School Update

I head off to school in a couple days, so I don’t know if I will be updating the blog as often as I was during the summer, or at all. Obviously school will be my first priority, so writing for my blog or any others as a guest is out of my immediate plans, but if I do have some free time to write a blog post, I could probably do that.

I always used this blog to get some nagging thoughts out of my head, and to comment on the events around me, locally and globally. To be honest, I was shocked to see that so many people came to check out my site and that it got so many views. It was successful, that’s for sure.

I want to thank everyone out there for checking out this blog, commenting on the posts, linking it to other sites, and such. Without you, the reader, this wouldn’t be possible.

Like I said before, I don’t know if the blog postings will be affected. I could still be posting 2 blog posts a week, but I doubt that much. I have to be focused for school.

Cheers all, and have a good day.

Canada vs. St. Lucia: Post-Game Thoughts

Last Friday, I went out to BMO Field to see Canada start their campaign for the 2014 World Cup against St. Lucia, one of the Caribbean minnows of CONCACAF. Overall, the night was incredibly fun, despite my obvious drunkenness. Thankfully, Canada won the match 4-1, but I won’t be talking about Canada’s performance in the match (leave that to the media). Rather, I will talk about what I noticed while sitting in the south end watching the match, from a supporter’s perspective.

The first thing I want to talk about is the crowd. Overall, the crowd was very pro-Canadian, compared to other Canada matches that took place at BMO Field, where the away fans typically outnumbered the home support. There were a few St. Lucia fans around, but they were in very small bunches. My rough estimate on the St. Lucia fans that attended the match is around 500-750 people, out of the total number of 11500 people in attendance. Most of them congregated in the north stands, but there were a few St. Lucia fans all around the stadium. With that said, I was happy with the Canadian presence at this match, especially in the south end.

One thing that got me angry was the conduct of some of the St. Lucia players during the match. There was an unusually high number of St. Lucia players falling down and acting like they were injured. I counted at least six or seven stretchers coming out onto the pitch during the match, and they were all for St. Lucia. Obviously this was nothing more than a tactic by St. Lucia to waste time, especially when the match was tied 1-1. Still, this drew out the anger of the Canadian fans, and the insults were flying towards the St. Lucia players.

The thing that impressed me the most at the match was the atmosphere from the south stands. The east stands were decently full and the west and north stands weren’t as full as the east stand, but the south stands were the place to be for the match, it was very packed. It wasn’t just the supporters sections of 112/113/114 with the chants and songs, the rest of the south end got into it as well, which was awesome. There was a sense of unification in the south stands at the Canada match that you don’t get when going to a Toronto FC game. In terms of atmosphere, I would much rather go to a Canada match than go to a Toronto FC match. I remembered getting home after the match and watching the same game I was just at, and I heard the Canadian supporters sing their hearts out loud and clear. This was incredible.

I would love to go to the other Canada matches taking place in October and November, but I have school. Still, the match on Friday was quite the crazy match to go to. I was bummed to not meet anyone from Twitter, but it was still a great night.