It’s Not Like The Girls Will Ever Stop Cheering

By Ben Knight Onward!

Small, good crowd; big, bad loss
There’s something about the way girls and young women watch soccer. There’s an edge – an emotional enthusiasm. Lots of noise, but very different from the gruff, low-pitched singing and swearing that usually ring forth from the BMO Field bleachers during a Toronto FC home game.

Squeals. Yells. The same chants, way up the scale, with all the emotion and none of the scorn.

The game? Canada’s rebuilt, refocused women’s national team, making their home debut under new head coach Carolina Morace. Japan was supposed to provide the opposition, but they got flu-fear and backed out.

That set off a frantic day of on-edge phone work at the CSA’s Mansion on Metcalfe, which amazingly resulted in the top-ranked United States side coming north on hugely short notice to keep the fixture alive.

It were better as a spectacle than a game. The American Women were ahead on two minutes – a hugely preventable goal from the right diagonal corner of the box. Three well-crafted goals would follow. The 4-0 final was fair, and honourable. And there were some significant positives for Canada, even though the scoreboard kind of collapsed on them.

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