On Saturday night, the YEG4CPL group, supporters who galvanized support for the Eddies to re-launch its professional team in the CanPL, held an event at an Edmonton pub to announce a new name and logo. The River Valley Vanguard was unveiled. New, blue supporters scarves were unveiled. An old soccer shoe was passed around, and supporters put money inside, with funds to go to Free Footie, the soccer program for disadvantaged youth that was once home to Bayern Munich-bound Alphonso Davies.

City administration has recommended that Clarke remain a multi-sport venue, with shared usage between FC Edmonton and other minor sports. Roger Jevne, the city's director of community facilities, said that some improvements can be made ahead of the kickoff of the 2019 CanPL season, but there's no way that the stadium can be expanded to 7,000 seats by that time.

"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.”

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.

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.

I’ve used a lot of that resilient and resourceful thinking since I came to the club almost two years ago. I’ve been very fortunate, our owners, Tom and Dave Fath, have allowed me to bring in new ideas and approaches. However, If someone had told me that within my first two years I would take over a struggling front office, work spend two seasons trying to get it the so hard to take it to the next level, then shut it it down and, just a few months later, be faced with possibility of  try to launching it all over again, I would never have believed them.

If FC Edmonton, which left NASL at the end of the 2017 season, is to field a pro team in the Canadian Premier League in 2019, the club needs its fans to rally. It needs a massive ground game to sell season-ticket commitments. And, maybe, if the team is to survive, Wednesday’s night’s meeting of soccer supporters will be remembered as the Alberta Capital’s very own Tennis Court Oath, soccer style.

Eddies general manager Jay Ball confirmed Thursday that the team, still months away from training camp, has broken a new record for season tickets sold in a season. Edmonton plays in one of the NASL’s smallest facilities — Clarke Field holds 4,500, and crowds were usually under 3,000 for games last season — but the fact that season ticket holders are renewing, and the team is attracting new subscribers, shows just how distant Edmonton is from the mess in the United States.

“We have to adopt a culture of winning in the office to match the culture on the field,” he says. “There is not one culture in the front office and one culture on the field. It should be one culture for the whole club.”

So, for those wondering “who is Jay Ball?” I can offer a little bit of fill-in-the-blanks.