That's exactly what's happened. I always found it odd to be creating this HPL league when one essentially already existed w/ Metro. We knew it would cannibalize Metro eventually, and it has. That's not necessarily a bad thing, just evolution of a development league. I did find it weird, though. They could have brought in this motion way back then and avoided having to do the whole HPL league start-up, but with 20/20 hindsight, easy to see that.i think we can call HPL metro again can’t we? But with ex VMSL players now lining their pocket as “pro” coaches.
Great perspective. Never thought of it from the other angle.broad strokes, the only people who give a shite about soccer for life and the recreational youth soccer players are the districts. the CSA has wanted rid of them for ages; they forget that from your grassroots clubs come your next Alphonso Davies' and Jordyn Huitema's.
Getting rid of the OOD rule will be the death of the small community clubs. The landscape will turn into about six super clubs and at least as many for profit academies, exactly none of which will care about the players who manage to get written off before they hit junior high.
End result will be a lot less kids choosing to play soccer, which actually hurts high performance at least as much as the local clubs - only the powers that be are too short-sighted to see it.
Too bad - there's a role for everyone if people would put their goddamn egos aside and realize that no one has the magic solution to "fixing" youth soccer in this province and that we're all better off if we work together from our own little corners of that world.
Rant over.
I'm not a fan of superclubs. However there are way too many shitty clubs managing to survive just because they have limited competition in their area, which they've maintained at the district level by blocking new clubs from getting sanctioned.
You don't have to look much further than Langley FC to see how bad it can get.
If this forces clubs to be better or die, then so be it. There's nothing to say you can't still run a small, community-based club that caters to a specific geographic region, and be successful doing it. The most important aspect will be field access, and that's something the municipalities need to manage.
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The bottom line is that when there is what I will call political upheaval, many kids and parents vote with their feet and just leave the game. If you want proof, look at what happened to the numbers at u18 when the BCSPL came in and basically blew up all the teams all the way down to bronze for one year of soccer. A huge number of those players just said fcuk it and left.
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Didn't mean to suggest you were, and I was using that more as a general example than a comment on the Langley situation specifically.@mtkb I didn't mean Langley FC were the ones blocking others -- I don't know if anyone else ever tried to start a new Langley club. It just seemed to me that because the only choices in Langley were them or Langley United, by default they got a lot of players registered, and provided them with a very shitty product.
Can easily substitute Langley with Richmond, and it wasn't until 2021 did Richmond get a 2nd district club as an alternate option for both genders.@mtkb I didn't mean Langley FC were the ones blocking others -- I don't know if anyone else ever tried to start a new Langley club. It just seemed to me that because the only choices in Langley were them or Langley United, by default they got a lot of players registered, and provided them with a very shitty product.
IMO The Packenhan Cup should matter, but it should also be played by those worthy
The FVSL needs demolition and rebuild
That's really the more important point here. I'd say maybe 75-80% of soccer families could care less about the politics or level their kid plays at. Most have their kids there for participation reasons, not competitive reasons.Didn't mean to suggest you were, and I was using that more as a general example than a comment on the Langley situation specifically.
To @Dude's points - 1) I was talking relative to the normal attrition at u18 - the change was still significant. 2) We're having a friendly chat about the issue on a philosophical level and still finding disagreement. Now imagine parents actually in the middle of it, dealing with coaches and or administrators protecting their own little fiefdoms. Trust me, there's not a world in which additional OOD movement doesn't significantly fcuk things up for kids who just want to kick a ball around once or twice a week as part of a team...
Sounds like you have blended two posts for two different threads into one reply.Richmond FC and Langley FC have boatloads in common when it comes to unethical boards and the shadiest decisions ever made in youth soccer…..with zero oversight by BCSA or anybody else for that matter. fcuk the societies act!!
I wish for the love of Hay Zeus that someone would have the nutsack to make the shadow people accountable instead of praising them for their volunteerism.
IMO The Packenhan Cup should matter, but it should also be played by those worthy
The FVSL needs demolition and rebuild