It’s the morning of October 13, 2022, and your phone won’t stop vibrating. You resist the urge to check it at first, but eventually, concerned there might be an emergency, excuse yourself from the meeting you’re in, walk towards the washroom, and lock yourself inside a cubicle.
“Well then…” a message says.
“He’s done.” says another.
And this is how you find out that Stephen Hart is no longer the head-coach of Halifax Wanderers Football Club. It's the right choice, yet you still feel sad. Your experiences with Hart had always been positive. You’d spoken to him at length for an article during the inaugural season, had interviewed him at a live podcast event at Durty Nellys, and had spent time speaking with him more informally off the record afterwards. He was a good man, you liked him. But the atmosphere around the club was becoming toxic. Supporter discontent, which had bubbled quietly in online spaces for two years, was now spilling over into the stands at Wanderers Grounds. This is a sport that demands change.
Within a day or two, whispers over the identity of the new head-coach begin to slide into your DMs. You’re told several different names from several different people. One name that keeps coming up is Jimmy Brennan. Another is Pa-Modou Kah. Someone even mentions a young, highly regarded Scottish coach. One candidate’s representative, looking to get some favorable coverage for their client, puts out feelers to see if you’ll write an article about them. You politely decline.
You co-host a live event at Garrison Brewing with Derek Martin and Matt Fegan. You were concerned beforehand that the event would be tense, but it’s not. They’re both forthright and upfront about how poor the season has been. They speak about their plans to put things right right in 2023.
“How’s the hunt for a new coach going?” asks your co-host, Anthony.
“We’ve had a lot of applicants” says Derek.
“Over 70” adds Matt.
They’re non-committal on a name though, and soon the relentless march towards Christmas begins, and life is swallowed by relationships and work and the tapestry of the day-to-day. Within a few weeks, the head-coach vacancy is an afterthought.
But then, on the morning of November 30, your phone once again starts vibrating, and you finally have a name: Patrice Gheisar.
“Who’s that?” you ask.
“The head-coach of Vaughan Azzurri.” comes the reply.
And thus begins a hazy, delirious period where you spend each evening, after your partner has taken herself to bed, watching as many full matches of the 2022 Vaughan Azzurri as you can. At first, it’s all a blur. The camera angle is low and nothing makes sense (why is the left-back now a right-sided 8? Why is the right winger now a striker?) but over time things start to crystallize; patterns appear, repetitions reveal themselves. You remember an article you read recently about Positional Play. You re-read it. You watch another Vaughan match. You re-read it again. Pennies drop from the sky at a ferocious pace.
You and your mate Shep message back and forth, using each other as a sounding board for what you’re both seeing.
“So, it’s a 4-3-3, right?”
“Right”
“But the left-back – Ferrazzo – he inverts and forms a double pivot. Similar to Zinchenko. The wingers are super high and wide too, and…”
One day you receive a Twitter DM from a name you don’t recognise. He’s a college player who wants to talk to you about Patrice Gheisar.
“Your new head-coach” he begins, “is amazing”.
He goes on to tell you how he knows this: his college football team had recently played against Patrice’s college team, and as part of his homework before the game, his coaching staff had instructed him to present a tactical analysis of their opponents. He sends you his research and asks a simple question:
“Ever heard of 3-box-3?”
It’s a couple of months later and you’re co-hosting another Halifax Wanderers event at Garrison Brewing. This time, the guest of honour is Patrice Gheisar himself. You’d spoken to him previously for an article you’d written. He’d made a good first impression. He was enthusiastic, passionate, and charismatic. He knew how to hold an audience.
Before the event starts you make small-talk with him and mention the message you’d received from the college player, and comment on how detailed his analysis of the 3-box-3 system was. You expect this to be taken as a compliment, but instead he appears to be deep in thought.
It’s a great night. Patrice speaks fantastically and the supporters love him. You leave the event feeling much the same as everyone else, that this is a fresh start. That this coaching fit feels right.
New signings start to pour in. There’s an ex-PSG player with a Parisian scowl and ballerina feet. There’s an aristocratic looking fellow from Vancouver Whitecaps. There’s an absolute fucking unit from Palmeiras who is absolutely not 18 years-of-age, but who also absolutely is. There are a handful of college prospects and three ex-Vaughan players.
Alongside player signings are new coaching hires: Jordan Feliciano, Patrice’s assistant at Vaughan, arrives. Jed Davies is added (“Jed Davies” texts Shep, “is a low-key massive get for the club.”) and Jan-Michael Williams is retained.
The club heads to Florida for pre-season. Not long after returning they host an open training session. You write and publish an article reviewing the squad. Based on conversations you’d had with people around the club, and after watching him during the open session, you highlight a young English defender named Daniel Nimick as a potential star and include him in your Projected Starting XI. Soon, a DM arrives from a Halifax supporter.
“You really think this new kid Nimick will start…. over Cristian Campagna?!”
Snow melts. Winter passes. The 2023 Halifax Wanderers season begins.
You attend a pre-season friendly prior to the opening game and leave feeling excited.
Everything you’ve seen in the Vaughan research is on display, but this time with better players. It will take time for the team’s identity to solidify in your mind, but eventually you’ll think of it as something like this:
A 4-3-3 team that builds in a 3-2-2-3 (3-2-5) shape and defends in a 4-4-2 block, with rotations, fluidity, and different faces depending on the opposition.
On April 15th, you sit down for the opening game of the 2023 CPL season full of expectation. Ninety minutes later, after a 1-1 draw with Atletico Ottawa, there’s only one name on your lips: Lorenzo Callegari. You giddily type up your thoughts on the game, and on Callegari you write:
The moment I fell for Lorenzo Callegari was the same moment you fell for Lorenzo Callegari. You know the one: pinned either side by Ottawa midfielders, he received the ball surrounded and under pressure, yet somehow managed to fashion a Cruyff turn through the press to set Wanderers away on a break.
I loved just about everything about his performance on Saturday. He sat at the base of Halifax’s midfield and moved the ball debonairly around the pitch. Sideways strokes, punchy line-breakers, daisy-cutters to the wing, drilled diagonals, lofted through balls…. there isn’t a golf club he doesn’t have in his bag.
This love continues to grow over the following seven months.
He’s your favourite type of footballer; a whirlwind of technique, poise, and sleight of hand. He’s a modern 6. He’s an artist. He’s the mercurial conductor of the orchestra. He’s a magician who could carve a passing lane out of a mountain side. He’s a prodding, probing, relentless force. He’s the team’s beating heart. And on his day, he’s the best to ever do it at Wanderers Grounds.
The season splutters to life. More draws follow, and soon the first home game arrives. The performance is good – all the performances to this point have been good – but the game ends in yet another draw. Throughout, there’s a strange feeling of caution among the supporters. The previous two seasons have left some deep wounds, wounds that are yet to fully heal.
But despite this, your eyes aren’t lying to you. You know what you’re seeing on the pitch is good. In fact, it’s very good. Once it clicks, you think…once it clicks.
But in the next home game, it absolutely does not click.
Halifax 0 – 3 York. And suddenly, doubts creep in.
Suddenly, people are talking.
Has anything really changed since last year? Have we really improved? Have we gone backwards? Have we, have we, have we…?
You hold your nerve. You fully believe in the football this team is playing. The next week’s performance, away versus Pacific, is justification for this. Halifax battles to a 1-1 draw against the league leaders in an impressive display of mental fortitude. This, you hope, could be the turning point.
But another defeat follows – this time away in Ottawa – and Halifax Wanderers really need to find a win now. You can see the tension on the faces of players and coaches as they answer questions from the media. You can see the desire to play it down, to stress the importance of the project, the process; to remind everyone how Halifax Wanderers 2.0 is only 6 weeks old, and after such a short amount of time what, really, do you expect?
And this is true – of course it’s true – but this is a result-led industry, and this is a team that needs three points.
Amidst this, life – of the real variety – comes crashing through the door. There’s a passing in your family. There’s a funeral. There are boxes to be gone through and arrangements to be made. There is an upcoming game versus Valour that you will miss. There are synapses colliding and merging with other synapses as life and death and football and everything in between haggle for room in the same restricted mental space. None of it matters; all of it matters.
The day of the Valour game you’re distracted but you keep an eye on the score.
1-0, Callum Watson. The Essex boy. The Gooner. You’re delighted for him. Half an hour later, you check again. 2-0, a brace for Watson: Halifax Wanderers have their first 3pts of the season.
You check in with a mate who was at the game. How was it?
“Fucking great”
“Yeah?”
“Yeeeeaaahhh”
Life moves on. You’re back in Halifax, and it’s your first home game since the first win. Cavalry FC are the opponents. They’re a team you hate playing. Tommy Wheeldon Jr has built a very British, very functional, very agricultural team that always seems to have Halifax’s number. If this is real, you think, if this progress is real, we need to beat this lot.
An early goal from both teams starts the match with a bang. Wanderers are playing well. Cavalry are matching them. And then Aidan Daniels decides to put on a clinic. He’s picking up balls in dangerous areas. He’s driving at the Cavalry backline. He’s trying to make something, anything, happen. And then he’s thundering the ball into the back of the net and pounding his chest in front of the Kitchen. A late Theo Collomb goal follows and it’s Halifax Wanderers 3 – Cavalry FC 1.
“You know what” you say to Shep as you exit the stadium, “I think we’re genuinely a very good team now.”
“Yep” he nods, before asking who the next home game is against.
You pull out your phone.
“Ugh, it’s Forge” you reply, “fucking hell.”
Later, when you think back to that evening, you are struck by how strange the colours looked. Halifax at dusk, Halifax by night. Both shrouded in a thick, creeping fog. The navy, grey, orange, and black of the two kits giving off a Gothic hue. Billows of blue smoke from the Kitchen sharply cutting through the mist. Everything wet, everything blurred.
Wanderers start the match well. The team looks serious and focused.
Jesus, you think, we’re finally their equals.
You watch as Patrice Gheisar’s players keep the ball, build through the thirds, create angles, find lanes, find space, find the spare man, find rotations, pass, pass, pass… and then score! And what a goal it is!
The ball leaves the boot of Dan Nimick and your eyes remain fixed on it as it loops through the grainy air. You see Massimo Ferrin’s first touch; how he controls the ball and cushions it into space in one delicate flick of the ankle. You see the Forge defenders open up, unsure whether to close him down or maintain their territory. You see him driving into the central space, just outside the 18-yard box. And then you see the ball leaving his foot, and his contact is good, and the ball is fizzing through the air, and the net is bulging, and it’s a wonderful, wonderful goal. And you’re done.
“Fuckinggaaarrrrrrrgghhhhh” you scream.
But then comes the Orange Wave.
This Forge team, with a black eye and blood trickling from its nose, is scary.
The pressure builds. Halifax can’t get out. The previous match between the two, with the last-minute equalizer, rattles around your mind. Not again, surely. You spend much of the second half squeezing an empty beer can into a tiny ball. You head every ball, kick every clearance. You watch the clock impatiently.
Would you please get a fucking move on? you hiss at it.
And then it happens. A Forge equalizer in the 88th minute.
You turn and fling your hat at the railing behind you, but fortunately it rebounds back into your hands. You swear, sit down, and sulk.
Minutes pass and you stand back up. You have a word with yourself, rationalize what’s happened. Is a draw really that bad of a result? Probably not. Not against this lot.
But then you see Lorenzo Callegari receive the ball on the half-turn, and then you notice Riley Ferrazzo making a run from deep, and then, with almost no warning, you see him bearing down on goal and getting taken out by the Forge goalkeeper and you think, for all the world, that you’re dreaming. But you’re not. Penalty to Halifax Wanderers.
The next five minutes feel like fifteen. Eventually, through a crowd of players, Dan Nimick steps up. The stadium takes a sharp intake of breath. Nimick does the same. He begins his run up… and the rest is a blur.
You see the Halifax Wanderers players hurtling towards the main stand and throwing themselves onto the floor. You feel arms around your neck. You hear a gurgled, mangled yeeeEEEsssSSS spluttering from your mouth. You see blue smoke rising. You see delirious faces. And you see a soaking wet Lorenzo Callegari, once of Paris St. Germain, roaring into the sky as the veins in his neck strain to burst out.
You leave the stadium in a daze.
As far as footballing memories go, there are few you will treasure more
The wins continue to come.
Watching this flowing, confident Halifax Wanderers team from June until October is a tremendously enjoyable experience. After the first win lands, there’s a refreshing looseness to the players’ movements. The pressure, now eased, gives way to rediscovered talent and an understanding of what this team is: the ball-dominance, the patterns, the angles, the symmetry, the variations, the problems, the solutions, the identity.
“I’ve not seen football this good at the Grounds before” says your seat-neighbor Glen, during a comfortable 3-0 victory versus Vancouver FC.
After several months of the season, you feel like you have a pretty good understanding of what you're seeing. During the build up phase, for example, in their 3-2-2-3 (3-2-5) shape, consistencies appear.
The left-back, usually Wesley Timoteo, will move inside to be a left centre-back. Cale Loughrey will remain central and deep. Dan Nimick will peel to the right to cover the space vacated by right-back Zachary Fernandez.
Ahead of the back three, Lorenzo Callegarri and Mo Omar will operate as a double pivot, with instructions to progress the ball centrally, through the lines, and into the feet of the 10s.
The 10s, made up of a left-sided 10 – Callum Watson or Tomas Giraldo - and Aidan Daniels, who clips in from his right-wing starting position, are tasked with carving out passing lanes for the double pivots to play through. The left 10 will peel out to the left wing to create space while Daniels roams around looking for a pocket to receive the ball in.
On the exterior, Massimo Ferrin will give the team width on the left of the pitch. He’ll look to receive the ball wide before driving into central areas and breaking open the game. On the right side, the aforementioned right full-back Zachary Fernandez will look to exploit the space vacated by Aidan Daniels.
And at striker, personnel will dictate the interpretation of the role. If it’s Joao Morelli or Jordan Peruzza, they’ll operate as a False 9. If it’s Thiago Coimbra, you’ll get more of a post-up, aggressive, press-y type.
And it’s this team and this style that starts to put points on the board and climb up the table.
By the time autumn rolls in, Halifax Wanderers are a serious play-off contender, and you are a bag of nerves. You wonder aloud during one potentially tense home game whether you miss the days of yesteryear when we were, well, a bit shit. You decide that you don’t.
Landmark wins punctuate June and July. Forge, Cavalry, Ottawa, and Pacific – last season’s top 4 – all lose at the Grounds. There’s some beautiful football played throughout, but there’s also a growing mental robustness. The players are learning to grind out wins, to hold on, to stop conceding late goals.
To the surprise of everyone, João Morelli returns. Then in an even greater surprise, Doneil Henry is signed. Suddenly Halifax Wanderers have depth. And suddenly, one of the youngest teams in the league has some experience.
Despite this, inconsistency starts creep into Halifax’s results as home defeats to York and Cavalry leave the club in a 5-way battle for the four remaining play-off spots. The club fluctuates from 4th to 5th to 6th and back again. With a league so small, matches with play-off rivals occur almost weekly.
The most emotional of these takes place on September 18, in a home match versus Atletico Ottawa.
In the cannon of drama-filled 2023 Halifax Wanderers games, this one will take the top spot for many supporters of the club. After ninety minutes Wanderers are ahead 2-1. It’s a game you haven’t enjoyed. In fact, you’ve spent most of it muttering barely-audible grumblings under your breath. Atletico Ottawa’s defensiveness doggedness, timewasting, and street-smarts are all fair game. In fact, most teams do these things. But on this night, in the mood you’re in, you find it all terribly irksome. Regardless, as the clocks moves into added-on time, it looks as though the 2-1 win is coming.
That is, until the 92nd minute.
You believe it to be a giraffe on rollerblades at first, but you soon understand that what you’re actually looking at is Samuel Salter – once of this Parish - bundling towards goal… and then suddenly, horrifyingly, it’s 2-2.
You hear the air leave the stadium. You exchange a look with your mate. “That” you say, “was shit.”
And that’s how you expect the night to end, but then up steps Zachary Fernandez. You’ve barely seen a bigger not-on-my-fucking-watch moment from a player before as he picks the ball up deep in his own half and runs, rides a challenge, beats his man, crosses, and forces - and I mean forces - a winning goal. 3-2 to Halifax.
An eruption tears through the Grounds that leaves your ears ringing. Again! They’ve only bloody gone and done it again!
Halifax Wanderers Football Club finish the regular season in 3rd place, joint on points with the 2nd placed team, and 13pts better off than the previous season. All while playing an attractive, ball-dominant style of football. It’s a remarkable achievement.
You reflect on how you felt in April. A successful season you’d said to yourself back then, is anything better than last season. 6th place? Fine. Scraping into 5th and a play-off spot? Fantastic. Doing so well you get a home play-off game? Stop it. Finishing 3rd? Fuck offffff.
And it’s because of this exceeding of expectations that you find yourself in a surprisingly calm state of mind in the lead-up to the first home play-off game in Halifax Wanderers history. Gone are the end-of-season nerves, exorcised is the fear of regular season failure. And what is this feeling that has taken its place? Pure excitement.
On Wednesday you find out the opponent: Pacific FC. A good team, and one that has already won in Halifax this season. You check, half in hope, for any suspensions or injuries, but it looks like their top boys will all be here. You worry about Manny Aparicio. He’s a small player, but a snarling, tigerish type. A player you’d love if he wore your colours.
By Thursday, you find yourself haggling with a make-believe entity over what sacrifices you’d make for a Halifax win. You low-ball them at first: for a Halifax win, I’ll let you infect me with a rather dreadful case of food poisoning. No? Okay fine. For a Halifax win, I’ll let you empty my bank account. No? Well, the joke would’ve been on you anyway because there’s fuck all in there, you absolute slug.
On Friday, your mum flies into Halifax for a short visit. There’s lots she wants to talk about over a beer that evening. Reports from home, important life updates. But you find yourself trying to shoehorn Saturday’s play-off match into every topic of conversation she produces.
“.. so anyway, your cousin wanted me to tell you specifically that…”
“What’s that? Pacific?”
“What? No. She wanted me to tell you specifically that…”
At one point in the evening, you find yourself fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers on the table, reimagining them as Halifax Wanderers’ double pivot. You move one slightly higher than the other to see which passing angles become available.
“You” you whisper to the tiny little saltshaker in your right hand, “are Monsieur Callegari.”
Sleep, when it comes, is restless.
We all know what happens next.
Wanderers with 73% possession.
Wanderers with 14 shots.
Wanderers with three efforts cleared off the line.
Wanderers hit the woodwork twice.
Wanderers lose 0-1.
Given them numbers, nine times out of ten Halifax Wanderers do not lose that football match. But there’s always that one time, and that one time was on Saturday, and now Halifax Wanderers 2023 season is over.
So, here you find yourself, slumped at the kitchen table an hour after the game has ended.
You're not angry and you don't have regrets. Rather, you have an overwhelming feeling of something unfamiliar.
You think back to some of the things you’ve seen this season: Lorenzo Callegari stroking the ball around the pitch, Dan Nimick emerging as a top-level player who’s destined for a higher level, Aidan Daniels showing he can be that guy, Cale Loughrey shaking off the challenge of a CANMT defender and carving out a place as one of the best defenders in the league, Wesley Timoteo learning on the job and becoming a genuinely fantastic left-back, Mo Omar puffing out his chest and becoming this team’s leader, Massimo Ferrin scoring some of the best goals the Grounds has ever seen, Joao Morelli coming back from an ACL and celebrating a goal in front of his newborn baby, Theo Collomb guiding a first-time volley into the bottom corner of the net, Callum Watson being the hero in the first win of the season, Thiago Coimbra dousing the Wanderers crowd with infectious passion, Yann Fillion producing a stunning double save in the last-minute vs. Forge, Zachary Fernandez galloping down the left wing and crossing the ball into Tomas Giraldo’s feet in the 96th minute of play…
And then you think of the supporters. You remember how quiet that stadium had become by the end of 2022. The divisions that existed, the absence of joy. But now all you see is pride. Now all you feel is togetherness. This, you think, isn't how it was. This is a fanbase that has fallen back in love with its football club.
You stand up, remove your Wanderers jersey, and pack it into the wardrobe for another year.
And in that moment, you’re struck once again with a feeling that you can’t quite place. It’s something new, something different.
Something a little like hope, perhaps.
Gary is an Arsenal supporting, Halifax-based Brit who moved to Canada in 2016 unaware that he was about to fall in love with another football team. He can be found on on Twitter at @FromAwaysHFX. He also guests on the Down the Pub Podcast - a CPL/Halifax Wanderers-focused podcast - alongside Anthony Abbott.
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