valleywhitecaps said: I miss the spontaneity of chants. The capos now do a fantastic job and I appreciate their commitment to helping create an atmosphere, but needing capos makes us a little bit plastic.

too be fair the capos themselves are a lot less plastic than ECS :)

Mobilio catliff valentine evans duZe McDonald dolan Norman

I miss the csl 86ers at swanny

Some nice pics of those crazy times

I'll never forget walking onto the pitch with Footy to deliver the first ever Cascadia Cup to the boys. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought that the not-so-wee trophy we were carrying would become the symbol for everything that was right with North American soccer at a time when so much is being done wrong.

The 86ers years were all amazing. Watching Mobilio absolutely annihilate the opposition match after match was an incredible gift I'm thankful to have had the privilege of enjoying. I remember the year when Darren Tilley signed for us and he went on an insane goal scoring tear. Now that was a guy who loved supporters. He jumped into the Southside a few times after a goal, and I think he might have brought us some beer once. Great guy, great hair! ha ha

As weird as it sounds, I'll always look back with fondness on the last match of the season after the final whistle. This was in the days before the Southsiders had pubs and events to socialize together... back then, the last match of the day was about saying goodbye to your pals for the next five months. The last ever match of the 2010 Div 2 Whitecaps was a strange one to walk away from. The team was eliminated, and the players came over to shake our hands. They were really looking down, and I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that a lot of them knew they weren't going to make the leap to MLS. I remember shaking hands with a really dejected looking Gershon Koffie. He had just turned 19. Told him to keep his head up. Glad he heeded my advice!

What I miss is the Victoria Vistas playing one of their only four playoff games at Swangard, in 1990. 86ers drubbed them 6-1, after they'd shown promise with a 1-1 tie at Royal Athletic Park. I guess what I'm saying is that I miss the CSL, and a Canadian D2 league.

The biggest thing I don't miss about Swangard was the feeling I always had that there would never be more. I never thought that the CSL would rise again, nor did I think (until 2007) that Canada would have MLS teams. As a result, my annual trips to Swangard, to watch the 86ers and then Whitecaps against El Paso Patriots, or San Jose Earthquakes, or Toronto Lynx, were always tinged with a tiny sense of despair.

Proggie said: - Winger diving and sliding on his roll up banner whenever we scored. - (Not) signing along with the cheerleaders White Is The Colour (man I hated that song!) :) Wish we now had a proper but good official anthem to sing though.

OR not having enough numbers (apparently Caps couldn't afford doubles of everything) to do the 50/50 so he would move them around (you guys couldn't see this from the SS).

chanting_craig said:

smoothmedia said: No love for Winger in this thread? I miss how horrible the costume was, and his goofy antics. Spike is just too polished and vanilla :P

Winger highlight had to be vs Cardiff FC, as the he repeatedly squirted their supporters with a water gun, the Cardiff fans began chanting "We're gonna shoot the Duck". One of them managed to drench Winger with a full bucket of water. Winger never looked more lovably pathetic.

Forget winger what about Loonie?

He was my favorite when he was the Loonie Bird. I didn't take to the Winger name too much, and Spike just looks too much like the Toronto Blue Jays.

Anyone know if it has been the same guy playing these mascots since Loonie appeared in the early 90's?

Personally I hate the term "plastic". Generally people here use it to describe ECS because the general consensus is that they are just robots with tonnes of co-ordination. I would personally love to be way more co-ordinated like that, but people here seem to think its a bad thing. Sometimes I look over at Curva and see them all in unison and think "why dont we have that here". And I dont think that would jepardize our "witty spontaneous chants" either.

my favorite chant was " loonie do your job, loonie loonie do your job...."

he didnt stick around the southside much back in the old days unless he was banging his drum in unison with our chants

Bad_Gones said: No, just years of practice.

Decades. With everyone in the section committed to the singing.

Most of the people that I talk to that say they just want to analyze the game just end up turning into pylons. I have sat in other parts of the stadium and stood in the southside and I can honestly say that I can analyze the game just as well from the southside as anywhere else. Although I do rewatch the game on MLS live when I get home from the game just to see the game from a broader scope.

Yeah, I can see how that happens. I try to find an inbetween. To you guys I'm a near pylon, to the people near by I'm sometimes over the top. My noise tends to me emotion/reaction, although I join some of the Southside stuff.

OldFan said:

StateSide_Cap said: English clubs don't need capos to get a few thousand people singing, so clearly there is no actual necessity for mass organizers to get a bunch of people organized.

This isn't Europe. Most people in the Southside have not been spending the last 20 years being in a singing supporters section to learn how to do all this without a capo. It is necessary at this point.

For the record I never said we didn't need capos at this point. i agree that we need capos right now - no question. My opinion though is that the southside at Swangard was a genuinely more authentic experience than what we have today. The majority of people had been football supporters for years, whereas today the majority in attendance now have been football supporters since last March (if that). One day what we have today will feel just as authentic as what we had at Swangard, but it will take time to develop. We need Capos in the meantime, and as I said before our Capos do a fantastic job.