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Originally Posted by esquire
^ When you put it that way, the Ottawa Fury's concerns don't sound unreasonable. Clearly their owners have sunk a lot of time and money into growing the team and I can appreciate that moving the team to a totally new venture does entail significant risk.
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Indeed. On the same side though they don't have as much to sink in as the others do. They already have a roster, and a stadium, and travelling around Canada can't be any more difficult than travelling around the Eastern US, especially considering it's fewer dates. I imagine crowds for games against York or Hamilton would be bigger than crowds against Bethlehem or North Carolina...
If they try to get into a fight with CONCACAF they're going to lose.
If they join CPL, and it flops spectacularly, you'd think CONCACAF would let them move back into the USL anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
Has there been any talk of a delayed transition? i.e. maybe waiting for the CPL to get year 1 under its belt and then move over in year 2, once there is a bit more certainty? I know that would be treating Ottawa differently than the charter CPL teams, but in fairness, the charter CPL teams signed on for a risky new venture while the Ottawa Fury is fairly established at this point.
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Slightly, but right now they've rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. There's been talk that Fury folk were not very positive on CPL and were saying not very great things about it for whatever reason. They were pretty adamant that it was USL or bust for them, and they would rather not play at all in 2019 than play in the CPL. If they're going to be that against the idea of the league itself then I understand if CPL want nothing to do with them.
What confuses me is that there are two other CFL ownership groups involved in the CPL (Hamilton & Winnipeg) so to see a third, with a soccer team already operating, so adamantly against it is...odd, I think. You would think there would be some cohesion and groupthink going on. They all have the same goal of maximizing revenues and maximizing dates their facilities are in use.
There's actually been talk from one of Canada's footy journalists about Impact moving to the CPL five-ten years from now. Purely wild speculation at this point but it's out there.