Jay DeMerit – The Whitecaps TV Star In The Making

When the Robbie Savage deal fell through, we mentioned in the blog that our biggest disappointment over it was that the Caps would be missing a fantastically colourful character off the pitch and one who would have risen the Caps profile in the city no end.

Savage could have brought so much to the Vancouver media, although to be honest, I don’t think they’d have been ready for him and having his own stints on the BBC and ESPN is not going to compare with Team 1040 and CTV.

The Caps need to have a pretty dynamic figure to grab some media attention in a hockey-mad city. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that we don’t have a high profile designated player like David Beckham or Thierry Henry for the media to fawn all over. To be honest, thank fuck about that.

There are a few of these colourful characters in the current squad. Wes Knight has the southern charm and has been fun to listen to on Team 1040. Joe Cannon seems to be in the “Mental Goalkeepers Club” if his Twitter posts are anything to go by. Although, I think all keepers belong to that club.

If we can talk the Caps into signing Croatian goalkeeper David Sugar from Swiss side AC Bellinzona then we’ll be somewhere down the road of pitching our show, “Koffie with one Sugar”, featuring everyone’s favourite Ghanaian midfielder Gershon.

For us though, there is no better choice to become the Caps new media darling than Jay DeMerit.

The former Watford man is entertaining, great fun to listen to, has some of that charisma that’s missing from so many modern day footballers and has an interesting back story as to how he ended up in England in the first place. PR gold as far as the Whitecaps should be concerned.

If you need any more convincing, then take a gander at this piece of televisual gold from when Jay appeared on the cult UK television show Soccer AM. This is an edited version of his appearance on the show from January 10th 2009:

See, entertaining and with a story which theoffside.com said “has the makings of a Disney movie written all over it”. Make up your own Mickey Mouse gag!

Bizarrely, this is the only old episode of Soccer AM that I had kicking about. Must have been an omen that he was going to sign for the Caps.

Another element of the Jay DeMerit story that many of you may be unfamiliar with is that he is also a singer/songwriter and that same episode of Soccer AM featured Rocket and the crew miming to Jay’s song “Soccer Rocks”.

Oh for there to be a show like Soccer AM in Canada. Even though it’s not a patch on what it used to be in the early years, it’s still great entertainment and the best way to start off your footballing weekend.

Whilst the whole country gets their endless English Premiership fix though, the prospects of Soccer Eh-Em in Canada are pretty slim.

So if the television powers that be won’t give us what we at AFTN want, then we’ll just have to do our own! We’re hoping to start podcasts at some point in this coming season and Jay, if you’re reading this, then we have lots of ideas for you to help us out with! And just so the rest of the squad don’t feel left out, we have plans for you guys too! All in the best Soccer AM style of course.