Just before we rolled tape last month on what turned out to be a significant interview on the road to Canadian Soccer Association governance reform, I locked eyes with Ontario Soccer Association president Ron Smale.
Normally, I’d give him a quiet little set-up chat about the interview to follow. But he looked so certain, so ready – and he had his communications guy there filming the whole thing.
“So, we both know what we came here to do,” I said.
“We do,” he answered.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]
What followed was the best, most impassioned, most committed pro-reform argument I’ve heard in a decade – from a man who was willing to give all to vote himself off the CSA board.
As we all now know, that day is coming. Nothing will change for a year, but then, gradually, by 2015, all provincial and territorial soccer association presidents will be gone from Metcalfe Street for good.
For VERY good.
Smale’s role was fascinating. He was under significant pressure – from the CSA, the provinces and his own organization – to back the compromise plan. He was beyond adamant that he would not.
This begged the question – and lots of folks were asking it – what would Ontario do if the original plan failed? Smale never betrayed his hold card until the vote was over. And then he dropped his brilliant bomb.
He proposed – and it was accepted – that the compromise be modified to mandate the three-year phasing out of whatever provincial presidents remained.
The danger (and I saw it right away) was that a sharper compromise would strengthen the opposition’s resolve, and it did. Quebec, Alberta, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador all voted nay, and the first compromise plan died.
But then Quebec – of all vague and silent and difficult places – took the last compromise standing (the one that delays everything by a year) and incorporated Smale’s three-year phase-out plan. That was adopted … and passed unanimously.
And suddenly, seemingly impossibly after what had come before, real reform lit up the distant early warning radar screens of your Canadian Soccer Association.
How utterly … Canadian!
Where else, but in a country that funds its national teams with the registration fees of amateur players, would a governance reform package be voted on ONLY by the people it’s designed to put out of business?
And where else – we STAND on GUARD for THEE! – could any version of said plan end up passing unanimously?
Ron Smale is a player, folks.
I find, after a decade in this fight, I’m feeling more drained than relieved. Elation will come, but, like the reforms, it will be … delayed.
My heartfelt thanks go out to the provincial presidents, who ultimately found a way to do the right and necessary thing. They should never have been put in such a situation, and it’s to their credit that they managed to see that the ultimate long-term good of the Canadian soccer dream did not include them sitting at the board table.
Whatever else was going on in Ottawa this day did not, in the end, amount to disaster. Questions will still be posed (Hi, Alberta!), but the outcome cannot be rescinded now.
We
(All of us)
Actually
Freakin’
DID
IT
!!!!!!!!!
… And may we all be cheering Canada in the World Cup in our dreams tonight.
Onward!