You know you’re getting older when you strain a tendon in your little finger whilst holding a bowl. Ouch. My guitar practice will be about more compact chord voicings for the next few days I think.
Sometimes (all the time?) music needs you to be the channel for it, not the filter or the gatekeeper. Cal explors their growth as a musician in a beautiful post this morning. And my friend Luke Concannon, who is as pure a channel for music as I have ever met, has news about a new album, which I can’t WAIT to hear. I just my copy.
Making meetings a channel for good work requires asking the right questions and designing from deeper intent. Mana Shah shares her go to questions, framed through an appreciative inquiry design cycle. Helpful stuff.
A conversation in verse between Dave Pollard and PS Pirro, has me reflecting on Dave’s lines:
The problem — where it all begins, it seems —
is in the desperate need of our sad species
to find patterns, to make everything ‘fit’
into this flimsy model we mistake for reality.
I’m partial to Brian Cox’s idea that Earth could be the only place in the galaxy where meaning is made. I don’t know why, I don’t know what for, and I don’t think we are really equipped to do it well on our own. But it is something that we do, and it enlivens my animal life.
The Canadian National Men’s team set a new standard for themselves, claiming to 26th best in the world after their performances in friendlies last week. That’s the right direction.
While I was away I didn’t get a chance to see Tottenham’s 3-0 victory over West Ham, but I was glad to hear of it. After the hiccup against Bournemouth I was worried that we might head back to our trend of diabolical losses bucking a trend of otherwise credible performances. I had one eye on today’s Champions League match against Villareal. It wasn’t a scintillating piece of art or high drama, but a reasonably comfortable 1-0 win based on an own goal from Luiz Junior who bundled a cross into his own net from the in-form Bergvald while Ricarlison was steaming in behind him. The lack of offensive was a little concerning but with Simons now taking his place in the side and a more or less settled starting XI, I hope that the chemistry keeps building.
In other English football news, these plucky boys from Grimsby keep doing the business and snuck out of South Yorkshire with a 1-0 win against Sheffield Wednesday in the League Cup. They are fast becoming the story of the tournament as if knocking off Manchester United wasn’t already enough.
Last week was the international break and by all accounts Canada had a good set of games against European competition. I caught some of the first match against Romania, a solid 3-0 win in Bucharest, which was powered by Ali Ahmed who had an assist and a goal. Later they played Wales, and as good as the Romania game was, this was even better. A 1-0 win off a sublime free kick from Derek Cornelius doesn’t tell the whole story. Canada missed a swath of chances and could have had two or three more goals. The movement and chemistry up top with Ahmend, Oluwasayei, Buchanan and David was beautiful. With no competitive matches until they open the World Cup in June in Vancouver, these kinds of games are just the right kind of warm up for the MNT.
Closer to home, the Vancouver Rise got pummelled 7-0 by AFC Toronto putting an end to a good run of form that saw them climb up the table. They meet Ottawa Rapid on Saturday back at Swangard Stadium and I’m hoping to see our former TSS Rovers Stella Downing (Ottawa) and Kirsten Tynan (Vancouver) get starts. Vancouver needs to win to stay above Ottawa. The Rise are currently tied with Montreal for second place. No one is catching Toronto at this point, I don;t think . With five games left, Toronto have a 10 point lead over their chasers.
A fun night last night at the Vancouver Rise match at Swangard Stadium. Coming into last night’s match against Montreal Roses, the Rise were undefeated in five matches and two points off Montreal for second place. Vancouver started bright but former TSS Rover Tanya Boychuk opened the scoring for Montreal. Vancouver responded on a Holly Ward goal, scored off a perfect pass from Quinn. Ward has been snake bitten all year and she needs to get her goals to efforts ratio up a bit. She’s tireless in attack and this goal was well deserved. She had a tough game against Hailey Whitaker at right back for Montreal but she’ll be happy with that goal.
Vancouver got their second in added time before the half when right winger Lisa Perchersky curled a sublime shot into the far top corner. The Rise protected the lead in the second half but pressed for more and could have scored two or three more. By the final ten minutes both teams were running out of gas and the Rise managed the match to a satisfying conclusion, winning 2-1 and climbing to second.
The Rise have nailed this moment in time I think. They seem to be outdrawing Vancouver FC, the Canadian Premier League team who play up the road in Langley. The atmosphere is marvellous and the conversation in the stands, especially between the young women and girls who are dressed in their own club shirts, is about WOMEN’S football specifically. The girls behind us were comparing their own style of play to Alex Morgan, and then finishing the conversation with “but she’s American, so whatever…”
Walking around at half-time, I had the persistent thought in my head, which many of us involved in women’s football have, said in a sarcastic and mocking tone “BuT NoOnE WAtChes WoMEn’S FooTBalL!” which is the objection raised against the sport. Truly, if you head out to Langley to watch Vancouver FC, they are drawing about half of what the Rise is drawing. There are lots of reasons why, having to do with Vancouver FC’s general incompetence in developing support for their club at the moment, but the Rise are still averaging more people at their matches (4296, which included 16,000 at their home opener at BC Place, to be fair) than the CPL average (4049). In fact only one CPL club has outdrawn the Rise on average.
The point is, people DO watch women’s football, and it’s not always the same people that watch men’s football. The Rise are doing great. Long may they continue to, well, rise.
Me in my Grimsby Town shirt in 2016, wearing it in support of the team in advance of their successful playoff promotion back to the Football League that year.
Back in 2015 I started an accidental and unlikely friendship with the supporters of Grimsby Town FC. Grimsby is a small fishing town on the north east coast of Lincolnshire, on the estuary of the Humber River. Their football team was founded in 1878 and is one of the oldest in the world. They have had a full history of ups and downs, have played at every one of the top five levels of football in England, and have a modest trophy haul, including divisional championships and playoff promotions and two Football League Cup wins, the second most important cup in English football.
Of all of those matches played over a century and a half few were as big as last night’s. Grimsby Town were drawn at home against Manchester United in the League Cup. It was a classic David v Goliath set up. Town is settled mid table in the fourth division (League 2) and Manchester United, despite horrific form in the last couple of years, are who they are, one of the most valuable global sports businesses, with a legendary history and a near permanent (but not absolute!) lock on Premier League and European football.
Last night was a match for the ages. The struggling visitors went down 2-0 on a couple of well worked, if a little lucky, goals from a hugely motivated home side, who were playing in front of some of the most diehard supporters in lower league English football. The only question in the second half was whether Town had the legs to sustain what was certainly going to be an onslaught from the billionaires from Manchester. Withstood it they did, but it cost them two goals, and when the referee blew for full time after 98 torrid minutes, much of which was played in a monsoon, the two sides remained drawn.
That meant penalties. The first five penalties for both sides were near perfect, but Town missed their third, requiring their keeper Christy Pym to come up with a spot of magic or risk going out. Pym saved United’s fifth penalty and the context continued. Every kick was scored from then out, including both keepers scoring on each other and it wasn’t until they started into the second round off penalties that united’s Bryan Mbeuno hit the cross bar and sent the supporters into giant-killing heaven.
Having been on the winning end of a historic giant killing myself, I LOVE watching these things happen, something which is unique to football in general in which clubs from different levels of the pyramid play each other in Cup matches. For supporters it is an indescribable moment. The tension builds and builds, especially if you are defending a lead. Going to penalties makes it worse. But the relief and joy and pride that is released after the victory, and the subsequent sinking in of the magnitude of the occasion makes it a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
This is why we follow our teams, especially the ones we have a real stake in. It is for the drama and community and the emotional roller coaster ride that passion takes you upon. I’m so happy for my Grimsby Town friends. I know what they are feeling today – the glow of something truly special still lingering in their hearts, stunned smiles pasted across their faces. A lifetime of suffering through cold nights and desperate relegations and crappy ownership and a glory era that ended 90 years ago – all of that gone by the wayside this morning, traded for a feeling that you will never know except by experiencing it.
What is going on? My friend Alison shared this story on Mastodon with this intro “Fake news features about things that didn’t happen in places that don’t exist written by people who don’t exist is pretty much what we expect from AI journalism.” Read on about the elusive Margaux Blanchard.”
Dave Pollard shares a thoughtful post on the intelligence of crowds, in which he explores both the wisdom and the incoherence of large groups of people and asks good questions about the characteristics of a crowd that contribute to it’s thoughtfulness in acting. It makes me think of the “intelligence” of crowds, as in the emergent property that creates a set of constraints that directs action in certain ways. This seem to co-arise with the emergence of the quality of a a collection of people that makes it a “group” or a “mob” or an “assembly.” There is intention behind those words – we want a team and not a gang – and it’s worth asking the question how do we create coherence that guides the emergence of the form and intelligence we want froths group, without the pitfalls of too much coherence so that what alos emerges is a cult. This is something I’mexploring in the container book I’mchipping away at.
Back in 2018 a Whitecaps Academy grad and former WFC2 player, Patrick Metcalfe joined TSS Rovers for the season. He appeared in 10 games as a defensive midfielder and helped us on to winning our first piece of silverware as a club, the Juan de Fuca Plate. Following that season he signed a professional contract with the Vancouver Whitecaps where he made 20 appearances in 2020 and 2021. The Whitecaps cut him after 2022 and he went to Norway where he found a job with Staebek and helped them get promoted to the Eliteserien. He was cut again at the end of that year and signed on with Fredrikstadt, who were in the second division. Again he helped a club to promotion and after a great 2023, the club did well in their first season in the top flight and won the Norwegian Cup, meaning they qualified for European play in the Conference League. Patrick played 70 matches over those two seasons and had his contract renewed in March just before the season started. Today he started for Fredrikstad against English FA Cup winners Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park and played the whole match in a defensive masterclass that held the Premier League team to a 1-0 win in the first leg of their two-leg qualification tie.
Patty’s is one of those players, like our former defender Joel Waterman – who just got transferred to Chicago Fire in MLS – who make their own way in the world of professional football. They travel to find a place they are wanted, where they can make a contribution. They know their talent alone is not enough to keep them in the professional game, and so they work hard, stay true to themselves, and give as much as they can wherever the end up. In as much as it’s great to have the flamboyant heroes of the pro game for younger players to look up to, I’m always lifting up the likes of Metcalfe and Waterman and Tynan and Friesen and Haynes, all players who have stopped in with out little club, the TSS Rovers, and seen it as the step they needed on their own journey. When they come through us though, they pick us up as well, so that even 7 years later a small group of people in Vancouver are watching a far flung European tie and can’t take their eyes of the number 11 from the Norwegian underdog.