To our Faithful Soccer Community – 

We appreciate your patience while we processed the news announced by the Middlesex-London Health Unit. For those of you who were not aware, the MLHU announced a set of orders on Wednesday afternoon, severely impacting the operations of all indoor sports, recreation and community centres. We had been operating in compliance with all federal, provincial and municipal guidelines up until this point with not so much as a possible case, so we were caught off guard by the announcement of these new measures.

After numerous conversations with Dr. Chris Mackie, his colleagues at the MLHU and various other affected organizations, a virtual townhall was held today, Oct. 23rd. It is with great pleasure that we advise that we have been provided official confirmation from the MLHU that we are able to resume league operations and game play.

We would like to thank Dr. Mackie and the MLHU for their diligence in addressing the concerns we had brought forth, as well as the concerns they received from parents, players and patrons. We would also like to thank the Mayor and the city councillors who took the time to respond to our emails and phone calls.

We will resume operations effective Monday, October 26th 2020. However, there will be further modifications to game play in addition to those already in place. Please read them below in detail:

League Operations:

• Team rosters must be limited to 12 players per team maximum
• Players must maintain 6 ft of distancing when on the bench
• Players must wear their mask while on the bench of the playing field; the only exception to masks is while players are actively playing on the field
• Physical contact between players must be avoided at all times. Referees have been instructed to monitor this; any instance of deliberate contact with another player will result in a blue card (2 min penalty) or ejection from the game
• Referees will be required to wear masks at all times; referees will be provided with electronic whistles 

No Contact Terms:

• No head-in’s
• No tackling/slide-tackling
• No handling of the ball; referee and/or goalie only will handle ball
• No contact celebrations; handshakes, fist bumps, hugs, etc.

BMO Academy

• Groups will be limited to 10 players with 1 coach
• We have added an additional field to the program in order to accommodate smaller groups of 10 with appropriate spacing in between

Casual Rentals

• Casual rentals will be limited to 24 players’ total
• League operation rules apply to all individual field rentals; no contact is permitted
  those who do not comply will not be permitted to rent in future

Club Rentals (Ontario Soccer Members)

• Club rentals will be limited to 25 per field including coaches
• League operation rules apply to all club field rentals; no contact is permitted

We will never be able to thank our soccer community enough for their demonstration of support and encouragement over the last 2 days. This was a challenging predicament, though it was truly a community effort to work through this together. 

With Thanks, 

BMO Centre London Management Team