An Interview with Barton Street Battalion

Barton Street Battalion are an independent supporters' group that was founded with the purpose of supporting of the Hamilton Professional Soccer team that will be a part of the newly unveiled Canadian Premier League. Barton Street Battalion forms part of a group of enthusiastic fans welcoming a new era of footy into Canada. A big thanks to the group's President, James Hutton, for the insights!

Image Courtesy: Barton Street Battalion.

Q: Tell us a little bit about your organization and the inspiration behind its start.

R: The Battalion began as Hamilton based Toronto FC fans who would meet up to watch away days. When rumours were circulating about a pro team coming to Hamilton we unanimously agreed we'd support it over TFC. We picked a name, a logo and began meeting with the Ticats regularly. There was strong excitement around the project and we soon got our own supporters scarf - my first order of 50 scarves sold within four days! That's when I felt we were really making headway - impatience, ambition and the right group of people to make it happen.

Q: With the work you're doing in Hamilton, walk us through some of the elements of the game that you've seen grow the most in the Hamilton Region? 

R: I've always felt that Hamilton harbours a strong soccer community. I've been to bars all over the city to take in Auld Firm games, World Cup games, Canada games, but what I've noticed is that Hamilton already shows its soccer fandom. The women's friendly between Canada and England sold out, over 15,000 people consistently showed up for Canadian PANAM games, and when Portugal won the Euro Cup in 2016, local authorities had to close off one of Hamilton's busiest roads for the Portuguese community to celebrate in the streets. To me it's clear Hamiltonians care about soccer whether it's domestic or international, and a local team will only add to that passion.

Q: The Canadian Premier League has finally been announced! It's very exciting news for footy fans in Canada. What does this mean for Hamilton?

R: What. A. Weekend.

Everyone knew it was going to be a big few days and it has people and press talking about the league across the country - keep in mind only two cities are official and there hasn't even been a press conference! For Hamilton, this means we're finally going to get what we've been waiting for. A professional team to support that also provides Canadians local to Hamilton and across the country a chance to develop into Canadian national team players.

Q: How about on a national level? Where do you see #CanPL taking soccer to in Canada? What things can we expect from this new era?

R: The league addresses a huge hole in the player pathway. I recently listened to a podcast with Jason De Vos, Canada's Director of Development but also one of Canada's All Time Greatest Starting XI. In De Vos' playing career he had to make the jump to Europe four separate times in order to get proper development, all because there wasn't a league to support him here. It's simply not realistic to expect our players to go through what Jason had to. A local solution to a national problem, that's what the Canadian Premier League is - and we should expect a better generation of Canadian soccer players for it.

Q: While the #CanPL announcement is a great start, there's still a lot of work to be done before summer 2018. What do we need to do to get the league off to a great start?

R: Hype hype hype hype hype!! For too long soccer has been on the back burner of local and national media stations. Supporters groups have been excellent in getting featured in newspapers and other outlets to show those neutral or new to soccer that this is a project worth getting excited about. At the Battalion we're going to be all we can so that by the time the Ticats invite us to the big press conference we'll be ready in numbers and in black and gold.

Everyone in this country has been involved in soccer in some way - coaching, playing, watching. This is the world's game and it's time for soccer fans in this country to rise up and say it's Canada's game too.

Be sure to follow Barton Street Batallion on Twitter & Facebook.

Update: James has moved on from being the President of the group, and is now part of the awesome team at Hamilton’s own Canadian Premier League Team Forge FC