Man it would've been nice to have you guys at the conference, it would've been awesome to see some scarfs raised. Anyways, my question or observation is, With the entrant to the MLS, would the Southsiders step up and create a more organized supporters club. I also think the southsiders website should be updated or revamped. Just wonder what Southsiders have planned for the big leagues! Cheers!!!
I can hopefully speak to this as one of the groups liasons to the club along with Johnny Monster. The Southsiders are, and remain, a group of guys that have made acquaintences as Swangard in the southside. We are a very loose fluid and dynamic group of guys that actively support the team on and off the pitch. we have no formal arrangements as far as group leadership, we are not a "club" per se. we have a message board and all generally meet up before the games for a little tailgate bevvy and we'll generally meet up three times or so during the off season for pub nights etc The official count of how many of us again is fluid. Perhaps 30-50 guys that are actually present on a regualr basis at the messageboards and as season tix holders. However the SS swells to a couple hundred or more for the matches. Do we want to be more organized? Perhaps, but we don't want to take ourselves to seriously either. Look, fact is most of us use this attending the matches etc as a release from the daily grind and rat race of jobs and families. It is our chance to break free and be a kid again for a few hours a week during the season. We are failrly organized though. We meet with the club's ops and ticketing folks on a regular basis to put in our input, our reactions to marketing stuff, game day ops etc. We have a fantastic working arrangement with the club in general and we will be growing in status and size from here on out, which may or may not require us to get more "Organized" depending on your definition of that word. We are happy to have more guys and gals to the games and hence our name, everyone knows how to find us.
as far as what we have planned, wow... two years is a long ways away. We have been more and more active in our tifo and winding up of the opposition players and specifically the keepers for some time now. I guess with the growth of our group more things will spawn from that.
I just visited the board. Funny enough there are two relevant threads relating to this. One is where you guys are talking about them needing a moderator here. One guy mentions he'd like to do it but he finds the moderators on BS to be a little sensitive. Kind of funny when you consider I've been a member of this board for 10 years next month and I've never been banned here nor have I even received a yellow card (that I can remember). Yet on the Southsiders board it took less than a few years after I gave up control of the discussion board and official website to get banned...numerous times! Second relevant thread is the vote you are taking on whether to warn the trolls from Toronto before banning them, or banning them outright. Trolls with no purpose but to cause trouble are being given a chance for a warning before being banned but real contributors get banned? Too funny!
There was three of us, myself included that crashed the press conference. We were happy to be there and decided to would be better to not bring attention too ourselves. Later that night the whitecaps threw a party downtown and the southsiders got a bit rowdy there.