who have been paying attention would say he was proven right.
Looking ahead
A lot of what we're doing right now, as we reflect on this year, is asking 'Where do we go from here?' We're the biggest site of our kind in Canada, how do we top what we've done? The short answer is we have to improve on the markets outside of Toronto. I'm the first to admit (and I mean no criticism to our other writers on this site) that we have lacked at covering Vancouver, Montreal and Edmonton. We tried different things. They were met with mixed results. So, we've gone about it a re-thinking the way we managed it. This new way will ensure that we will have better coverage in those markets in the next year. I won't give too much away but we'll begin rolling those out soon.
Next, we have some massively important events coming on the CSA level in the months ahead. We'll be diving back into that in the same way we dealt with reform and we'll be shining a light on to those we still consider to be cancers in our game. There is, of course, also World Cup qualifying (we're looking at helping to organize and promote a trip to Cuba), the women's Olympic qualifying and all the club action in between.
This article has turned out much longer than I had intended and inevitably, as we have come to expect from our wasp's nest of a readership, someone will make the obvious joke: 'For a post supposedly not about self fellatio I sure did gag a lot."
So, instead of ending it on a bad joke, I'll close with something Jason de Vos said to me recently.
"You guys have a big role to play in Canadian soccer. You serve as the bridge between the grassroots and the mainstream and have a tremendous amount of influence over the soccer community here. So you need to be mindful of your messaging."
Granted, he was calling to tell me how we had gotten something wrong, but I'll take it, like most of the criticism we receive, as a sort of praise.
Cheers,
Ben Rycroft
Canadian Soccer News
Editor in Chief