Ottawa Fury News Release -- www.ottawafury.com
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
OTTAWA, Ont. -- After falling a goal shy from reaching the PDL Final Four in 2012, the Ottawa Fury are not just eyeballing their fourth division title in five years in 2013, but they are taking aim at the PDL Championship. The trio of Stephen O’Kane, Jason Whiting and Marc Lapointe return after spending the off-season building what is arguably the best roster that the Fury have ever seen - on paper - and the 2013 season will determine if having depth, talent and experience at every position is a recipe for a PDL Championship. 
Despite their successes in 2012, O’Kane and company only have seven returning players for the 2013 campaign led by veteran Will Beaugé, who currently sits at 96 career points with the Fury, and striker Carlo Basso, who finished second to Beaugé in team scoring last season. Another returning striker is local product Robbie Murphy. The Fury’s backline see’s the return of Sandro Rajkovic and Peter Manginas, while the last line of defence has Nils Carlson and local product Chad Bush back between the pipes.
While the Fury will have several new faces for 2013, they won’t be short on PDL experience. Carl Haworth joins the Fury after capturing the PDL Championship last season with FC London and should provide ample offence and leadership for the club in 2013. Another major coup for the Fury was landing a pair of captains from a pair of top PDL squads from last year - Jordian Farahani who captained the Thunder Bay Chill and Joseph Dawkins who captained the Ocala Stampede. Jacob Barron joins the Fury from Reading United and former Capital City FC players Emir Zrnic and Francis Letourneau return to Ottawa after spending the 2012 season with the Chicago Inferno. Shaun Foster, who plies his trade at Hofstra University, joins the club from rivals the Jersey Express who the Fury eliminated from the post season back in 2010.
The team’s international contingent boasts some impressive talents led by defender Artur Piperkov and midfielder Yannis Becker who both came through the Werder Bremen Youth Academy. French midfielder Loic Miliani joins the club after capturing the NAIA Championship with Belhaven this past fall and Kozarac, Bosnia native Maid Memic comes to the Fury after captaining NCAA Division 1 School Hofstra University. The team’s British connection includes a pair of NCAA Division 1 midfielders in Eddie Jones from the University of Dayton and Jon Barden from James Madison University.
The experience runs deep for some of the Canadian and American talents that have also been added for 2013. Kennedy Owusu Ansah has played for RoPS Roviemi in Finland and was also capped four times for the Canadian U20 team. Oakville, Ont. native Niko Jelicic comes to the Fury after leading a major turnaround as captain at NAIA school Holy Cross while Jacob Van Compernolle is another standout defender who plies his trade at UNC Wilmington. Goalkeeper Barrett Nielsen joins the Fury from Lander University where form Fury captain Jamie Ramm played, and the club is also excited to have Gatineau native and Fury Youth Academy graduate Justin Maheu back in the fold after he spent the last couple years in Germany with the Fortuna Dusseldorf Reserves.
With depth, talent and experience at every position the Fury have assembled all of the necessary ingredients to challenge for their first-ever PDL Championship.