Professional Soccer Coming to Barrie?

At 1:00 this afternoon a dream will come true.  It’s been a dream of Ronan Cordelle’s, together with a group of people he has helped bring together with the goal of fielding a professional soccer team based in the City of Barrie. The new Club is to be named 1812 Barrie FC and will be a partnership between  Andrew Weilgus the owner of the National Premier Soccer League’s Atlantic City FC in the U.S., football advisor Peter Raco, the Barrie Soccer Club and also the Kempenfelt Crew supporters group as they officially unveil plans for the Club and team(s) this afternoon for a new League 1 Ontario franchise Men’s and Women’s Division to start in 2021.

Originally from Dublin, Ireland, a lifelong soccer enthusiast, Cordelle has been in Canada for 12 years, almost 7 of those years in the City of Barrie.  He initially got together some like-minded football fans to get a petition going to bring professional soccer to the City of Barrie which produced some positive results including from the likes of soccer greats Danny Dichio and Niall Quinn.  After the initial show of support for the idea, Cordelle wanted to measure the feasibility of the idea with area politicians, and hit the road to meet with  area politicians such as Doug Downey, Doug Shipley,  Andrea Khajin and John Brassard and also had a number of phone conversations with City Mayor Jeff Lehman to see if the support would be there from a political standpoint in the City. He had also been in touch with Barrie Soccer Club who were keen on having a higher level of soccer in the City and they became interested in partnering with the new professional Club as well. During all of this this time, he was trying to get as much advice as possible from as many sources as possible which led him to contacting Andrew Weilgus who has ties to Toronto and knows the area well. Andrew was able to bring Peter Raco into the mix and the new 1812 Barrie FC was born.

The club is going to be officially launched this afternoon at 1 pm with an online press conference, promo video, interviews with the new start player, owners and executive team. You will be able to see it all live on their brand new website 1812fc.com and with the announcement, what was once just a dream will become a reality and the hard work of bringing everything into place to make that dream come true begins today.