Excitement building for Halifax’s professional soccer team
Posted Jan 27, 2019 07:00:00 PM.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Halifax's first professional soccer team is just a few months away from kicking off its first season, and are well underway for a successful future.
The Halifax Wanderers join seven other teams across Canada to play in the new Canadian Premiere League, and will make its home at Halifax's Wanderers Grounds downtown.
“We've gone through a lot to get to this stage,” said president of Sports and Entertainment Atlantic Derek Martin.
The “iconic” sports field was renovated last year after efforts made by Martin, who had hoped to bring international rugby to Halifax. He brought the idea to city council, and was approved to build a temporary stadium for a match between the US and Canada Men's rugby teams.
The “modular” stadium model seen at the rugby matches will be a staple at Wanderers' says Sports and Entertainment Atlantic (SEA) president Martin. For HFX Wanderers' games, a 6,000 seat stadium will be built temporarily.
“We took an approach that we felt was reasonable, that was manageable, that we could do without going and asking for taxpayers money,” he said of the stadium.
He says close to 3,000 season's tickets have already been sold.
“We're in a good spot right now. We've got a great fan base that's already started supporting us, we're going to have a stadium that I believe is the right size for our city,” he told NEWS 95.7's Todd Veinotte.
He suspects that support will only continue to grow as redevelopment downtown continues.
“There is an influx of people that are moving into the urban core that are now looking for things to do,” he explained.
Martin is confident that the HFX Wanderers and SEA are going to impress soccer fans in Halifax, and he's excited to see its popularity will grow.
“The players that fans are going to watch when they go to the Wanderers Grounds are going to be amazing and highly above anything that they've ever seen before, and I think this league will grow as we continue over the next few years,” he said.
Martin says so far, the team has signed a number of players, and expects to release the jersey design, full season schedule and full roster within the coming weeks.
More information about the team can be found online.
