"Your whole front of the ship is in the ocean. At 19 years old, a guy from Toronto having this experience, I was terrified. You’re hoping the ship comes back up. It always does, of course.”

When FC Edmonton paused its first-team operation at the end of the 2017 NASL season, Ben Fisk had options.

The badge is a stylized, interconnected “FCE.” A rendering of the North Saskatchewan River forms part of the letter E. The badge notes the team was established in 2010 — as a nod to its NASL history — and also had a rabbit-paw track, a more subtle homage to the team’s animal talisman than might have been expected.

An open-air fanfest will be held in the Old Strathcona neighbourhood to officially revive FC Edmonton's pro franchise and welcome the club to the Canadian Premier League.

The Canadian Premier League took four major steps towards its planned 2019 kickoff.  At the Canada Soccer annual general meeting Saturday in Yellowknife, four more CanPL clubs received their official professional sanctions: York (Toronto Area), Port City (Vancouver area), Calgary and Halifax.

As the Canadian Premier League’s Board of Governors meeting in downtown Edmonton wrapped up Friday afternoon, Commissioner David Clanachan suggested that Clarke Stadium may not be the only option on the table.

So, the end goal is the CanPL, but the team’s not officially signed on yet. Paulus’s role moving forward hasn’t been made clear, because, well, the future of the team is not clear. The question: How does he shepherd the club towards a 2019 launch that, for Edmonton, is still a wish list item and not a hard target?

“Today was about the past, the present and the future,” said Foothills coach Tommy Wheeldon Jr. “And the crowd dictated that they’re here to watch local talent. They’re here to invest in Canadian rivalries. It’s hard to strike up a rivalry, as you guys know, with Miami and Puerto Rico. But if you say Calgary’s coming up for an Al Classico, and suddenly everybody wants to see the rivalry. I thought it was a brilliant response from the Edmonton community.”

Don’t call it a comeback, even though Shaun Saiko was an Eddie for years. On Sunday, the man who scored the first NASL goal in FC Edmonton history looks to be rocking his peers, putting Calgary Foothills in fear.

But, when dealing with the city bureaucracy, this is still early in the game. It’s time for the various stakeholders to come together. It’s time for dialogue.