EDMONTON – This Nurse isn’t mistaken as a caregiver — at least, not on the soccer pitch.
FC Edmonton midfielder Chris Nurse — all six-foot-one, 181 pounds of him — is known for his aggressive style of play. The 29-year-old veteran has never been one to shy away from a challenge and is often a collector of yellow cards.
In training, he plays just as hard as he does in games, which doesn’t always please his coaches or fellow teammates.
But head coach Colin Miller said he has seen an improvement in Nurse’s discipline on the field, especially after he sat down with the player and had a one-on-one chat several weeks ago.
“He’s not running around like a nutcase and getting aggressive,” Miller said earlier this week as his team prepares to face Minnesota United FC in North American Soccer League action at Clarke Field on Sunday afternoon. “He’s more temperate and is managing his discipline better.”
He has, however, been more aggressive in front of the opponent’s net, joining the forward attacks and getting more scoring opportunities.
His efforts have paid off — he netted three goals in three straight games this summer, earning him the NASL Player of the Month in August.
Growing up, Nurse was known to be a bit of a troublemaker.
Born and raised in Hammersmith, a suburb just west of London, England, Nurse said trouble was never too far off and that he and his friends had a knack for getting into mischief. His circle of friends, whom he described as being part of the “wrong crowd”, loved to play soccer, but they had mostly given up on any aspirations of pursuing it professionally.
Except Nurse.
He was a rising star in his home country, moving quickly through the levels of English professional soccer.
Friends and family still worried about Nurse’s rebellious ways. They would often ask the young man what he planned on doing with his life, but Nurse said his mother was quick to interject.
“Chris is going to be a professional footballer,” Patricia McGill-Nurse would say without hesitation.
It wasn’t until Patricia died of breast cancer in 2004, when Nurse was 20 years old, that he began to take her words seriously. After her death, he decided to focus on becoming the professional soccer player his mother always wanted him to be.
“I owed it to her memory,” Nurse said. “I had to do something in my life. If I didn’t, my mother would have died a liar.”
Nurse played professionally in England for several years before he decided to move to North America in 2009.
He has quickly become well-known in New World soccer circles, winning an NASL title with the Puerto Rico Islanders in 2010 and top regular-season honours with the Carolina Railhawks in 2011.
He’s also made an impact on the international soccer stage.
Nurse, whose father is from Guyana, was asked to play for the country’s team in 2008. He has made 47 appearances with the national team, scoring five goals. In 2011, he was named its captain.
He says the highlight of his career came in 2012, when Guyana faced off against Mexico in a FIFA World Cup qualifying match. While the team may have lost, the feeling of having the captain’s band wrapped around his Guyana jersey in front of a boisterous crowd of 85,000 fans was something Nurse will never forget.
This year, Nurse is one of the few veterans on the Eddies who has won an NASL championship, and he has become a leader on the team.
“He cares very much about the club,” Miller said. “You see him speaking to the younger players a lot in training, and he is becoming more of a mentor.”
Link: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/sports/soccer/NASL+Edmonton+Chris+Nurse+Guyana+soccer/8940279/story.html
Author: asiekierska@edmontonjournal.com
