Going coast to coast

Terry Jones
Sunmedia.ca

MONCTON, N.B. — Until Thursday Ian Fowler wasn’t present to watch over the birth of a football franchise due to the death of his father.

But the visionary, who is credited for being the man who inspired the creation of Touchdown Atlantic — not to mention the largest Rolling Stones concert in history here at Magnetic Hill, another similar success with AC/DC, the acquisition of the 2006 Memorial Cup and 2010 IAAF World Junior Championships In Athletics – was able to see it all come to life here Thursday.

And he’ll be there today when CFL Commissioner Mark Cohon likely will bless a Touchdown Atlantic II here next year and a Touchdown Atlantic III in 2012 at a press gathering this afternoon.

With the Edmonton Eskimos and Toronto Argos experiencing a love-in and the streets blocked off and the Scotiabank Touchdown Atlantic party beginning Thursday night, it’s already been a happening here.

“One thing that’s surprised us has been the expressions of to what extent the rest of Canada appears to want us in the league, especially with the kind of participation from Edmonton and Calgary,” said Fowler.

“Hopefully when this is over we’ll want to be part of Canada that is built in with having a CFL team,” he said of making it a coast-to-coast league.

“I think you can already see that in nobody is complaining that Edmonton doesn’t have a great team this year and Toronto is winning ugly. It’s that we have Edmonton and Toronto here in a regular season CFL game.”

But what happens Monday?

What happens when the circus leaves town?

When do the Atlantic Schooners finally join the league?

Folwer says steady as she goes, mate.

“The baby has been born. But you have to learn how to walk before you run. There is still work to do in Atlantic Canada to demonstrate a franchise would be financially viable here. And the commissioner is quite clear he wants Ottawa up and operational before adding the 10th team. We’re taking the right tack with this, I think.

“I think we really surprised the CFL when we sold 20,000 tickets in 24 hours. But it’s a different business when it’s 10 home games. This is only one step. The intent was always to hold this more than one year. There’s lots of work ahead. But there’s also lots of optimism.

“If we look back to when we first approached the league in 2005 for the pre-season game they would eventually hold in Halifax, the reason we didn’t get it was that we didn’t have a suitable venue.

“But we were really impressed with the sincerity and up-front manner we were dealt with by the league. We knew there was an opportunity here.

“The opportunity came with the stadium. The stadium came with the three levels of government financing 10,000 permanent seats for the track event,” he said of the 20,500-seat venue with the addition of temporary endzone seating for Sunday’s game.

“When Cohon decided he wanted to do a regular season game we’d overcome our largest stumbling block.

“We look back now, with a wonderful festival underway, we’ve accomplished something. When we started we had no expectation it would become something this big.”

It really is Touchdown Atlantic not Touchdown Moncton.

“Everything we undertake here, from the Stones and AC/DC concert to the Memorial Cup and the world track event, is always with our geography and making it an Atlantic Canada event. We have a radius to draw from that no one else does,” said Fowler.

Moncton (pop. 125,000) is better placed than Halifax (pop. 370,000) to make that work because the Nova Scotia centre isn’t in the centre of anything, with the north Atlantic taking up 50% of the drawing area.

Moncton is 172 km to Charlottetown. Halifax is 356.

Moncton is 182 km from Fredericton. Halifax is 415.

Moncton is 152 km from Saint John. Halifax is 424.

And the two cities are two hours apart on the Trans Canada highway.

Moncton has the stadium, or at least half the stadium.

The goal is to create an East Coast version of the Saskatchewan Roughriders franchise.

But for now they have this. And this is one spectacular Touchdown.

“We need to do this again and again and then go get the stadium expansion financing and go get the ownership group.”

You need more than one Touchdown to win.