The Halifax Tides are just days away from their first ever home opener.
The team - which is part of Canada’s first women’s professional soccer league, the Northern Super League (NSL) - will play at Halifax’s Wanderer Grounds on Saturday.
With big crowds at games in Vancouver and Toronto, league founder Diana Matheson says it has been a good first week for the NSL.
“I can tell you the players, the fans, the broadcasts, the atmosphere, I couldn’t have dreamed of anything better. It’s been fantastic so far and I can’t wait to bring it to Halifax,” she said.
“I think the Atlantic Canada fans are going to bring it to the next level.”
Top players from other leagues around the world have returned to Canada to play. One of the things Matheson says she is most proud of is the people in the NSL.
“The people we’ve attracted to this project that are running the clubs, that are working for the league, coaches and players and other talent that work in women’s sport that have, you know, uprooted their lives,” she said.
“They’ve moved to a new city; they’ve left existing jobs with leagues and clubs to take a risk on a brand-new league that maybe they didn’t even know that much about. They signed for teams that maybe didn’t have coaches yet, or they didn’t know who their teammates were going to be, but they understood that we’re doing something big here in Canada. We’re building a league by former players, for players.”
Even though the league is in its first year, Matheson says NSL is one of the top five women’s professional soccer leagues in the world.
“That’s just a start. Then we got to get in the top three,” she said.
“We’ve been hearing from the beginning, (the players are) so impressed with the professional standards from day one of a brand-new women’s professional soccer league. We’re a league that has to compete against women’s professional leagues all over the world. We have to attract talent in. So, we’ve got a player group that is full of seasoned professionals.”
Matheson played professional soccer in Norway and the United States and says it would have been special to lace up her cleats in the new league, but she’s happy for the younger players.
“I actually had a former teammate, Melanie Booth, who also grew up in Burlington out here near me, played for the national team. She wore a hoodie that said, ‘born too soon’ to play in this women’s professional soccer league. But then she had her daughter, who had a hoodie as well, that just said ‘future NSL player.’ So, it wasn’t meant to be for us, but we’ve got it ready for the next gen.”
As the league’s chief growth officer, Matheson says she has big plans for the NSL.
“The six teams is a start, so we’ll be adding two teams in the future. We’re looking at the 2027 season right now. We’re looking at opportunities to grow this league and our international partnerships. That’s the beauty of soccer,” she said.
“It’s a global game, so we’re going to build our relationship with the U.S. League, the NWSL, and the Mexican Women’s League as well, Liga MX Femenil. We’re so aligned on building the women’s game in our region, which is something we’re really looking forward to.”
Infrastructure will also be a key focus for Matheson moving forward.
“We have a massive gap in Canada when it comes to soccer specific infrastructure,” said Matheson.
“So, there’s simply not enough places to play. So anywhere we can go in existing markets, I know that it’s an ongoing conversation in Halifax to get that permanent stadium over the line, that’s conversations we’re going to be having in other markets as well and for expansion markets too. We’re going to go to the cities that are going to help us build.”
Matheson says Canada has one of the largest player pools in the world and there is a hunger to be the best in women’s soccer.
“Now that we have these professional pathways coast-to-coast, and we’ll add more so we have more professional pathways in more cities across this country to develop more players for our national team, so we cannot just win Olympic medals, we can win World Cups as well,” she said.
“There’s just so many incredible building blocks here to do so. In addition to those players, sponsors are getting behind this product at world leading levels and our fan base too. We have a culture that supports girls and women in sport, that watches them on TV.”
The Halifax Tides will face the Calgary Wild Saturday night at 6 p.m. on TSN.
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