Halifax Wanderers head coach Patrice Gheisar is not, generally speaking, the type for drastic measures. “Never too high, never too low” has become akin to a mantra at the Canadian Premier League soccer club during his two years at the helm. It will be interesting, then, to see how Gheisar and the Wanderers’ front office handle the months ahead after a year of more lows than highs: Following a wildly successful 2023 that ended with Halifax’s first-ever home playoff match, the Wanderers were the first to miss the postseason entirely in 2024. The club finished with 30 points on the season—four shy of a playoff berth, and 12 below the club-record finish from the year prior. Wanderers founder and president Derek Martin called the outcome “simply unacceptable,” adding that the team would “take a hard look” at what went wrong.
Poor luck had its part: Not even halfway into the season, the Wanderers lost marquee defender Julian Dunn to injury. There were acrobatic own goals. The Wanderers’ entire attacking line battled bumps, bruises and worse from preseason onward.
“I feel like everybody on the team had a cast at one point,” Gheisar jokes, speaking with The Coast.
But there were obvious fixes, too: The Wanderers racked up eight red cards in 2024. (Halifax managed a single win in those seven matches.) The club won once away from home all season. Halifax conceded five goals in the last six minutes of regulation, dropping a potential six points from last-minute winners or equalizers for their opponents.
Gheisar doesn’t shy away from what needs fixing.
“I blame myself [for 2024] more than anyone, but I think there’s lessons to take away,” he says. “We’re a good team. We just have to impact the moments.”
The most imminent question for the Wanderers’ front office? How to retool a roster that could see three of its brightest talents—midfielder Lorenzo Callegari, centre-back Dan Nimick and full-back Zach Fernandez—depart as free agents. Starting goalkeeper Yann Fillion has already announced that he won’t be returning to Halifax in 2025. Ditto for centre-back Cale Loughrey, who—along with Nimick—formed one of the CPL’s strongest defensive pairings in 2023.
Should Halifax go all out in its pursuit of bringing back Callegari, Nimick and Fernandez? How should the club handle the likes of captain Andre Rampersad, longtime Wanderers midfielder Aidan Daniels and former Player’s Player of the Year nominee Massimo Ferrin—all of whom have yet to see guaranteed contracts for 2025?
The Coast’s Martin Bauman and Matt Stickland debate it all on the latest Wanderer Grounds episode.
Listen and subscribe to the podcast below:
Related Stories
The Wanderer Grounds podcast: The Halifax Wanderers are down bad right now
7 burning questions as Halifax Wanderers approach soccer pre-season
Halifax Wanderers seek first win of CPL season on the road in Vancouver
This article appears in Nov 7-30, 2024.