Canadian Soccer League website back online, CSL response

Earlier this week, the website of the Canadian Soccer League went entirely offline and the domain became unavailable.

As of late yesterday afternoon, the Canadian Soccer League brought the site back online, though with a number of broken links, at a slightly altered address, canadiansoccerleague.ca

Stan Adamson, Director of Media and PR for the CSL, responded to my inquiries on the matter, laying out the plans for the future of the CSL online.

Canadian Soccer League website vanished? Sanctioning?

At some point on Monday morning, the Canadian Soccer League's website disappeared from the internet, domain name and all.

There were some technical glitches with the site last week as their news feed disappeared a couple of times and their database of news, press releases, and statistics vanished, but nothing as surprising as the domain name no longer existing.

CSL: Kingston FC 2014 roster

This past week, Kingston FC announced their roster for the upcoming 2014 CSL season.

The announcement was held in the Queen's Alumni Lounge at the ARC and was presented by main owner Lorne Abugov and three returning players, Joe Zupo (ex-Queen's University captain), Guillaume Surot (CSL 2013 MVP and Golden Boot winner), and Ryan McCurdy (Kingston FC veteran since year one).

Queen's West Campus noise exemption request (Updated)

Over the last several months, there has been an ongoing issues with local Kingston residents near the Queen's West Campus turf field, located out near Richardson Stadium (corner of Sir John A MacDonald Blvd and Johnson St).

This Tuesday (March 4), Kingston City Council (as part of their agenda) will be receiving a recommendation from City staff as to how an exemption for the noise by-law should be applied to the field.

Local talent tagged for TAG

The Ontario Soccer Association and the Referee Development Department announced the leaders for the newly formed Technical Advisory Group (TAG) today. This group is designed to replace the current Instructors and Assessors Advisory Groups for referee development in the province with an eye toward creating more inclusivity and succession planning.

The main goal of this new group was to be a counterpart to the OSA's Technical Advisory Committee, which advises the board of directors on all matters soccer related, but seems to concentrate more on the player and coach development stream.

Bill Orme

Bill and Eden Orme
(courtesy KLBC)

I'm taking today to do something a bit atypical for this blog, specifically to honour my first ever soccer coach, Bill Orme.

When I first began playing "organized" soccer with the Kingston Youth Soccer Association back in the day, I often played at the McCullough Park fields here in Kingston, which was fairly close to home. My best friend and neighbour Mark Staveley was playing and his dad, Howard Staveley, was one of the two coaches, along with a co-worker of his, Bill Orme. Bill's two sons also played for the team, Will and Steve (and even though Steve was a year or two younger than the rest of us, he definitely wasn't out of place on our motley crew).

As is often the case with youth house league teams, most people were played in positions they disliked horribly (I was played as an outside left striker in modern parlance) and there were one or two great players on the team (I was not one of them), Bill and Howard managed to instill a love of the game in me at a young age, something I'm certain that both of them since regretted!

CSL: Kingston FC - 2014 Kickoff

Yesterday afternoon, Kingston FC held their 2014 Launch Press Conference at the Queen's ARC in the Alumni Lounge.

The team made several announcements about their upcoming 2014 season, some new ownership interests, a new partnership with Queen's University, and some player news.

They also unveiled their new logo (seen here), a new update done by a Toronto based graphic designer, Jennifer Coghill.

During their discussions, they talked about their objectives for 2014 (and beyond), and what the new governance situation with the Canadian Soccer League (CSL) means for them moving forward.