It’s almost a foregone conclusion at the start of every season that the Blue Devils will be somewhere near the top of the League1 Ontario table. When the dust has settled at the end of this year, things will be no different.
With only one game remaining on the calendar, Duncan Wilde and his charges will square off against their bitterest of rivals, Mississauga’s Sigma FC, in what is always a slugfest.
The Blue Devils' biggest match of the year is up against a team that would love to spoil their playoff dreams, with North Toronto having lost Friday night. A win would see the Blue Devils clinch a semi-final, bypassing the Quarter-Finals.
If they spill points, Alliance could potentially pass them, but Wilde is focused on the task at hand.
It’s been a challenging season for the club that plays its home games out of Sheridan College. Having to play a mid-week Quarter-Final would see them forced out of the comfy confines of their Trafalgar Campus home and into River Oaks Recreation Centre.
But they’re not looking that far ahead. They know what can happen if they take their foot off the gas for even a split second.
The Blue Devils lost late in the season to Woodbridge, who scored despite being down a man, right after the Strikers goalkeeper got a red card.
They also lost at the hands of expansion side Electric City, earlier in the year. Wilde reiterates that teams are emboldened when the Blue Devils are lined up against them, as “everybody raises their game [and] they’re all looking forward to that”.
The club started the season slowly, drawing 5 of the first 10 matches they played, spilling points that would have been helpful in building a cushion between them and their competitors as they all battle for the six available playoff spots.
Having had the first handful of those games on the road against top-level competition, Duncan believes that the resulting ties are more meaningful than they appear as the "first 6-7 games were all away.”
“A draw away at Simcoe, a draw away at Vaughan, those are good results, the big slip up for us was Windsor.”
As of late, the squad has been firing on all cylinders, despite the hiccup against Woodridge a few weeks back. In fact, the Blue Devils are averaging over 4 goals a game. Duncan feels they could have done better still, “as prolific as we’ve been, and we’ve scored a lot of goals, we should have scored a lot more. We’ve left a lot of goals out there that we could have quite easily picked up.”
This year has seen the rise of academy product Deryn Armstrong, who made his way into the line-up this year to form one of the most lethal scoring tandems in the league with Taha Ilyass. Deryn burst onto the scene in 2019, banging in his first few goals as a wide-eyed teenager, but now he’s a little more mature, a little more experienced and it’s showing on the pitch.
Armstrong has netted 6 times while Ilyass banged in 19 to put him in 3rd place for the league scoring title ahead of the closing match of the regular season.
Unfortunately for the Blue Devils' coaching staff, Armstrong has returned to North Kentucky University to begin the NCAA season.
Sigma will be in a similar boat however as they have lost several players from their regular rotation, but will still have Captain Kyle Walton, who always has a great game against the Blue Devils.
On the other end of the Wheel of Fortune, the Blue Devils will see the return of Taha Ilyass, who sat out last weekend’s 4-0 victory over Unionville, after being suspended for acquiring his 5th Yellow Card of the season. Ilyass has been absolutely lights-out this year, Wilde boasts, “he’s been a good addition for us, a different style to what we’ve had the last couple of years, so that’s allowed us to play in a different way this year”
Wilde has a wealth of riches and there is always an academy product waiting in the wings. Andra Neptune, Mario McLennon, Luka Frankovich, and Mo Shamkhi have all gobbled up minutes for Oakville after having come up through the academy system.
It’s not been too difficult for the Blue Devils to find time for the young players to sprinkle into the lineup as they have been surrounded by a cast of wily veterans, who are more than battle-tested.
In the off-season, Canadian National Team veteran Kyle Porter joined the club after a long professional career that saw him play in MLS and the Canadian Premier League. Former St. John’s University Captain Brandon Duarte convinced his schoolmate Matt Chandler to sign on, and those two new additions slid in nicely with the veterans like Adam Czerkawski, Matt Santos, and Khody Ellis.
Chandler has returned to school but everyone else is basically still in place.
Expect this game to have a bit of everything. Oakville will be desperate for the win, and Sigma would love nothing more than to inflict whatever pain they can on their biggest adversary.
The kickoff is 1 pm, Saturday, August 20th at the Paramount Fine Foods Centre.