After being voted out of original league, Massachusetts Pirates to join Nebraska league
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The Massachusetts Pirates of the Indoor Football League.
The Massachusetts Pirates, a Worcester arena football team, will join the Indoor Football League following its departure from the National Arena League, team Founder and President Jawad Yatim announced on Wednesday.
Last September, Yatim said the Pirates would depart the NAL after it announced a merger with another indoor league. In July, however, the NAL said in a press release its board of directors voted unanimously not to offer the Pirates a new three-year membership agreement.
“As a league, we feel it is important to have partners that follow the rules on and off the field," the NAL said in its announcement in July about the Pirates leaving the league.
“We are willing to re-open dialogue with the team in the future, however, the board members made it very clear that the Pirates' way of operating their franchise with disregard to the NAL rules had to cease, thus a change was needed,” NAL commissioner Chris Siegfried said in a July 14 statement.
Neither Siegfried nor the league specified what rules were allegedly disregarded.
On the same day, the Pirates responded to NAL’s announcement in a lengthy statement attributed to Yatim.
“We are disappointed in the National Arena League for choosing to make our private business endeavors their public matter,” Yatim said in the statement.
“Prior to today, we had expressed to the NAL that we did not want to enter into another agreement at the moment and that we would continue to evaluate all options available,” Yatim said. “I am going to defend our character, as we have been a class organization from day one.”
On Wednesday, the Pirates also announced that they entered a three-year agreement with the DCU Center in Worcester to keep playing in the area.
The IFL, which is headquartered in Nebraska, lists 13 other teams on its website, not including the Pirates. The other IFL teams are concentrated in the Midwest and West, with the closest team to Worcester being the Quad City Steamwheelers in Illinois.
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