USL Feature
Thursday, February 9, 2012
By NICHOLAS MURRAY
A lot has changed for the Ottawa Fury since they last hosted the USL W-League Championship in 2004.
They’re now in a different conference, competing predominantly against fellow teams from Canada, although the Rochester Ravens remain a rival in their division. They’ve seen players move up into the professional ranks, and represent the Canadian Women’s National Team. And they’ve seen the standard of play within the W-League improve year by year.
One thing hasn’t, however, and it’s something that the club’s owner is eager to rectify; for the Fury to win the W-League championship.
“We’ve probably got the best record in the league over the last eight seasons, and certainly for a team that has never actually won it,” Pugh said by phone this week. “We’ve been to the final three times and the final four six times, so it would be extremely nice if we were able to win [the championship] in front of our own fans.”
The Fury had an outstanding 2011 campaign, finishing the regular season undefeated and sweeping through the Central Conference playoffs and national semifinal to reach the W-League Championship game. But then, in a scene reminiscent of their 2004 semifinal loss to the New Jersey Wildcats, an early red card saw the game get away from them, and the Atlanta Silverbacks claim the championship.
Still, if you look at what the club has achieved overall since Pugh took the helm in 2003, it’s pretty easy to get over a disappointing defeat. Setting a course that would allow the Fury to become one of the pre-eminent clubs in Canada in regard to player development and on-field accomplishments, Pugh has helped the club achieve success after success.
“We had a couple of goals in mind, really,” Pugh said. “First of all we felt that young players in Ottawa -- they don’t live in Toronto, they don’t live in Montreal -- they live in Ottawa, and we didn’t feel as though they were getting the degree of exposure that they deserved not only for representative honors but also in terms of exposure to U.S. coaches and potential scholarships and so on. That was goal number one and we’ve achieved that through participation in the Super Y-League.
“Secondly, it was to bring to Ottawa the highest level of soccer that we felt was sustainable. The W-League team had been playing three or four seasons, and we were able to acquire that team and use that as the vehicle for building a club. We wanted it to be a real club, rather than a collection of teams. We added a PDL team three seasons later, and it’s been onward and upward since that point. We now have players as young as five participating in the club’s youth program all the way up to U-20, W-League and the PDL team, with the overall goal of bringing a full professional team to the city.”
At the forefront of the club’s success, though, has been the W-League team. The Fury’s main focal point in the community has seen players such as Rhian Wilkinson, Diana Matheson, Kelly Parker, Carmelina Moscato and Robyn Gayle play in the past, and players like Christina Julien, Teresa Rynier and Courtney Wetzel play in 2011.
Seeing players move on to play for the Canadian Women’s National Team, including 14 alumni at last year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, and getting the chance to move into the professional ranks has been one of Pugh’s biggest sources of pride. Julien became the latest Fury player to make the move to the pros recently, signing with Swedish Premier League side Jitex BK for their upcoming season.
“We feel very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve in terms of taking players to the next level,” Pugh said. “One of the goals of our club has always been to bring players through our youth program and have them move on to representative honors, perhaps by way of a U.S. College scholarship. It’s been particularly pleasing to see players like Christina Julien, who is a perfect example, who probably joined us when she was a 14- or 15-year-old and now has gone all the way to playing regularly for Canada and just signed her first professional contract with a Swedish club very recently.”
Having players such as Julien play for the Fury has also helped the club raise its profile locally. Pugh refers to the side as the club’s flagship, and is expecting a great turnout for the W-League Championship, and a memorable experience for all the teams that reach the championship weekend.
“I think certainly the W-League team has been recognized many times for its efforts on the field, and it’s attainment on a North American scale,” Pugh said. “In some sense, it’s become the flagship of the club by virtue of its very successful record, so we’re certainly looking forward to the W-League Championship because we know the community will rally around and support us just as they did in 2004. We’ll have no shortage of volunteers to make sure that the event is one that teams and fans will remember, which is as it should be.”
But while Pugh hopes the three conference champions enjoy their stay in Ottawa this July, he also hopes to see his club hoisting the silverware when it’s all over.
“We look forward to welcoming the three teams, the three conference winners, but we also relish the thought of them coming to play at Algonquin,” he said. “We’ve gone three seasons now -- I think it’s 25 games, 23 wins, two draws -- since we last lost at Algonquin, so we do feel that hosting the championships will give us a bit of a home-field advantage. Algonquin has been a fortress for us, and we just hope it continues to be so through the championship.”