Oklahoma City Slickers
Head coach Brian Harvey and General Manager Jim Walker assembled a team that was composed largely of young Americans but that was bolstered by a handful of older English and German players who had experience playing in top European leagues, including Wolfgang Rausch, Phil Parkes and Jeff Bourne.
[4] The team also lost several key players during the offseason, with Wolfgang Rausch leaving to become a player-coach for the expansion Dallas Americans, who also snapped up three other starters from the ‘82 squad (including leading scorer Jeff Bourne).
[5] Then, just as the season was getting underway, news emerged that majority owner Ralph Penn had been stripped of many assets, including his shares in the team, due to a variety of legal and financial troubles.
Local businessman David Fraser provided cash to help the club meet its financial obligations and assumed control of Penn's shares, and Walker returned to the front office to help stabilize the floundering franchise.
Their efforts allowed the players and coaches to focus on soccer, and the team began to find ways to win some games; however, they still finished the season with a league worst 7–17 record.
[7][8] When Fraser returned his shares to the minority owners in November, citing unsustainable out of pocket spending and an overwhelming level of debt that the club was still carrying, it appeared that Oklahoma City's first experience with professional soccer was coming to an end.
[11] Though the name and colors of the new team were different heading into the 1984 season (black and gold was replaced with red and white), fans of the Slickers from the previous two summers would have been familiar with the majority of the Stampede's roster as well as GM Walker and coach Harvey.
Two experienced forwards from the NASL, David Kemp and Thompson Usiyan, provided an offensive boost to this young core of former Slickers (finishing 2nd and 3rd in league scoring), and goalkeeper Delroy Allen posted a 1.61 Goals Against Average and three shutouts to key the defense.
[15] But in the months following this announcement, it would become clear that despite respectable attendance figures and measures to keep salaries and costs in this new league manageable, profitability and stability would be just as elusive for the USL as it had for its predecessor, the ASL.
New investors began talks to take over principal ownership from the Frasers, and the Tornado's did manage to piece together a roster and find funding to travel to Fort Lauderdale for the final match of the USL Cup series.
