New year, new league.

Kickoff for the Northern Super League (NSL), the first professional women’s soccer league in Canada, is just three months away, with this past Monday marking the start of the 100-day countdown to the opening game on Apr. 16.

Six teams will take part in the inaugural season: Vancouver Rise, Calgary Wild, AFC Toronto, Ottawa Rapid, Montreal Roses, and Halifax Tide.

Over the past few months, Canadian soccer fans have enjoyed a steady stream of news from the budding league. All six clubs have named head coaches, and they continue to fill out their rosters.

Preparations are in full swing, with a schedule announcement forthcoming, but there are still logistical hurdles to overcome. Vancouver and Montreal have yet to announce where they will play their home game, although the Roses have indicated that several stadiums will be used.

TSN spoke to Diana Matheson, co-founder of the NSL, regarding what announcements fans can expect in the coming weeks.

The former Canadian international, who now operates as the league’s chief growth officer, also offered insight regarding interest in the NSL from players on the Canadian women’s national team, as well as recounting her own experience playing in the early days of the U.S.-based National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

TSN: We're now less than 100 days away from kickoff. How are the preparations coming?

Matheson: They're coming. I think we're right where we need to be. There's been a ton of things done. Obviously, lots of announcements last year for partnerships, for players, for coaches, for staffing, for venues, and I think those are really just going to keep continuing until kickoff.

Obviously, the clubs need to announce the rest of their players. Announcements always lag a bit behind signings. So, there's many more players signed that haven’t been announced.

The schedule announcement comes out likely beginning of February, which I know everyone is eagerly waiting for. We can share where our opening game is and championship game.

We're in an exciting time. It's like 30 days away, in most cases, for the players getting in market for preseason. So, the clubs are in their final home stretch of preparation, and then the league office is busy preparing everything for visiting the clubs during preseason, and then, obviously, for that opening day on April 16. So, I think we're going to all blink and it's going to be kickoff on April 16.

TSN: In terms of the schedule announcement, have there been many hurdles in putting together a schedule?

Matheson: Yes, of course. We live in a country that has a huge deficit of sport infrastructure. I know PWHL is struggling with this. On the soccer side, the reality is most of the other world’s professional leagues have a mid-sized stadium, sort of that 8,000 to 18,000 seat stadium, for soccer. They have one of those for every half million people.........

© TSN