Changes Abound for Season Seven
2011-12 Season Starts Tonight!
Frank Perin — When the Croatian Indoor Soccer League of Hamilton kicks off it’s seventh season of play tonight, you may notice a few not-so-subtle changes — that is if you show up to the right venue.
The biggest difference in our Friday night’s will be that The Club at 200 Kenilworth, the building which housed all of our league meetings and after-parties, was sold and is now a karaoke bar.
With that source of the league’s revenue now obsolete, the Hamilton Croatia executive board took the opportunity to outsource our post-game shenanigans and agreed on a one-year sponsorship deal with Lotos Bar and Grill.
Lotos offers ten large-screen televisions, two pool tables, a ping-pong table, dart boards, food, drinks, music, and even sometimes live nightly entertainment. Like in the past six seasons, teams are encouraged to stop by every Friday and treat the place like we treated The Club — our own place to gang it!
All post-game festivities including the CISL Christmas party (on December 16th) and the year-end party will be hosted at Lotos, except of course the Hamilton Croatia stag at the Dom on December 2nd.
The second change is in regards to the playing venue. When the CISL began back in 2005 at Mountain Sports Complex, the place was perfect. But as the league grew in numbers we had to accommodate it with a move to Wentworth Arenas.
With teams beginning to grow wary of the drive to Ancaster every week it was decided that another move was in order — something a little closer to home.
Just minutes from Lotos and a relatively short drive for many patrons of the league, Players Paradise Sports Complex is a state-of-the-art indoor sports facility with the latest in turf technology giving you a true grass bounce while also helping to reduce injuries.
When the decision was made to move to the new facility, costs became a factor resulting in yet another change — two less teams. The 2008-09 regular season champs Slavonske Legende and last year’s version of Napredak (not to be confused with the Napredak of season three) withdrew from the league with sources citing the spike in league fees as their reason.
So the CISL is back to it’s original form of eight teams, but that does not mean there will be less registered players.
The new venue has a larger playing surface than the previous two, so games will now be played six-on-six plus a goalie. This means teams are signing an extra couple of guys in order to combat the amount of exercise everyone actually gets, because let’s be serious, nobody is really there to work up a lather.
Another in-game change is the three-goal penalty shot rule. The kick will still be taken, but instead of from the spot it will be a shot from half on an unmanned goal — this will be harder than it sounds.
And finally, last year’s experiment of having no playoffs has been kiboshed, and the bracket-style “Race to the Jimmy” for the Zivko Cup will be played at the end of the regular season.
One thing that stayed the same is the website, which is as always located at cisl.hamiltoncroatia.com
And that’s it. Welcome to the new players, welcome back to the old, and let’s get through this winter injury free and make season seven the most memorable, so that season eight will be even harder to wait for!
Let the games begin!
