One day after scoring against Mexico’s Club Leon, veteran Toronto FC fullback Justin Morrow was still smiling.
But he was looking forward not back. Morrow’s family was en route to Orlando, Fla., where the MLS team has set up shop this season owing to pandemic-related travel restrictions.
“I’m really happy,” the 33-year-old father of two said recently. “They weren’t planning to come down originally and then as things changed in Toronto, we decided it makes the most sense for them to just be down here. And I can be around to help them out a little bit.
“I know things aren’t going so well right now with COVID in Ontario so my well-wishes to everyone back up there. I hope everyone’s staying safe and getting through this time.”
Captain Michael Bradley has also been reunited with his wife and two kids.
“Everybody’s plan was slightly different,” Bradley said Saturday after the team’s season-opening 4-2 loss to CF Montreal in Fort Lauderdale.
“Had schools stayed open and had things been relatively normal there [in Toronto], the idea for my wife and kids was to be around there and to let the kids enjoy being in school every day, be with their fiends, activities.
“But obviously with the way things have played out over the last few weeks, we wanted to just use the opportunity to be together as a family again.”
Earlier in the pandemic, Florida was the hot-spot. Now Ontario is reeling.
TFC has worked hard to accommodate the families of players and staff in Florida, in a bid to make life as normal as possible in an abnormal time.
General manager Ali Curtis expects more than 20 families will head south – some 12-14 player families and six to eight staff families.