(rdnewsNOW file photo)

By Troy Gillard

AFL makes the call

Bucs landlocked as Alberta Football League cancels season

Jun 10, 2020 | 2:58 PM

There will be no season this year for the Central Alberta Buccaneers.

The Alberta Football League’s board of directors voted unanimously Tuesday night to cancel the 2020 campaign due to the situation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We held out hope pretty much as long as we could,” says Bucs president Vince Roth. “Ultimately, yesterday with the introduction of phase two (of Alberta’s Relaunch Strategy), seeing what that was going to entail and how it would impede travel with a league as wide spread as ours, it was just time to make a call.”

The cancellation means the Buccaneers have to wait another year to try and win their first league championship, something they came heartbreakingly close to finally doing in 2019.

“We had a lot of great talent lined up to come out and join us,” Roth says. “Who knows how this is going to affect their plans going forward and if we’re going to be able to get some of them back for the 2021 season.”

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It’ll now be a long summer without Buccaneers home games at Setter’s Place at Great Chief Park.

“Personally, my three daughters are pretty upset that they don’t get to watch dad play football this summer,” Roth shared. “We’ve got people on our executive (committee) who aren’t players and plan their entire summer around our games. It’s like a big, extended family finding out family suppers aren’t going to happen.”

On the bright side, Roth says the decision to cancel the 2020 season should help ensure all seven AFL franchises are in good financial shape for next year.

“There are teams like us that have great sponsor support but other teams are operating in oil and gas economy-based towns where sponsorship had dried up this year with everything that was going on. So to force a season might have crippled them, but I think the decision made last night should hopefully salvage them and make it more feasible to make 2021 happen. As it stands right now every team that was supposed to play this year intends to field a team for 2021.”

Roth says the Buccaneers plan to remain as active as possible in the community this summer. Plans for their annual food bank drive in Lacombe are in the works and the team will be looking into other opportunities as well.