Hello everyone, I am back substituting for Louis in tending the chickens as he has devoted the past week fact-checking and dismissively tweeting about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which if you haven’t seen is an adventure story about a grumpy old man who just wants to fall asleep on his recliner watching TV.
Back at the Compound we’ve been very excited about Austin FC’s recent return to 2022 form, which coincidentally happened when the team started playing the same basic formation and line up they played during last season’s success. Surely those two things couldn’t have a direct and obvious correlation or someone in the Austin FC Front Office or Coaching Staff would have brought it up months ago.
Or maybe not…
One of the fun things about MLS is it’s a soccer league with teams from multiple countries, which means that when Austin plays one of the Canadian teams (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal) we get a special treat: we get to hear the Canadian National Anthem.
This is an absolute banger of an Anthem. It’s clear, concise, and not written by a lawyer. The Honourable Théodore Robitaille wrote O Canada in 1880 but it wasn’t the official Anthem until 1980. It has English and French versions and the song is sung in its entirety unlike the Star Spangled Banner which has four verses, 3.5 of which nobody knows, except Canadians, who can fill in for AV difficulties whenver needed.
O Canada is more akin to “America the Beautiful” which surprisingly also has multiple verses.
To compare O Canada to The Star Spangled Banner is like comparing Canadian rock bands Rush and Nickelback. This is how remind I myself that this article is really about the chickens:
Austin FC 1
O Canada Singers – 2