It has been 45 years since the Toronto Maple Leafs last won the Stanley Cup and yet they fill the nearly 20,000 seat Air Canada Centre on a nightly bases despite absurdly high ticket prices. The Maple Leafs support base makes up only a small fraction of Canada's population but they still shell out the cash to come to the games and tune in every Saturday night for Hockey Night in Canada. If the Canadian population as a whole requires a team to be successful before they are willing to support it, how are the Maple Leafs still so strongly supported?
Many Leaf fans will answer that question I just asked with one word: history. Yes, the Toronto Maple Leafs are a team with a history that many professional sports teams would be jealous of. But that is in the past now. No one is left who can remember the days of the Original Six and few can recall their last Stanley Cup. The argument for history as a means to maintain support despite recent success falls apart when one takes a look at another Toronto sports franchise, the Blue Jays. In the early 90s the Blue Jays were the best team in the MLB winning back-to-back World Series and boosting one of the best lineups in the league. But now, only 20 years later, not even 20,000 fans can be found at Rogers Centre where in 1993 50,000 celebrated Joe Carter's World Series winning walk off home run. The Blue Jays trophy draught is about half as long as the Maple Leafs and are currently rebuilding as well, but why does one continue to sell tickets well the other plays in front of empty stands?
Now the men's national team may not have ever been the best team in the world but only 10 years ago they were crowned CONCACAF champions and are competitive in the Gold Cup each time around. In my opinion, that counts as more success than the Maple Leafs have had in recent history. On top of that, the market for the national team is over 30 million while the Leafs have a support base of maybe 5 million. Hockey is more popular in Canada than soccer as our national sport, but soccer is growing rapidly and quickly catching up so when will the fans start turning out.
I have taken a look at how a team still manages to garner support despite a lack of success, now I will look at how increased support lead to better results with the example of the Canadian Olympic team at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
With the Winter Olympics on home soil in 2010, Canadian's turned out in droves to sport our national athletes in sports such as cross country skiing, ski jumping, and bobsled. For a month, these lowly sports that few ever paid attention to came into the spotlight of the sports world and ignited Canadian patriotism. With the home crowd behind them, Canadian athletes put on a show for the ages. Canada's 14 gold medals was double the previous best (7) and was the highest total amongst all participating nations.
On this occasion, it was the support of the home crowds that drove our Olympic athletes to success and it was a sense of patriotism that brought out the support. Millions of Canadians cheered on athletes they had never heard of in sports they had no prior interest in because they loved their nation. But why doesn't this patriotism bring out the supporters for of national soccer team, a sport that is far more popular than bobsledding or cross country skiing? Our players have expressed their feelings about playing in empty or hostile stadiums even when they are at home, so image the how they would feel if they got the same support as our Olympic athletes? If the support of a nation drove our Olympians to glory, can it not do the same for our soccer teams? Our support could be all it takes to propelling our men's soccer team to the biggest stage in the world, the 2014 World Cup.
The example of the Toronto Maple Leafs shows that Canadians don't always follow the opinion that a team must experience success before we will come out and support them. The success of the Canadian Olympic team at the 2010 Vancouver Olympic shows that the support of a nation can propel a team to success. So if Canadian soccer fans are waiting for results on the field before they fill the stands and show their support, maybe it is their turn to do their part in creating a tradition of success by taking a page out of their own book and showing their patriotic support.
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