As a parent from CCB I can tell you, Colin, that there are a great many who are NOT buying into this and CCB on some levels will not have the players to "offer" the Mariners as they originally thought that they would. SU and SF will likely have an influx of players from this club requesting to be evaluated for their BCSPL teams and not for CCB/Mariners' team. This of course will cause many more troubles within those clubs as they go about having to likely relocate many of their own players who will no longer "make the cut".
While the merger looks good on paper without a doubt, the club has indeed shot down HPL for the entire year and suddenly is all "for it" once again, ending many of the metro teams' seasons early in order to "fill" the HPL teams with their club players. Personally I feel as though they kept their strongest teams at the metro level in order to have a group of "poster children" to advertise and use to facilitate a merger that allowed them to be a majority stakeholder in the HPL franchise and indeed they have accomplished that.
I can assure you they have more questions than answers and the political stench has left many parents reeling. At the end of the day the kids want to play soccer and many that should have always been at the BCSPL level will now be playing at that level, in many cases, outside of the CCB/Mariners franchise and THAT is putting kids first - allowing them to play and be challenged at the level they always should have been playing at with or without the support the their "club" and THEY are the ones that step on that pitch and leave it all on the field and they can finally now, despite a year of politics, be put first. The way it always should have always been.
Very well said soccermom, we're on the same page.
...and no TTP'ers, we're not a couple....unless my wife is posting on here now without my knowledge??