The sound of the bagpipes will again fill the air at Royal Athletic Park.
The Victoria Highlanders are returning to play soccer this summer, this time in a league with what the team hopes is a more efficient economic model.
David Dew and Marvin Diercks have bought the Highlanders from former owner Alex Campbell Jr., who this year folded operations in the United Soccer League Premier Development League. The reborn Highlanders will play in the Pacific Coast Soccer League, but Dew and Diercks say they are leaving their options open for future years and a potential higher level.
On such a short timeline this year, they say the PCSL was the best option to keep a representative summer soccer team alive in the capital. The PCSL — with teams in Vancouver, Abbotsford and Kamloops — is the main summer league for soccer in B.C. The PDL was considered the top developmental soccer league in North America, and each season produced numerous players for the MLS draft. But the PDL was primarily a Under-23 league, while there are no age restrictions for the PCSL.
The latter brings up the calibre of play, said Dew and Diercks, because the use of veteran players is unlimited.
“The level is similar, maybe a touch higher [in the PCSL],” said Dew.
Dew and Diercks said less than 10 per cent of the more than 300 people who had purchased Highlanders PDL season tickets for 2015 have asked for their money back.
On the pitch, expect to see mostly familiar faces. Dew said “80 to 85 per cent” of last year’s Highlanders PDL team is expected back in the black and gold team kit. He said Highlanders players expressing interest to return include former Plymouth Argyle and Swindon Town pro Blair Sturrock. Dew added Riley O’Neill, a 2005 FIFA U-20 World Cup player from Campbell River who starred in the NCAA with the Kentucky Wildcats before playing pro in the Finnish Premier League and German Second Division, is also interested in returning. Dew said top players from the UVic Vikes and Island Soccer League Division 1 will also be part of the mix.
Dew and Diercks promise the same game-night presentation provided during the past six PDL seasons.
“We will bring the PDL standard and put it in the PCSL, and that will raise the standard of the PCSL, as well, in terms of presentation,” said Dew.
But everything else in team operations will change and get drastically leaner.
Dew said salaries accounted for $350,000 a season in expenses for the Highlanders in the PDL.
“I put my hand up as one of those who was being paid [in the Highlanders organization as coach of the women’s team],” he said.
The new PCSL Highlanders will be volunteer-run.
“Staff wages doomed [the PDL Highlanders] from the start,” said Dew. “We have taken this on as volunteers.”
Perks for the players will also be gone.
“Some players had meal cards, gas cards and subsidized housing and have been notified there will no longer be any of that,” said Dew.
Diercks described it as a “different model.”
“There will also no longer be a massive [Highlanders] youth academy program,” he added.
Also being chopped is the women’s team, which previously played in the PCSL as the Peninsula Co-op Highlanders.
“The women’s team received only minimal [fan] support,” said Dew, a champion of women’s soccer and assistant coach for Canada at the 1995 FIFA World Cup in Sweden.
Dew and Diercks said the Highlanders name still has brand value in Island soccer and that’s why they wanted to purchase it and not just go into the PCSL with a new entity. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
“The [past] debts remain with the old [Highlanders] company,” explained Diercks.
The 2015 PCSL schedule, which will run from early May to late July, has not been released. There will be 16 Highlanders games, eight home and eight away.
