CPSL: Five
Teams Bid for Rogers Cup
by Winnipeg Fury
FIVE TEAMS BID FOR ROGERS CUP
Wild Card decider kicks off
CPSL Championship
Club Roma, the home of the St. Catharines Roma Wolves, is
the site of a three-day playoff series this weekend for the Rogers Cup and the
championship of the Canadian Professional Soccer League.
No less than
five clubs have qualified for the playoff series that gets underway this Friday,
October 12 when the Roma Wolves clash with Montreal Dynamites in a one-game
decider for a spot in the semi-finals the following day. The top three teams in
the 12-team CPSL automatically advance to the semi-finals, but if the host team
fails to capture one of the top four playoff berths, it has one last chance to
make the semi-finals in a one-game knockout with the fourth place finisher.
That one-game knockout comes on Friday.
The winner will advance
to play Ottawa Wizards, the first place finisher in the standings, in one of the
semi-finals, while in the other semi-final encounter second place Toronto
Olympians will meet third place Toronto Supra.
The Rogers Cup Final
follows a Consolation Final on Sunday.
Toronto Olympians and St.
Catharines Roma Wolves have been members of the CPSL since the league launched
in 1998, while Ottawa Wizards and Toronto Supra are in their inaugural year as
expansion teams when this Ontario-Quebec pro-loop took a leap from eight to 12
teams for this year's May 25 kickoff. The CPSL has set its sights on expansion
to other regions of Canada in the next three years.
First-year Wizards
astounded the soccer community by winning the OZ Optics League Cup on September
30 and providing an encore by capturing the league title in its final regular
season game on October 7. These wins were especially impressive given the
earlier dominance of the CPSL by Toronto Olympians, winner of seven of the nine
trophies up for grabs in the first three years of competition.
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