It's been a big week here at WTR Mansions, with a couple of updates to let you know about.    First off, if you've been here in the last few days, you've probably noticed a bunch of articles by Dave Rowaan.  You may have read his stuff earlier at Here we call it Soccer, or know him on twitter as soccercanada, and despite that whole distasteful Man United fan thing, I'm very happy to confirm he'll be contributing regularly here.  This means between us we should be able to bring you more than the basic preview, smarter than mo, game thread, report, and repeat cycle I was just about managing to keep up with.  Welcome aboard Dave.

Second, if you visited other SBN sites, you've probably seen the tickets tab up at the top of the page.  For whatever reason we didn't get that here for the longest time, I'm not sure exactly when it did show up, but i just noticed it today.  Anyway, click on the tab and what you get is TiqIQ's Toronto FC ticket centre, where you can get tickets to TFC games, both home and away.  Basically it's an aggregator of resale sites like Stubhub, Ebay, TicketNetworks and others.  So if you want to get tickets and don't want to have to do too much work to find the cheapest available, then click there, and they do the work for you. 

Conflict of interest/undignified begging alert.  If you buy tickets from that link, Waking the Red gets a small commission, so you know, support local bloggers and all that.

My benevolent overlords tell me I need to tell you about this, as if you won't have seen all the ads all over the page.  I haven't had a chance to use it myself yet, but the sneak previews we've had make it look pretty sweet, so I'm genuinely interested to see how it works.  (edit:  pretty damn good is how it works, if you've got an iphone, get this).  Anyway, here's the basic info, along with a brief demo video.  Download it, have fun.

The SB Nation iPhone app is now available in the App Store! And it's Free!

Now you can stay on top of all the latest news and commentary for Waking the Red and all 300+ SB Nation blogs from your iPhone. With the SB Nation iPhone app you can:

• Get the latest, breaking sports news as it happens
• Customize your news with your favorite teams, sports and blogs (including Waking the Red)
• Get notified of updates to the stories you choose to follow on SBNation.com, regional sites, Baseball Nation, and MMA Nation
• Read and reply to comments

Here's how to get it:

Go to the App Store on your iPhone and search for "SB Nation"

-- OR --

Go here and click "Download Now"

FAQ

1. An Android version of the app is coming soon. Hopefully by the end of the year
2. The app is free
3. Comments are basic read-and-reply, but SB Nation has plans to enhance them in future updates
4. You can use your existing SB Nation user name and password to log in to the app

Any questions, feedback, comments? E-mail support@sbnation.com.

SBN demo from Mark on Vimeo.

So it's been just over 2 months now since Waking the Red launched and I feel like I've got into a good routine and a bit of a comfort zone with this.  So thanks to everyone for reading/commenting/playing smarter than Mo and all that, especially if you're any kind of regular, it's much appreciated.

So how to take that next step and make this place better?  Well the main thing that the best SB Nation blogs have in common, whether the best MLS blogs like Sounder at Heart, or the best Toronto blogs like Pension Plan Puppets, is a sense of community.  It's not just one guy posting, it's a lot of different people with different strengths and different viewpoints and plenty of regular posts to read and comment on.

So consider this an open call, if there's anything you want to write about as a one off, well that's what the fanpost section is for, I can work my awesome behind the scenes technological magic and make it appear right there at the top of the front page.  If you want to get involved on a regular basis, I'm very open to the idea of co-authors, so get in touch, there's an email link at the bottom of the page, or hit me up on the twitter.

The main reason I throw this out now is that I'm going to be going on vacation for a couple of weeks, leaving on Thursday, so my internet access is going to be very sporadic, dependent on whether hotels in europe offer wi-fi, and even if they do, it will be minimal, so if you've ever pondered doing the fanshot thing, this would be a great time to start. 

Cheers, Duncan. 

Hello, and welcome to Waking the Red, SBNation's latest blog, covering Toronto FC of MLS.  I'll get all the introductory questions out of the way first.

Waking the Red?  Eh?  Like waking the dead?  Exactly.  Also, it's a rare and perhaps foolish moment of optimism, but I'm going with the idea that after 4 years of poor results and laughing stock quality management, TFC's latest management team will be the start of a new era of competence and competitiveness.  The logo represents the red and orange sun just about to rise over BMO Field, enabling Reds supporters to wake up from the 4 year long nightmare they've endured so far.  Something like that anyway.

Who are ya?  Until now, I've been blogging about TFC, Canada, and MLS stuff, as well as a lot of what has harshly but probably fairly been described as "bush league English stuff" at Cruel Geography.  I'll be importing older posts from there once some technical issues get sorted out, but if you're sick of everyone related to TFC telling you to be patient until the new system works out, well feel free to cheat and click on the above link to read my full roller-coaster journey from despair to hope and back again many times over in the last few months. 

I've been watching football (and that's what I'll be calling it here) for just under 30 years now.  After a brief period of childhood gloryhunting with Liverpool, the team I grew up with back in England is Darlington, and after a cautious start, I got fully sucked in to following TFC in 2008 and have been a season ticket holder ever since.  Basically, I'm not a journalist, I'm just a regular supporter, and if all that makes you think "well I know just as much as this guy"  well, yeah, that's kind of the point, there's a good chance you do, so feel free to jump in and argue in the comments section, or use the Fanpost section to post something completely different. 

If you're interested in contributing on a regular basis, have ideas of something you'd like to see covered, or just want to send me random abuse and hate mail, please contact me by email, facebook or twitter I'm very open to bringing others in and expanding this and seeing where it all ends up.

Cheers

Duncan Fletcher