According to this article, the owners are in debt to the league, the team forfeited its game last Saturday, and the coach + 8 players left the team on Monday. League decision is expected later today. http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/Stories/0,1413,106~4999~1403381,00.html Frankly, I am surprised this team still exists at all after their miserable debut season last year, but it'll be sad if they fold.
Jeez, I live in New England, about 15 miles from Fitchburg and about 25 from Worcester (pronounced "Wista"), and I have never heard of this team. I thought the closedt D3 clubs were the New Hampshire Phantoms, Rhode Island Stingrays and Western Mass (Chicopee) Pioneers. Maybe the fact that the players and their families are probably the only ones who know the team exists could be part of the problem... Tom
They are PDL, an amateur league for college players, etc - one notch below D3 (which is actually now called the "Pro Select League"). The Phantoms and Pioneers still play pro ball but the Stingrays are now in the PDL as well.
If you can't raise $5000, you have no business running a company. There are various ways this is possible, wow. Got to feel bad for the players, they need this to stay in shape for college ball in the fall. Any idea if they could play for Cape Cod, RI, etc?
And I thought it was somewhere in the middle : "woostah". In other news, there is a Chicago(?)-based amateur side called Wisla which is pronounced veece-lah.
Well, I was going to say that, over the past year, I've spent 12-15 days in Worcester visiting friends, and this is the first I'd heard of it, too. And the friends are soccer fans, too.
It may very well be an homage or a derivative of the same club, given Chicago's ample Polish population.
I think the response is "What took so long?" They have no attendance, as you can guess since no one knows they exist. They have no sponsors, and no front office to speak of.
Yeah, but it's the PDL. You should be able to scrape by longer than a week and a half in the PDL that way. Heck, I know at least one A-League team that has managed to operate this way for several years.
We know at least two teams in the A-league. Wusstah had trouble last season. Did I ever tell you about the game where the owner's daughter threw a coke out the pressbox window? No one got splashed, only because there was no one there.
Worcester has problems, but they're not folding. And they've have some pretty good players--I'm not sure where that 8 player "fact" comes from. Come check them out in Fitchburg!
Worcester saves soccer season http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com/Stories/0,1413,106~4999~1405770,00.html I don't know if you were questioning the "facts" in my original post about the 8 players, gorilla, but I simply got it from the article I linked. Articles have been known to be wrong, of course, so I hope you're right. The above follow-up makes no mention of the 8 players.
SueB, I was questioning the validity of that aspect of the article. One might expect a reporter to verify the statement that 8 players were leaving by getting their names and doing some cross-checking. You were clear that your source of information was the article.
i think its also a disgrace that they failed to notify brooklyn until the day of the game that they were not going to make the trip for the game. i heard they did so via fax. no phone calls, no nothing. i can't imagine the game isnt a forfeit, although on the USL website it's listed as "postponed." im not privy to league rule, but surely you can't cancel a trip via fax on game day! PS, in their "return" Worcester lost to Albany, 2-1 tonight.
The league really frowns on forfeits because it puts the home team in a real bind and makes it hard to sell the league as anything but a bush-league setup. A few years back, Central Jersey skipped their final trip of the season - to Albany and Vermont. The games were "meaningless" in the standings, as Jersey had already clinched a playoff berth. However, the league docked points from the Riptide for that stunt and they ended up being replaced by Brooklyn in the playoffs. After the season, the franchise was actually stripped from the Riptide ownership. They reapplied for a franchise and played the following season, as a "provisional" team, but they didn't make it and folded after the season. I have to say I can't see Worcester returning next year if they had to forfeit one of the first games of the season.
The Atlanta Ruckus did the day before an A-League game a few years back (they had a big rigamarole stripping that guy of his franchise). They faxed the other team (I forget who it was...Long Island maybe) that they weren't coming. The other team said "Fine. We've sold tickets to a game. We're going to have a game." And they rounded up like 15 guys from a local league and called them the Atlanta Ruckus (no one in Long Island was going to know the difference) and they played. You might be able to make a case for fraud on that one, and at least get ticked off if you spent money to see an A-League match and saw a glorified scrimmage, but I don't think too many people saw it or cared.
1998, if memory serves. The Ruckus went from being the Ruckus to being A-League Atlanta as the league finally forced the owner out after that debacle and took over. The Silverbacks rose from the ashes of that one.
That's what I thought, the year of the Storm. Our owner fired the soccer staff at the beginning of the season and let the baseball team ruin it after that.
And in 2000, folded the whole nut a few weeks (if that) out from the season. Screwed things up royally.
I remember the day I heard the news. Some players had already gotten apartments, and were left in the lurch. He was a real jackass. baseball and soccer don't mix