✍️ Ivan Sørensen

We are 2 months from kick-off for the second-ever season of the Northern Super League, Canada’s professional women’s football league. April 24 will see the first game of 2026 with AFC Toronto and Vancouver Rise reprising their clash from last year’s final.

While people are looking to the She Believes Cup to get their fix for women’s football, I thought I would take a retrospective of the season we left behind. 

Many predictions had, of course, been made about the pre-season and the rosters being built, but ultimately I think a lot of people went into the season with a pretty open mind (unless, of course, you were living in one of the 6 cities, in which case victory was assured). With 4 teams eligible to make the semi-finals, the field certainly felt wide open to this observer.

When you think back, it is easy to remember the way things ended and apply that retroactively to the entire season, but looking at the week-by-week results, there was considerable variation.

Halifax Tides

Halifax can perhaps be said to have been a failure to launch. After the first week, the club never managed to claw its way out of the last spot of the table, finishing with 16 points from 3 wins and 7 ties. 

The 3 wins were all by a single goal, while they had to endure both a 0-5 hammering from Ottawa and a 0-6 against the Rise. Difficult stuff.

In the campaign, they managed 4 clean sheets and had 11 games with no goals scored at all. 

By the end of the campaign, the team was a full 21 points short of the playoffs. I think most had written off the season and began to look to the future by then, a future that notably would include new coaching as Stephen Hart took over the reins. 

For the Tides, there is a lot of freedom in that everything is wide open. I will be following closely to see how they are able to regroup for a new season and whether they will be able to “start again,” incorporating the experience of the last season with new faces.

Calgary Wild

The Calgary Wild had a strong early streak, sitting in the 2nd or 3rd position for 4 consecutive weeks before falling out of the playoff spots by week 14 and never regaining the position. I remember initially thinking they would be a strong contender, but this was not to be in the long run.

They would finish their campaign with 29 points from 9 wins and 2 draws, with a -16 goal differential. 

They were shut out 9 times and got 5 clean sheets of their own. 

A difficult record, but on the other hand, we are talking about 8 points to make play offs from their final position. That could be as few as 4 goals in the right games. We will see what the new season can bring them.

If I were a Calgary fan, I think I would be looking forward to a renewed effort to build on what they already had. 

Montreal Roses

If you had asked me after the first month, I would have said the Roses would be the team to beat with energetic “in your face” football. I suspect I was not the only one, as they held the top slot for the first 9 weeks before finishing 4th by the end, though not for lack of trying.

4th was enough to get a playoff spot, but they would fall to Toronto pretty decisively. Fatigue from a long campaign? Loss of key players? Just the way that the ball happens to go? 36 points from 10 wins and 6 ties is certainly not a bad record, and a goal differential of +7 was the third best in the league.

More concerning was that they failed to score on 9 occasions, though balanced by 9 clean sheets. 

In the end, the Roses were an interesting team that was always exciting to watch. We will see how they endure a full campaign this year against opposition that is perhaps a bit more accustomed to their brand of football. Playoff contenders again? I should think so.

Ottawa Rapid

Ottawa’s results can be said to have been quite stable. They never fell below the 4th place and spent much of the campaign jostling for 2nd or 3rd, ending up as a guaranteed slot in the semi-finals, where they were narrowly bested by Vancouver. 39 points from 11 wins and 6 ties is a respectable record, inching ahead of Vancouver by a huge advantage in goal differential. 

The campaign provided Ottawa with 9 clean sheets, while they failed to score in 6 games. 

The best phrase that comes to mind for this team was 'consistent, with a couple of blowout wins to bolster morale while holding their own even in defeats'. I think eyes will be on the team with expectations to continue the same performance, and this time, do what it takes to reach the final. Certainly, falling to a penalty shoot-out in the second leg of a semi-final is almost as close as you could get. If I were an Ottawa fan, I would be confident in a strong showing in 2026.

AFC Toronto

Did Toronto become “Bayern Frauen of the North?” 

Sitting in the number 1 slot from week 10 and never letting go, straight through to the finals certainly suggests so, but it is easy to forget that they took a while to get there. The first 4 match weeks were spent outside playoff spots before the campaign really got going. 

In the end, however, 16 wins and 3 ties resulted in 51 points and a mighty +18 goal difference. 

With that sort of killer instinct and professionalism, the team only failed to score in 3 games while tallying 8 clean sheets. They also oversaw the single biggest win in NSL history, a gruesome 7-0 over Vancouver. 

Toronto would go on to look comfortable against the Roses in the semi-final before losing 1-2 to Vancouver. An impressive campaign, no matter which way you look at it.

Expectations will be sky high going into the new season, which can be a double edged sort, especially when the rest of the league starts viewing you as “the team to beat”. If I were a Toronto fan, I would probably be a little smug, though. 

Vancouver Rise

If Toronto took off flying, the Rise had a bit more of a stumbling journey, often feeling like the team tactics were just not gelling completely. It took until week 14 before Vancouver would remain in the playoff slots permanently, finishing 3rd with 39 points from 11 wins and 6 ties. A goal difference of only +2 suggests some of the struggles the team had along the way (though admittedly, that bruising from Toronto is basically responsible for that).

The Rise oversaw 6 games where they failed to score, while keeping their goalkeeper safe and sound on 9 occasions. And of course, we all got to witness Holly Ward ascending to the Canadian women’s national team, which was surely one of the coolest stories of the season. 

The finals made for tense viewing, with the Rise having to edge past the Rapid on penalties before Ward's goal sealed a 2-1 victory in the first-ever NSL final. It was perhaps fitting that Vancouver scored both the first and last goals of the season.

I think the team ended the season as a much stronger tactical unit than they began, suggesting a season with a big focus on continued refinement and forcing opponents to play their game. If I were a Vancouver fan, I’d probably feel pretty good that there are no giants that cannot be slain. 

An exciting season ahead of us

While it is always tempting to assume that the next season will play out much like the last, in football, things are not always so simple, and we are still in the formative stages of the league. League traditions, club histories and rivalries are built over years and decades. Each of these clubs has had fewer than 30 prime-time games to its name (not counting assorted friendlies, of course).

Watching last season, I was perpetually struck by the feeling that we were witnessing history being made: The first match, the first goal, the first red card, the first final and so on. That history has only just started.