Steve Milton, Hamilton Spectator

So, are they the Red Patch Boys or more the Box J Boys?

“I’d say we’re a combination of the two,” says James Hutton, the 25-year-old president of the Barton Street Battalion, the fan group which has dedicated itself to the Hamilton soccer franchise in the pending, but as yet unannounced, Canadian Premier League.

“When I’m explaining the Battalion to a lot of Hamiltonians, if they don’t understand what Toronto FC is and what the Red Patch Boys (the TFC’s team’s wildly active supporter group) are, we say ‘We’re essentially going to be the Box J Boys of soccer.’ Which speaks to the passion we’ve got and the passion we’re going to be bringing to games.

“On top of that, there’s a bit of a different culture to soccer. We’ll be having our flags, and our drums, our smoke and our confetti, all the things which make soccer a different atmosphere.”

Supporter groups for pro sports franchises, like the Box J Boys, are common and, like the Battalion, are not officially connected to the club. But Hutton thinks the Barton Street Battalion “is the first supporters group in the world to be formed before the league actually exists.”

Hutton and a few friends who follow TFC closely had read Spectator stories about the potential new league and the Tiger-Cats’ heavy involvement in it. They were meeting in Hamilton pubs to watch Toronto FC away games, “when at a certain point we said, ‘Would we support a Hamilton team over Toronto?’ And the pretty much unanimous answer was ‘yes.'”

So the first booster meeting took place last February at the Anchor Bar, with about a dozen supporters. Kevin Matchett, the Ticats’ director of new stadium development, came along and remains the liaison between the Ticats and the Battalion.

“That gave us that validation, that push to go forward,” Hutton says. “As a group we talked a lot about what we wanted to be. We came up with the name, created a logo, created a website and got some press inside the soccer world.”

The name combines a strongly identifiable neighbourhood reference with the military feel of ‘Battalion,’ suggesting banding together for a common, larger, purpose.