Jerseys of purple, blue and white will soon become a staple of Vancouver Island sportswear.
Friday the Canadian Premier League announced the team that will be coming to Vancouver Island will be called Pacific FC. The team will play at Westhills stadium, which is currently also the home of Rugby Canada. They modeled their branding off the ocean in the region and call their colours “starfish purple, lagoon blue, and lighthouse white.”
Josh Simpson, the teams president, said he’s excited about this team creation, because it means Canadians will no longer have to go abroad to play professionally.
“The challenge for a Canadian football player is that you have to leave Canada to achieve your dream,” Simpson said. “Today I’m very happy to tell you guys that that stops now.”
Rob Friend, the CEO of the team, said when they were discussing a place for a Vancouver Island team Simpson had recommended Langford, and after meeting with the mayor, he knew it was the right place.
“We met…about six months ago we met mayor Stew and he said ‘we’ve got a stadium for Rugby Canada and I’ll make it into a European atmosphere’,” Friend said. “’Intimate, tight, 6,000 seat stadium. What do you say?’ and we walked away from there and we said ‘done. This is where we need to be.’”
Previously the Canadian Premier League had said the team being based in Langford was conditional on a stadium being able to seat 6,000 people. Currently Westhills stadium can only seat 1,718.
Stew Young, the mayor of Langford, said increasing seating and parking will happen.
“We’re expanding the stadium expanding the parking,” Young said. “We’re connecting right to the highway now through the Leigh Road interchange. We’re going to attach that and it’ll access a whole bunch more parking.”
The team will begin playing in spring 2019.