Saturday marked the beginning of a rather unusual but exciting journey for HFX Wanderers FC, both figuratively and literally.
The entire Canadian Premier League team, along with the coaches and staff, boarded a bus in Halifax bound for Charlottetown for a two-month stay that will not expand farther than the hotel and playing field.
“We’re in our mobile bubble right now,” Wanderers head coach Stephen Hart joked from his seat on the bus. “We’re just fortunate that we’re able to play in some form or fashion. This tournament is ideal for that. We gathered this morning, loaded up all the equipment and, of course, the bus with everybody on it. No one’s allowed to travel separately, so that’s our bubble today. And we’ll remain in our bubble for the next 55-plus days.
“I don’t know what it’s going to be like. I think it’s going to take a bit of management. There’s a certain reality to making this tournament work and we’ve accepted that so we will do our best to work within in the protocol and get things right.”
Reporting to Charlottetown for COVID-19 testing and quarantining is the first step of what the league is calling the Island Games. There will be one game per day until a champion is crowned in the early fall.
Leading up to this point took a tremendous amount of pivoting and trouble-shooting, not only in the boardrooms but also on the pitch. Hart and the seven other league managers had to make drastic modifications to their training because of social distancing and limitations on gatherings. It took months, for example, for the Wanderers to get to the stage where they could even have a full scrimmage.
“We didn’t get to that point until about 10 or 12 days ago and it was only allowed within our squad itself so we could not play any exhibition games whatsoever,” he said. “We had a long a discussion as a staff and with the team leaders so we did it in stages. A lot of it was individual work and how players work in their positions. But it was really and truly a lot of unopposed stuff because that was not allowed so it was a lot of technical work and a lot of physical work.
“The mental strength these players have shown throughout all of this - the lockdown and then returning to training - they’ve handled it quite admirably.”
With 13 new players and only a handful of returnees on his roster, Hart is going into the Island Games somewhat blind. He has a sense of each player’s ability and a general optimism for how his new group will work together but it’s still all theoretical leading up to when the real games start later next week.
“(That’s) because we didn’t have that time period of a pre-season,” Hart said. “We’ve had zero exhibition games so if I was to tell you exactly what this team was going to look like, I would not be being truthful. But they have some idea of my expectations and how I would like the team to play. But to say that they’ve been in a position where they can attempt to execute it with the freedom to make some errors without the result being on the line, that was not possible.”
Some of the key returnees are striker Akeem Garcia, midfielder Andre Rampersad, keeper Christian Oxner and back line mainstays Peter Schaale and Alex de Carolis. Among the newcomers expected to make a difference are Jems Geffrard, Louis Beland-Goyette, Ibra Sanoh, Abou Sissoko, Omar Kreim and Alex Marshall. Hart has high hopes for his reimagined crew after last year’s CPL debut squad fizzled down the stretch on its way to a last-place finish in the Fall Competition.
“I think we have some young players that have some good dynamic qualities,” Hart said. “They’re good on the ball and are very creative and adventurous. We also have some players defensively that bring some qualities as well.
“I think the team has more depth than we did last year. When I say more depth, we have players who are a little bit different in each position so the qualities they can bring are a little bit different than some of the players that we had last year. And what that has allowed me to do is try to work on a variety of different ways of approaching games. Whether it will work or not is a different question but at least we have those potential options.”
All games will be carried on OneSoccer and the opener is on Thursday between last year’s league finalists, Forge FC and Cavalary FC.
