Women’s soccer team united for contract talks

The Canadian women’s TORONTO soccer team will enter into its next round of contract negotiations with the Canadian Soccer Association with an impressive hand: The first Canadian summer sports team to win back-to-back Olympic medals in over a century is ranked fourth in the world, is the reigning Algarve Cup champion and owns the record for the most wins by any Canadian women’s soccer team in a calendar year, with 15.

And the team is standing united via a newly formed player association. While not a formal union, the players hope it will help their cause and that of the women who will follow.

The Canadian Women’s National Soccer Team Players’ Association was created by a player vote last Thursday with captain Christine Sinclair, Diana Matheson, Erin McLeod and Ashley Lawrence chosen as player representatives for the next two years.

The four have 602 caps between them with veterans Sinclair, Matheson and McLeod accounting for all but 46.

The four player reps are authorized to speak for the membership.

“Personally for me and for the older players, it’s a big milestone,” said Matheson, 32, who made her senior debut for Canada in March 2003. “I think it was kind of a natural progression for us to get to this point, but it took a lot of work. … So this is just the next step to allow us to be more organized, to have a united front, to be able to represent all the players in the program, whether they’re in NCAA or they’re in the NWSL or in Europe.”

For Matheson, the most important round of negotiations isn’t the next one, but the ones that follow.

“A really important part for us too is that this structure will be in place for the next generation, and that when the group that’s been taking care of these issues for a while retires, the ball won’t be dropped at all,” she said.

Previous negotiations with the CSA were more ad hoc. The women used lawyers Maureen Littlejohn and Jim Bunting as their legal help for negotiations with a core group of players leading the way.

The Canadian women say they have a good relationship with the Canadian Soccer Association. Unlike their U.S. counterparts, who have filed a federal complaint accusing U.S. Soccer of wage discrimination, Matheson says the Canadians are comparing themselves to other women’s teams around the world and other sports in Canada.

The women are due to enter negotiations with the CSA in “the coming weeks,” according to Littlejohn.