Geffrard settles in with Wanderers
Jems Geffrard has played for the Haiti national football team and professionally in Finland and the U.S.
When he decided to return to Canada to play in the Canadian Premier League, teams were clamouring for the talented Montrealer. He could have gone anywhere across this great land but he chose Halifax.
Geffrard watched a televised Canadian championship match between the host HFX Wanderers and the Ottawa Fury on July 10, 2019. The Wanderers Grounds was packed with over 6,000 boisterous fans. Although the home side lost the match 3-2, the atmosphere was electric throughout the 90 minutes of play.
The idea of playing in a rollicking stadium in front of a throng of screaming fans had Geffrard hooked.
“I had a lot of friends in the league and I watched a few games but the atmosphere of that game was so incredible and that was just on the TV,” Geffrard said in a recent phone interview from his home in Montreal.
“I saw all of the fans and it was great. When I asked about it to some of the guys, they all told me how great it was. They really felt like a pro having all those fans behind you. That’s the feeling I wanted to get by coming to Halifax.”
Geffrard signed with the Wanderers last February. But a global pandemic prevented him from savouring that Wanderers Grounds experience. All CPL games in 2020 were played in a bubble format in Charlottetown.
“Hopefully, we’ll get it this season,” the veteran centreback said.
Geffrard, who was coming off an unfulfilling season with the now-defunct Fresno FC of the USL Championship league, didn’t know much about the Wanderers or the league in general.
A friend and former teammate in Finland, defender Chakib Hocine, appeared in four matches with the Halifax-based club during the inaugural season in 2019.
“I talked to him a lot,” said Geffrard, who signed with the Wanderers on Feb. 18 of last year. “He told me it was a good league and it will become something big for sure. And he would always tell me good stuff about the city, how beautiful it was and how amazing the fans were.
“I wasn’t really happy with my club (Fresno) the year before. I wanted to be somewhere that I could be back on the field and playing a lot of minutes. That’s what I was looking for in the CPL, playing a lot and being involved.”
Geffrard got what he wished for in 2020. An anchor on the backline throughout last summer’s Island Games bubble tournament in Charlottetown, Geffrard played every minute of every match as the Wanderers marched to the CPL Final.
“That’s why we play football,” said the six-foot-three left-footed defender. “You want to be on the field, you want to be involved, you want to win with the team and lose with the team and if you’re out there, you’re part of it.”
Raised in Montreal, Geffrard was groomed through the hometown’s Impact Academy and its under-23 squad and played briefly for FC Montreal in the USL before branching out overseas in northern Europe.
Geffrard, whose parents were both born in Haiti, represented the Caribbean nation 16 times in international play.
Most notably for Canadian soccer fans was a 2019 CONCACAF Gold Cup quarterfinal in Houston, Texas. Haiti shocked Canada by rallying from a 2-0 deficit to win 3-2 and eliminate the Canadian squad from the tournament. Geffrard played in all 90 minutes of that memorable match.
“I didn’t sleep at all the night before, I was thinking about that game all night,” Geffrard recalled. “My whole routine was f---ed because I didn’t sleep. But in the end, it was all good.”
“It was such a great experience. I saw a lot of great players and trained with great players. To play in front of 60,000 people in the Gold Cup was amazing.”
Geffrard, on the advice of a former coach at the Impact academy, went the European route to further his pro game. He started out with the second-division side Ekenas IF before advancing to the topflight club ROPS.
“I didn’t know where Finland was at first but I ended up going there and everything went well,” Geffrard said.
Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said about Fresno the following season.
Geffrard only appeared in seven matches with the California-based USL side in its final season of existence.
“I saw all of the fans and it was great. When I asked about it to some of the guys, they all told me how great it was. They really felt like a pro having all those fans behind you. That’s the feeling I wanted to get by coming to Halifax.”
Jems Geffrard
“It wasn’t a bad experience,” he said. “I just didn’t get the minutes that I wanted to play.”
Geffrard said the Canadian Premier League, heading into its third season of existence, is nearly comparable with the USL.
“I think we’re getting closer to that level with what I’ve seen,” he said. “I don’t think we’re that far behind. There’s a lot of good players and talent. In two or three years, I think it will be about the same. Give it time. It’s still a young league.”
The Wanderers players are scattered all over the Western Hemisphere doing their own off-season training program.
Geffrard has been running and training on his own and will do so until the 2021 training camp opens. Of course, the pandemic will dictate when it’s safe for the players to return to the club.
“I’ve been talking to some of the players and they have been motivated to do their training and stuff like that,” Geffrard said.
“We are motivated to come into this season and do better than we did last year. We still have the loss in the final stuck in our heads. So, the motivation is really high because we don’t want to repeat that this year.
“We still have the loss in the final stuck in our heads. So, the motivation is really high because we don’t want to repeat that this year.”
Jems Geffrard
“At the beginning of this off-season, it was quite hard to do our own training because there weren’t any places open here in Montreal. The gyms were closed and the restrictions were tough. The first two months it was very difficult to do some stuff. But I got by OK.”
The extended off-season has allowed Geffrard to revisit a favourite pastime from his childhood. He started playing chess again with his brother after watching the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit, about an orphaned chess prodigy.
“The movie got me back into it,” Geffrard said.
“We used to play chess a lot. But then it was one of those games where I played it once in a while. But when I watched the TV show I was like, ‘wow, we have to play it again.’
“Nowadays I’ve been training a lot so haven’t had a lot of time to play. But my little brother and I got to play about twice a week. It’s a good challenge for me.”