NEWS

United back home and rarin' to go (Times Colonist)

Wednesday February 6, 2008

Cleve Dheensaw, Times Colonist

Published: Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Based on recent reports, you might be tempted to call it the Clunker on Caledonia. But Royal Athletic Park, which has taken a pummeling of late with the prospective loss of sporting tenants, received a much-needed boost with the announcement that Victoria United of the Pacific Coast Soccer League will continue playing at the facility.

United, the city's main summer soccer club, held a news conference yesterday outlining plans for the 2008 season. The club is both the defending 2007 league regular-season and Challenge Cup playoff champion, but also wants to up its game off the field and has set a target of attracting between 500 to 1,000 fans for its nine home dates from May to August.

"The Victoria Rebels [junior football team] has shown it's a blast when you get 1,000 people into RAP for a game," noted Mark de Frias, United's director of marketing and communications.

"As for soccer, I think people have a bit of a taste for it now after what happened last summer in the 2007 FIFA Under-20 World Cup. We put 14,000 people into RAP for each game in our group. That was really something. There is no reason why we can't tap into 10 per cent of that market to come out and watch United. Generally speaking, soccer is never going to be up with the Big Four of North American sports, but those in our sport believe there is a niche market out there for it."

The Rebels announced they will vacate RAP after the 2008 junior football season to play at a proposed new stadium in Langford. The Victoria Highlanders, a proposed team in the United Soccer League's Under-23 development division, will also play in the Langford stadium. United, however, say they will remain at RAP for the foreseeable future.

"That's certainly our plan," said United president Bill McCreadie.

"RAP lends itself to soccer. The FIFA Under-20 World Cup was the epitome in showing what that park can do. As long as I have anything to say about it, my vote is to stay at RAP. We've also taken a more aggressive approach to raise our profile. What worked so well for the U-20 World Cup -- selling tickets through the local soccer clubs -- should work well for us, too. Our goal is to bring together the city's best players each summer and give them the best atmosphere and venue in which to play."

United yesterday launched its new website, victoriaunited.com, and all ticketing and other details are on it.

The task of assembling the on-field talent -- and it is considerable -- again falls to returning playing-coach Ben Hooker. The United annually brings together the best players from the Island League First Division and this year's side expects to feature the likes of Will Moore, Patrick Gawrys, Rob Veenhof and Paul Vandenboomen from the Gorge powerhouse, Steve Scott from Sooke, Matt Northrup of Gordon Head, Craig Robertson and Steve Gateley of Bays United and goalkeeper Dan Kilpatrick from UVic.

United will again be potent, but the commitment also represents nearly 12 months of soccer for the players. And the Pacific Coast League includes travel from down in Seattle to up in the Okanagan.

"It's hard on these players at times, but they do it for the game," said Hooker, the former NCAA UNLV Runnin' Rebels player, now with Bays United. "The Gorge guys will probably go deep into the B.C. playoffs, which gives them only about one week turnaround time before the United season starts. It's a bit of a struggle sometimes. Every player who plays for United goes 12 months. It's a long season. But we're soccer guys and that's what we live for."

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