Go (South) West!

Courtesy Rudi Schuller U-Sector

It has finally come to an end.

Now, TFC fans can rightfully say that they fully understand what fellow supporters of other MLS teams have suffered through since the inception of our beloved little league. I’m speaking, of course, about the ridiculously long off-season.

For the better part of five months, Toronto supporters have had precious little to do, aside from reminiscing about the smashing debut season (off the field) that has fostered such unbridled passion in so many local soccer fans.

Back in December, the league threw us a crumb by graciously identifying where and when our next game – the first of the 2008 MLS season – would take place.

“Columbus, Ohio, March 29, 2008. Be there.”

Supporters groups sprang into action, taking that one little bit of information doled down to the masses on a cold winter day and turning it into the single biggest party Major League Soccer has ever seen.

What started out as an ambitious 500-supporter road trip turned very quickly into a possible one thousand, ultimately resulting in a very real 2400-strong invasion. Anxious eyes will be focused on the trail-blazing Crew Stadium on the Ohio State Fairgrounds, as the North American soccer world witnesses its first true large-scale away support in the sport’s history.

Some will point to the fans of the New York Red Bulls, 800 of whom loaded up buses and headed south to Washington in the spring of 2006, as the first to amass a sizable throng of supporters at another team’s stadium. What needs to be considered, of course, is that those 800 New Yorkers were shuttled off free-of-charge, with the new owners of the former MetroStars picking up the tab.

To TFC’s supporters’ credit, each and every one of the red-clad fanatics that will show up in Central Ohio on Saturday will have paid his own way to do so, making the magnitude of the excursion that much more impressive.

While the numbers are great, all will be for naught if the fans are merely spectators. BMO Field has quickly gained a reputation as a raucous, intimidating place for opposing sides to visit, and given the lack of player movement on a team that finished dead-last in 2007, it is of the utmost importance that those in attendance Saturday “bring it” several times more than they usually would down at the Lakeshore.

Five months of inactivity focused into two hours of pandemonium. The wait, finally, is over.