We have come to the end of a historic year for our TSS Rovers and as we lean into 2024, we Swanguardians been having a bit of a chat on our What’s App about the moments that stood out for many of us during the last year. From our history making defeat of Valour on April 19 to an absolute gut shot of a loss on July 22, we charted a short season of incredible ups and downs for our club. History will remember the official record of events, but here are some of the little things that we’ll never forget.
The Voyageurs Cup Run Part 1: April 19, 2023 vs Valour at Home
April 19, 2023, is forever immortalized by Maddy Mah’s photo of Matteo Polisi leaping into our section after scoring the third goal in our 3-1 rout of Valour. In that moment, the section became a pile of beer, tears, joy, smoke and nearly a catastrophic collapse of drums and railings. Sheer and utter chaos. That night was special for many reason, not the least of which was that many different supporters groups around the Lower Mainland joined us, including members of the Southsiders, the Southsisters, The Rain City Brigade, Vancouver Albion, and the Fraser Valley Fanatics. Jason Amond and his family came from Victoria representing the Lake Side Buoys and brought a case of Phillips beer to our tailgate. A new tradition was born that night, for supporters of all stripes to get behind the League 1 representative in the Voyageurs Cup, especially when the opposition is from out of province.
One of our favourite stories was the story of Ryan Lindsay and Stephen Mosher, both hired to take on the role of technical analysts by our club last year. Ryan, who lives in Winnipeg, appeared out of the blue in 2022, liking a tweet about our share sale and through that contact, offered his services to the team as he was trying to get more experience in the field. Little did he know that he and Steven would be stringing together technical solutions and tactical analysis from dodgy Air BnB’s in Vancouver, jammed together in a tiny closet with a too small bed, with janky internet, and trying to figure out how to get a professional set up thrown together in time for the biggest game of our lives. Heh. It worked. And like Matteo Polisi, Ryan had been passed over by Valour before the season began. Justice was served.
Part 2: May 10, 2023 vs Pacific Away.
Away days are some of the best times you can have as a supporter. On May 10 we mustered in Tsawwassen to travel together to Victoria for our quarter-final match up against Pacific. We unfurled our pirate flag on the way through Active Pass, but not without some of us worrying if we were violating some kind of marine law. Nevertheless, a beautiful sunny day transitioned into a gorgeous night for football and we arrived at Starlight Stadium to be welcomed by our frenemies, the Lake Side Buoys who were kind enough to welcome us to their tailgate, but the tension was in the air. We set up below the box that was given to our owners and through we were a few dozen strong, we sang like an army and sang and sang all night. We sang through the first half, sang through the half time even as small children wandered into our section to test out their new swear words. We sang through Josh Heard’s shocking cheating dive and we sang through the press and ferocious attempts to level the score. And we kept singing. During Will Cromack’s post-game interview, with lager in hand and flogging Matteo Polisi’s talents, you could still hear us singing Bohemian Rhapsody.
The Voyageur’s Cup run was utter magic, and we made history. We immortalized the journey in song with a new version of Stan Roger’s classic Barrett’s Privateers called Willie’s Privateers, and long may it be sung.
The Regular season:
Nautsa’mawt
Our first opponents of 2023 were Nautsa’mawt FC, Canada’s first Indigenous owned team. While their tenure in our league would be short, it was an honour to play host to their first ever match, and it was sweet to have our old friends from Oregon, the Red Aces in the house with us that day. An even bigger honour was the return leg against them when we took six points off them at “The Library” up at UBC. Both our teams were fierce that day, and the late season results, especially on the women’s side helped keep the play-off push alive. During that match Sofia Farremo lost a tooth in the heat of battle and our ever diligent gaffer Chelsey Hannesson managed to retrieve it from the pitch. Sofia was rushed to teammate Megan Soo’s parent’s dental surgery and the tooth was repaired. The talisman was honoured by the women’s team toasting “#ForTheTooth” to drive on their efforts to secure a play off space.
Altitude
This is becoming a fun derby and a fierce one. They are trying, and though they don’t quite have the supporter culture yet, they do parade their banners to a jolly crew of Swanguardians singing “Corporate flag, corporate flag corporate flag…” and occasionally they pop of small canisters of smoke. No doubt they will come along. They did beat us on one front this year: getting their beer sponsor to create their own ale. We took revenge during the away fixture by drinking every last can of it. At some point in the middle of the second match an announcement came over the PA “Ladies and gentlemen, we have to close the beer tent as the Swanguardians have drunk all the beer.” That, a 0-0 and 4-0 result at home and a boatload of goals in a 3-2 and 5-1 result away including braces from Delana Friesen and Kian Proctor and an absolute worldie from Kyle Jones left us charging back over the Second Narrows Bridge as the undisputed winners of the 2023 Ironworkers Derby.
Rivers
This year we welcomed another nascent supporters group into the fold from Rivers FC. Jacob Burnley knows a thing or two about supporter culture, having lived in Victoria and supported Pacific. And when he took a job in Kamloops he brought active and visual support to Rivers FC. It wasn’t until he made a one person stand in the north end at Swangard that his players really finally recognized what he was doing and by the time a small group of us travelled to Kamloops a few weeks later, there was a veritable supporter’s section in place at MacArthur Park. They had every right to be loud and proud that day as their women’s team notched their first win against us with a late goal but our men’s team cleaned them out. We swallowed our pride and went out for pints with Jacob afterwards. That away trip to Kamloops was also notable for the fact that Delana Friesen’s parents bought all the half time beers for the travelling support and for that we will be truly grateful. At our club supporter culture ties together fans, owners, coaches, family, friends and players. Proper club, innit?
Harbourside
We were looking forward to this trip, and it did not disappoint! Harbourside joined the league in 2023 and became instant favourites of ours. They have beautiful kits and really good community support. A dozen or so of us showed up in Nanaimo on match day and Harbourside invited us on to the pitch at the beginning of the women’s match to honour the contribution we had made to supporter culture in BC and in League 1. None of us could ever remember a club doing that for their rival supporters but it puts into perspective what the League 1 project is all about. Enemies for 180 minutes, but pulling together to make this thing work off the pitch. This is a terrific away fixture and will certainly be the first one circled on the calendar every year.
Unity
Two traditions now seem inevitable. We face Unity during Pride month and display rainbow coloured smoke at Chase Field, and we take six points off them on their field. Another side that has potential for support but utter silence on the other side. Shh. We’re playing Unity. No need to shout. Those results avenged an early season 4-0 loss at Swangard on the women’s side although we beat their men’s team 4-0. That night was especially poignant as our talisman Devin O’Hea had tragically lost his mother just days before. After the men’s team match, the team posed with us in a gesture of support to Devin.
Whitecaps FC
So many of our players have played for the Whitecaps Academies over the years that there is bite in the fight every time we face them. This year was especially hard to watch as Nik White, one of our stalwarts from the 2022 Cup Champions signed on to play for the Whitecaps. We would face the Whitecaps three times this year, once at home, once away and once in the Playoffs. We had a really hard time with these teams this year, but Kyara Armenta’s game winner at Ken Woods Field backstopped by Camelia Xu’s standout performance in net secured one of the feel good performances of the summer. Going to Ken Woods is always fun. We have a tradition of serving chacuterie in our little section and taunting the Whitecaps player’s parents who watch the games for free on the other side of the pitch while we dilligently pay our admission and get constantly micromanaged by “security” in return. It’s a bougie and exclusive venue, holding only a select few dozen, several hundred short of the League minimum standard for League 1 grounds. And so we honour it with charcuterie in the afternoon and polite taunts of the Whitecaps parents who probably feel that the thousands they have already paid to the club should at least get them a ticket to the match. Ah well.
Highlanders
It is hard to write about the final matches of the season. Victoria away for the men was a simple job: win or draw and we win the league and regain our Voyageurs Cup place. You could watch football for a thousand years and never witness what we witnessed in the final few minutes of that game as the Highlanders scored two goals in added time to top us. And while that was bad, the unpleasantness of that trip was amplified by a dickish Highlanders mascot who was allowed to roam freely in our section stealing people’s hats and being a complete ass. There is a fine line, and probably the oxygen depravation inside a corporate furry outfit blurs the judgement a bit about where that line is. But we cannot let the disappointment of the men’s result take away what the women accomplished that afternoon. Needing a win to qualify for the playoffs, it was a tight affair and settled only by Maddy Mah who put the entire season on her back, weaved through four defenders, pulling what can only be described as a “Barry Sanders” move and scored the only goal of the game. Centennial Stadium will always be a place of heartbreak for us, but it’s also where Maddy Mah’s incredible season came to a point. Football.
Support for the community
Being a supporter group who cherishes a world of equity and justice gives us a platform to raise money in support of causes we believe in. This year we participated in a fundraising effort to enable young people and their families to attend Rovers games including the Voyageurs Cup match. We also raised money to enable young players and their families from Hope and Health to attend Nautsa’mawt’s first ever match in League 1 which was against us at Swangard.
And during the month of June, we once again participated in PrideRaiser, a North America-wide fundraising for local LGBTQ+ organizations. As we did last year, we threw our support behind Rainbow Refugee and $4722 was raised from donors and a matching partner from the Rovers Community Giving Fund. This was the first year the club’s philanthropic arm partnered with us. We had a great time welcoming staff from Rainbow Refugee to our June 3 match against Rivers. This annual effort means a lot to us and we will likely participate again in 2024.
Support for our players
We’re a raggedy bunch but we are deadly serious about supporting our players. Not everyone who plays for us has experienced supporter culture, but it doesn’t take long for them to get what we are about. We treasure our post-game celebrations and commiserations, and we love it when players come and drum with us and hang out in the section. This year we chose Delana Frisen and Ivan Mejia as our supporters players of the year which is a honour we bestow partly on the basis of the relationships we have developed with our players. And it extends off the pitch as well. This year when some of our players lost items in a dressing room break-in, we raised money to replaced the stolen items. We sent our love and commiserations to Devin with a signed scarf when his mother died and when Fugo Segawa suffered a broken leg in the fall playing for BB5 in the VMSL, we gathered signatures on a scarf for him too.
We stick with them, these young folks that pull on our shirt. This year Reese Moffat, Delana Friesen, Ivan Mejia, Anthony White and Matteo Polisi all signed pro contracts and as much as we hate to lose them, the reason we are here is to give these players the visibility and support they need to take the next step in their dreams.
2023 was an incredible year, more than we could have ever dreamed. It’s hard to think what could possibly top it in 2024, but we know for certain that there is no guessing what magic will happen in the south end of Swangard, what stories will unfold, what hi jinks will occur. Our season is short, and we squeeze every ounce of life and fun out of it.
Happy New Year. See you at Swangard in April!
