“It was a catalogue of disasters, it was a shocking trip,” FCE coach Colin Miller said of the trip “Finally, the rain delay set it right up for us to have the kind of first half we did. But I don’t want to make excuses, we set high standards at this club.

“A lot of CIS coaches will be delighted knowing that he won’t be playing for UBC in the fall,” Miller said. “I didn’t bring him in here to make up the numbers. Hes got a great football brain. He can find tiny pockets of space in the field.”

Former University of British Columbia standout Gagandeep Dosanjh has committed to FC Edmonton, and will join the club this week.

The Ottawa Fury has added another Dos Santos to the team’s front office.

Before coming to FC Edmonton on trial, the Canadian striker was training with the Columbus Crew where his cousin, Trinidad and Tobago international Kevan George, is under contract. Adur wants to attract the attention of MLS scouts. He wants to one day wear the Canadian national jersey. But, even though he boasted a solid scoring record in Thailand, it wasn’t going to put him on the radar of the national program.

The 11 understands that there was debate about starting the season earlier in year, which would have allowed for a balanced spring-fall schedule. But, that would have been unfair to northern members in Minnesota, Edmonton and Ottawa. A schedule which would start in early March would have meant the Fury and FC Edmonton could have been playing game at home in heavy snow, or been forced to start the campaigns with ridiculously long road trips.

The Board of Governors met with four groups, and approved the Jacksonville and OKC bids. Both teams will join the league in 2015. NASL spokesman Michael Preston said that the league won’t identify the other two cities that had bids in, but they didn’t receive flat-out rejections. See them more as being at the beginning of NASL courtship.

Right now, FC Edmonton has midfielders David Zaharija and Dominic Oppong for the week. On Friday, Anthony Adur (also known as Anthony Bahadur), a former Maccabi Haifa youth team forward who has also played in Singapore and Thailand, will join the Eddies on trial.

“It was just as I was starting to get going,” said Fordyce of the break. “When you get in a good routine, you don’t want it to end. But, for the three of us (Fordyce, Robert Garrett and captain Albert Watson, who all came to FCE from Belfast’s Linfield FC), it’s the first break we’ve had in a year. It was June of last year that we started training camp, went six to eight weeks, then the start of the season."

David Zaharija will try and take his game from the Vancouver Metro Soccer League to the North American Soccer League.