Another Bore Draw Ends Caps Voyageurs Cup Campaign For Another Year

The 2010 Voyageurs Cup wrapped up tonight with a soggy scoreless game at BMO Field in front of a sparse crowd. Don’t know if I’d have come out in a torrential downpour to watch a pointless match either, although the lure of seeing my team lift a trophy would probably have been the clincher in getting me along.

As expected, Toronto fielded a young side and the Caps made a few changes themselves but the weather was always going to put any free-flowing football on hold. What we hoped for though was the Caps to show some desire to maintain their strong record against TFC and that’s pretty much what we got in the first half, as Vancouver were by far the better side, despite playing with a man down for the last 14 minutes of it.

Philippe Davies’ shocking lack of bottle in shooting, when clean through after only 3 minutes, summed up the Caps campaign and problems this year. Shot shy.

Marcus Haber saw red on 31 minutes when he went in with his studs up and caught Doneil Henry. Stupid tackle, the conditions played a part and sure I’ve seen them only be yellow at times, but at the same time I’ve also seen them red, so not too much complaining from me. As soon as you go in at pace with your feet off the floor, then you’re asking for trouble.

It was a meaningless game, pride apart, so I would have been quite happy if Teitur adopted the Fife way and just kicked fuck out of everyone in a red shirt. A few sending offs offset by a few TFC injuries and I’d have been happy. Sadly didn’t happen. The Scottish way is clearly not the Icelandic way!

Toronto dominated the start of the second half, but what they had in possession they lacked in attacking threat, whilst Vancouver seemed to have left their enthusiasm for a contest in the dressing room. When Johnny Steele crashed a header off the bar on 66 minutes then it let us know that we were still in the match and still looking for that win. Well it should have. Instead we sat back in defence whilst Toronto stroked the ball around and still offered fuck all in the way of breaking the deadlock.

Thankfully the final whistle came and put everyone out of their misery. Another 0-0 draw for the Caps. Their fourth draw in the tournament, remaining unbeaten, but having only scored two goals in the process. Hmm, maybe we do have the Scottish way about us after all. Going unbeaten in the group stages but failing to qualify.

Let’s be frank though. With the team we had out (it was close to being our starting line up), we should have won that game comfortably against such an inexperienced Toronto side. Losing Haber didn’t help, but we should have been ahead by that point in the proceedings anyway. I think it says a lot about our current team and tactics at the moment. Strong defensively, but very little elsewhere. Unlike last year, it’s hard to see things clicking into place this term.

But that’s the Canadian Championship all over for another year. A bit of an anti-climax, with Montreal denying Canadian football a grand finale, but all we can now do is to look forward to next year.

What shape the tournament will take, no-one currently knows. The addition of Edmonton will now make it at least four teams strong. There’s been a lot of debate all over as to what the future of the Voyageurs Cup should be and who should be included.

We’re unfortunately a long way away I think from a US Open style Cup, but I would love to see that at some point. That would always be my chosen path. Regional qualifying for now would make sense. Get teams like Victoria and Abbotsford in there. Get some local derbies and rivalries going. It’s the only thing that will help grow the game here.

What I would hate is for them to have us playing a two legged game against Edmonton and playing the winners of a two-legged game between Toronto and Montreal. It’s pointless and kills the competition for the fans.

I could see Sportsnet, or whatever TV company gets the rights, pushing the CSA for something like this though. It would pretty much guarantee them six meaningful games to show and not the situation we had tonight. So if that does happen, it’s something else to hate Montreal for. Their lack of pride and respect for the competition would have got us to that stage. The only pleasing aspect of it is that they would never represent Canada on the international stage for a while.

Back to this year though and well done to Toronto. They deserved their trophy this time. They did what they needed to do, whilst we couldn’t get any scoring threat going in the four games. We were piss poor frankly. Keep the Cup shiny, as we’ll be going all out to get it next time, hopefully with some strikers in tow.

Good luck to Motagua in the preliminary round of the Champions League. Do Honduras and the west coast of Canada proud.