The Rummies are still the team to beat in the St. Albert Men’s Soccer League, even after a two-year absence from the pitch.
Sunday’s 11-1 throttling of Crossfire was the fifth win by the undefeated Rummies to kick off the season.
“We’ve looked pretty good so far,” said striker Brian van Essen. “We’ve got new guys and old guys and everyone has gelled together. It’s been awesome.”
The last match for the Rummies before their hiatus was the 4-0 loss to Summit FC for the 2009 playoff cup. It was the 17th straight appearance in the final by the most despised and decorated team in the league’s 32-year-old history as winners of an unprecedented 13 playoff cups and 11 provincial medals.
“We still have probably 15, 16 of the core group from a couple of years back and we added four or five real strong additions so we look as strong as ever,” said player/coach Rob Furlong. “It gives us an advantage having that core group of guys. Everyone knows where each other play. We’ve had a couple of games where we needed some guys to fill in somewhere else because somebody is missing and everyone has done that really well.”
The majority of the players competed at a high level before the Rummies got back together.
“For a couple of years guys just did their own thing. We had guys playing premier league and first and second division in Edmonton. Some guys took a couple years off and a bunch of other guys moved on to play major league masters with the Impact team,” Furlong said. “It’s really been an easy transition and the pieces kind of fell into place.”
At the end of last winter a meeting was held to see how many Rummies would return to the fold.
“We wanted to see what we would look like if we were going to start up again and all the guys put the commitment forward,” said van Essen, who played for the Impact masters the last two years. “The St. Albert league is good and you can’t beat playing soccer here [at Riel Park] on Sunday afternoons.”
So far the Rummies have exceeded their own expectations.
“We weren’t sure how we would do because some of the older guys came back and it’s a young guys league,” said van Essen, the oldest Rummie at age 37. “We just want to have some fun and compete and try and win the league.”
The top two finishers in the regular season qualify for the Tier IV provincials in September.
“We haven’t won the league yet so there is no use thinking that far ahead. We’ll worry about winning the league and then we’ll give it a go at provincials,” Furlong said.
The Rummies wasted no time racking up the goals against Crossfire. Vinny Segreto started the offensive onslaught at the eight-minute mark. At halftime it was 6-0 as Rummies’ keeper Ivan Filo was barely tested.
Van Essen finished with three goals.
“Today we came out against a group of friends who don’t probably take it as seriously as we do. We have a little more commitment. Unfortunately it’s like that but you try and have fun out there,” said van Essen, a multiple winner of the Golden Boot award as the league’s top scorer during stints with Chester City and the Rummies.
The Rummies are back on the pitch Sunday against the defending champion Blues FC. Kickoff is 11 a.m. at Riel Park.
In their inaugural season the Blues edged St. Albert United 2-1 for the playoff cup.
