{"id":38201,"date":"2015-09-15T20:02:57","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T00:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=38201"},"modified":"2015-09-15T23:15:57","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T03:15:57","slug":"nasl-side-to-reprise-tea-men-motif","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=38201","title":{"rendered":"NASL Side to Reprise Tea Men Motif"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>

Photo credit: Jacksonville Armada<\/p><\/div>\n

A moniker synonymous with New England soccer lore will be honored later this month, albeit at a locale well south of the region. <\/p>\n

NASL side Jacksonville Armada will don Jacksonville Tea Men-inspired kits for its Sept. 26 home match at Community First Park against the Tampa Bay Rowdies as a tribute to the franchise that was originally founded in New England during the late-1970s.<\/p>\n

The New England Tea Men franchise entered the original NASL in 1978, and played its home games at Foxboro Stadium for two seasons. They eventually relocated to Jacksonville in 1981.<\/p>\n

“We\u2019re looking forward to a very memorable night for every soccer fan in Northeast Florida,” said Armada FC President Steve Livingstone said in a club release earlier this month. “We are really excited and thrilled to be honoring Jacksonville’s original professional team by wearing their kits and involving them in our match festivities. ”<\/p>\n

The Tea Men franchise went a combined 59-43 in their three seasons in New England. The organization also fielded a team in NASL Indoor during the winter of 1979-80, playing its games at the Providence Civic Center.<\/p>\n

Following the conclusion of the 1980 outdoor season, the Lipton Tea Company moved the franchise to Florida after a season’s worth of poor crowds at Foxboro Stadium. A number of Monday night games – a concession made by team owners to avoid conflicts with the nearby Foxboro Raceway – was cited as a reason for the club’s low attendance figures.<\/p>\n

The Tea Men became the first pro soccer franchise to call Jacksonville its home when it moved into the Gator Bowl for the 1981 season. <\/p>\n

But their stay was short lived, as the franchise competed in NASL for only two seasons before it self-relegated to the second incarnation of the ASL in 1983. To its credit, the club went out with a bang by clinching the ASL title months before it was shuttered for good in 1984. <\/p>\n

“The First Coast has a very rich soccer history,” Livingstone said. “The foundation of soccer\u2019s success now can be attributed directly to the Tea Men and the influence they had in pioneering the start-up of youth soccer clubs, such as Clay County Soccer Club, in our area.”<\/p>\n

The Armada’s Sept. 26 match is the only known celebration of the Tea Men’s history since the franchise’s demise three decades ago. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A moniker synonymous with New England soccer lore will be honored later this month, albeit at a locale well south of the region. NASL side Jacksonville Armada will don Jacksonville Tea Men-inspired kits for its Sept. 26 home match at Community First Park against the Tampa Bay Rowdies as a tribute to the franchise that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[27],"tags":[1332,1331,1303,1330,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/Tea-men.png?fit=600%2C415","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38201"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38201"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38218,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38201\/revisions\/38218"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}