November 2, 2022...League1 Ontario Men's Premier Division split at the halfway point...(by Rocket Robin)
This article was originally written for The Sentinel online publication but the publisher decided to put his magazine on hiatus.
November 2, 2022 The 2022 season in League1 Ontario has been over for almost exactly two months but it can be considered the halfway mark on the league's plan restructuring. Twenty-two teams played through a twenty-one game regular season in nineteen weeks to finish at the positions shown above. Halfway? Yes, the league announced at the beginning of the season that after a combining of the 2022 and 2023 seasons, the top twelve teams will be split off into a 'Premier Division' with the next ten teams forming a 'First Division'. The current Reserve Division will be renamed the 'Second Division' and from the 2024 season onward, there will be promotion and relegation (currently planned as one team up/one team down between divisions) after that. Any new teams coming in (and I've seen the application this week being sent out for next season) have to start at the Reserve/Second Division level. Next season could be looked on as a relegation of ten teams and is the most important season in league history. For those ten dropping down, the climb back is difficult if only one team per year will come back to the top. The cumulation of team's 2022 season points will be multiplied by 75% and added to 2023's points to decide the split so last year's points can be looked at as a head start. The league should add another column to their standings so it will be easier to keep track which I was reassured would be happening with a new stats program because last season they couldn't display a 'games played' column and in individual game stats, a goalie could never earn a card as it was impossible on the hockey league software that was used. The 2023 fixtures will be 'reversed' in that the teams you played at home in 2022 you will play on the road next season. Teams that had ten home games will now have eleven home games and the eleven at home/ten away teams will play a reverse schedule when meeting their opponents. I'm going to try to rank the positions from 2022 to see if I can figure out who will survive the split at the top level. I've broken the finishers into five groups. First group: Vaughan Azzurri.....and that's it! This team was undefeated in the regular season for the second year in a row (12 games in the Covid shortened 2021) and finished ten points ahead of the next closest team. 18 wins and 3 ties for 57 points was over twice as many as the 28 point twelfth place cut-off line. First look would be to say they could take the year off and still survive but the 75% recalculation changes that and of course this team I can not see sitting back. Their title (they won the playoffs too) means they are the first L1O team to ever earn an entry to the Canadian Championship for a second time. Their 76 goals scored was 18 more than any other team and that was with a planned striker being scooped by CPL HFX Wanderers after a pre-season game against them and another forward being signed and extended to a CPL emergency contract during the middle of the season by CPL Forge FC. Second group: The other playoff teams plus one. Blue Devils FC, Alliance United FC, North Toronto Nitros, Simcoe County Rovers FC, ProStars FC, and Guelph United These teams dueled for the five remaining playoff spots and all finished within five points of each other with Guelph being squeezed out on the last weekend when they had played out their fixtures the weekend before. It was the first year for Simcoe County Rovers in L1O. There's an 11 point gap between the seventh and eighth place team so they can be fairly comfortable with a Top 12 finish if they continue to play as well as 2022. Third Group: Sigma FC, Hamilton United, Electric City FC, Woodbridge Strikers, and Scrosoppi FC These teams finish up the Top 12 but there's only a 3 point gap between twelfth and thirteenth and the best of them are only 6 points ahead of the drop and even narrower with the 75% mathematics so no let up is allowed! Newcomers to L1O were Hamilton and Electric City. ECFC underwent some coaching changes early and were down as far as sixteenth at the end of Week 6. Fourth Group: Darby FC, Pickering FC, BVB IA Waterloo, St. Catharines Roma Wolves, and Burlington SC No real reason to break the next group at five but they have the best chance of displacing a team in the group above them and make the Top 12. All but Darby were first year teams with the caveat that Pickering were returning for the first time since 2019. Fifth Group: Windsor TFC, Master's FA, Unionville Milliken SC, North Mississauga SC, and FC London These teams are in trouble with them starting a minimum of 10 points behind the Top 12 (OK not so bad with the 75% recalculation). None of these teams were newcomers. Master's and London were playoff semi-finalists in 2021. When Simcoe County and Electric City came in with flashy owners, there were a lot of players drawn to those teams from existing teams with the promise of a professionally run organization. I was warned by another fan that if I thought player movement was wild in 2022, wait until 2024 for a migration of players to the Top 12 teams to keep their names in the top tier and stay in the spotlight and the opportunity of being scouted by higher leagues. Is having a team in the second tier a failure? Well I was able to interview an official with each club as the season wore on (it did take until Week 13 so the writing was on the wall for some as the weeks passed). I suspect it won't make too much difference to teams like Windsor TFC and FC London (both under the wing of MLS Toronto FC). It's not the L1O players that TFC are interested in, it's the 12 and 13 year olds who can be brought into the TFC Academy. I suspect that would work with Waterloo and their relationship with BVB the German team. Some of the other teams see it are the best path for their community in building a pathway from their U5's to the top. Many clubs hold bragging rights for how many scholarships their youth players earn. Earlier this week I received tweets about both male and female players committing to universities. Sigma were holding a university spotlight tourney this weekend to show off some players and they have two youth teams heading away on a European tour. Hey and Sigma has a pathway to CPL champs Forge FC! One manager told me it was important for his club to play their young players and he wasn't going to bring in some mercenaries just to try for a Top 12 finish. The league had to do a lot of rescheduling for things like thunderstorms and stadium lighting failures but they eventually got all 231 games played...except one! This one may loom large. Way back in Week 3, Darby FC was awarded a 3-0 victory by forfeit over BVB IA Waterloo in a player dispute over uniforms (BVB was transitioning over from Waterloo United) and didn't take the field. Not to say Darby wouldn't have won their home game anyway but at season's end Darby finished with 25 points for thirteenth and BVB have 22 for fifteenth. Game played and those standings may have been reversed. Every point matters! A quirk in the schedule is 2022 should have been the easiest year for Simcoe County Rovers to win the fan sponsored trophy competition 'Credit River Cup' with nothing but home games against ProStars, North Mississauga, and Sigma. ProStars ended up winning after the year before not being invited because they were not 'geographically in Mississauga'. Watch for SCR to play all road games in this tourney in 2023. Rocket Robin robing@eol.ca twitter @RocketRobin01
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