Syracuse dans la rue..

[François]

En fait, ils ne pourront jouer leur match des séries au P&C stadium...

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Dogs kicked out of their house
Syracuse unable to use P&C Stadium for its first-ever A- League playoff game.
Tuesday, August 31, 2004
By Nolan Weidner
Staff writer
The Syracuse Salty Dogs are homeless.

After completing their second A-League season on an 11-1-2 run to finish third in their conference, the soccer team earned its first postseason berth opposite the Richmond Kickers.


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Game 1 of the two-match series is Friday in Richmond, Va.

Game 2, arguably the biggest home date in the franchise's brief history, will be played Sunday evening - 30 miles south of Syracuse on the campus at SUNY Cortland.

While the Salty Dogs and Kickers kick off at 5 p.m. at Cortland State's Athletic Complex for a trip to the A-League's Eastern Conference title series, the Syracuse SkyChiefs and Ottawa Lynx will play baseball at 6 p.m. in P&C Stadium to decide last place in the International League's North Division.

"I'm very disappointed," said Doug Spolyar, the team's chief operating officer who spent most of his weekend and all of Monday trying to solve the stadium use puzzle. "It's frustrating, and it's not anybody's fault."

The SkyChiefs, P&C Stadium's primary tenant since it opened in 1997, have a five-game homestand to end their 2004 season Thursday to Monday.

"It's unfortunate," said SkyChiefs general manager John Simone. "I've got games every night - and promotions."

A-League rules call for a home-and-home set of games in the conference semifinals, and those matches are supposed to be played Sept. 3 and 5 - Friday and Sunday.

Second-place Richmond, by

virtue of its higher finish, chose to play host for the first match, leaving the Salty Dogs to look for a field on which to play the deciding game.

Spolyar asked Simone about moving Sunday's game with Ottawa to early in the afternoon. But Simone said the team couldn't change its plans that quickly.

"If I would have known about it a month ago, I could have done something," Simone said Monday.

He said it would be a "major undertaking" to move the game up that many hours.

Simone did offer to move the team's final game Monday up one hour from its scheduled 2 p.m. start. That would have given the county crew that cares for the stadium time to remove the pitcher's mound and line the field for a night soccer game.

But the Richmond Kickers balked at playing on Monday, and the A-League backed them.

"Ultimately, it was a league decision," said Tim Holt, the A-League's director of operations. "We made it clear that Friday and Sunday were the playoff dates."

Holt said the league was willing to be flexible about moving the first leg of the series - Montreal had agreed to come and play Syracuse on Wednesday, then host the second game Sunday had those teams been matched up - but that playing a second game on Labor Day would cut into preparation time for the conference finals.

"It's just not enough of a turnaround time," Holt said. "It was not an easy decision. We know how important this is for the Salty Dogs."

Salty Dogs head coach Laurie Calloway said he suspects the Kickers simply don't want to play on the artificial turf at P&C Stadium, considered a big advantage for Syracuse because it is a much faster surface than grass.

Calloway said his players will have mixed feelings about the development. On one hand, they love the field turf surface at Cortland that is artificial but simulates real grass conditions. But the crowd isn't likely to be the same at Cortland.

"It's going to affect the crowd," Calloway said.

Spolyar called Cortland's new 6,500-seat field a "great facility," but he said his team stands to lose thousands because P&C Stadium seats almost 12,000. In addition, the Salty Dogs won't be able to make money off of parking and concessions.

"It's the first playoff game in franchise history," he said. "I truly hope the people come out. I think we'll get a good crowd, but it certainly isn't what we'd get at P&C Stadium."

Should the Salty Dogs get past Richmond and move into the conference final, there's a good chance that they'll get one more match at P&C Stadium. But it's not a sure thing.

Spolyar said there's a paintball tournament scheduled at the stadium Sept. 11 and 12.

© 2004 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.

[Bxl Boy]

C'est la faute de PERSONNE ??????
Depuis quand ils savaient que les playoffs pourraient se jouer les 3 et 5 septembre ?
En tout ce temps-là, ils ont jamais réfléchi au problème ?

Encore une bonne leçon qui montre que les équipes doivent avoir LEUR PROPRE STADE !!!