This article is based on Rocket Robin’s match report at his fantastic website www.rocketrobinsoccerintoronto.com
At a time when soccer was at an all-time low in Canada, Rocket Robin would go through every endeavor possible to watch a Canadian National Soccer League match in the Ontario area. Despite that the matches were poorly publicized, the level of play was at best of semi-pro quality and the weather was often terrible, Robin went to the match.
The author of this article followed Robin’s updates about soccer in Toronto on various feeds and at the rsssf.com website, during the early days of the world wide web as we called it. Robin is of course still going strong and updates his pages with the newest info available.
On Thursday June 27, 1996 Toronto Italia took on Danish touring team Vejle Boldklub at Esther Shiner Stadium in North York.
The match kicked off at 7.30 pm. 9:24 into the match Vejle scored the first goal of the match when forward Dejvi Glavevski headed in a pass from Jesper Sögaard.
The Danish team increased its lead after 30 minutes when Jens Madsen scored after a corner kick.
At 84:19 Brian Christensen scored on a great shot. The goal secured a 3-0 win for the Danish tourists.
Robin reported that “It was almost like watching two different games. In the first half, Vejle dominated; seldom letting Italia out of their own end. There were actually too many chances for Vejle for me to write down. I thought the CNSL was completely out of their element. In the 2nd half however, when both teams made a lot of substitutions, I thought the Italia subs were actually better than the Vejle ones”.
The referee was Andrew Jasevski. The linesmen were Les Wilcox and Glen Sharkey.
Line-ups
Toronto Italia: Joe Ciaravino; John Annisi, Franco Spadafina, Richard Alexander, Tom Perks; Miguel Ferreira, Jack Zomparelli, Phil Ionadi, Marco Antonucci(captain), Luca Centurione, Lalo Maradona.
Subs: Marco Vaiano, Mike Ivanescu (goalkeeper), Nick Maxwell, Ryan Gamble, Andrew Crawford, Garvin Houston
Vejle BK: Erik Boye (captain); Thomas Gravesen, Dan Sorensen, Jan Larsen, Jesper Sögaard; Jesper Mikkelson, Jens Madsen, Edouard Demenkovets, Bo Harder, Dejvi Glavevski, Jacob Olsen
Subs: Brian Christensen, Kim Norholt, Kurt Eriksen, Bertel Dorf (goalkeeper), Klaus Eskildsen, Sogard, Peter Grouiard