A holiday Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and happy September, even if it means the frost soon shall be on your pumpkin…
Never mind that the Winnipeg Blue Bombers had built-in excuses in advance of the muckabout at Mosaic Stadium on Sunday afternoon—no Matt Nichols, no Andrew Harris.
All that really matters is that the large lads in blue-gold-and-white linen returned home from Pile O’ Bones with tire marks on their chests—again—and I’d say losing 14 of the last 15 holiday weekend visits to the Flattest of Lands qualifies as road kill. So maybe it’s time people stopped calling this thing the Labor Day Classic and bill it as the Road Kill Classic. Or the annual Gang Green Gives Winnipeg FC A Wedgie And A Swirly Classic.
Oh, sure, it was close. They tipped a canoe. Burned a barn.
But don’t talk to me about the Bombers deserving a better fate, not when the guys on the D-side of the ball lost the plot when it mattered most.
I mean, Richie Hall’s defensive dozen made greenhorn quarterback Cody Fajardo look like a greenhorn quarterback much of the afternoon, then watched as Corn Dog Cody directed his Saskatchewan Roughriders down the field like a puffed-up, strutting halftime marching band. He, along with running back William Powell, smoothly navigated the Gang Green offence across the Mosaic terrain, whereupon Brett Lauther delivered the final and decisive points in a smash-mouth skirmish that, until then, had mostly moved to the cadence of two gnarly defences.
I suppose that D-dominance was predictable, given that the two QBs had a combined total of 14 Canadian Football League starts going in.
Still, it appeared that Chris Streveler, subbing for Nichols, had squeezed enough juice out of Winnipeg FC’s anemic offence to get ‘er done. It should have been game, set and bring on the Banjo Bowl when the Riders offence assembled for their final thrust, trailing 17-16 with three minutes and 18 ticks on the clock and the ball on their five-yard stripe.
What ensued went entirely against the grain, with the stingy Winnipeg D suddenly becoming as submissive as a house pet. Eleven plays, 87 yards, one 26-yard Lauther field goal, and a 19-17 W for a home side that has strung together half a dozen victories.
There was nothing classic about that 3:18 of football, unless you wear a watermelon on your head.
Should we look for more of the same when the large lads gather for a redux next Saturday, this time at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry? Well, I don’t think we should expect the Winnipeg D to cough up a hairball the size of a small horse again, but Nichols will still be in the repair shop and Harris in detention, so I suggest it’ll be on the D to rule the day.
For 60 minutes, not just 56:42.
Why don’t I hear the name Craig Dickenson included in chatter about the top sideline steward this season? Is it because, unlike his brother Dave, the Gang Green rookie head coach doesn’t have a non-stop, 24/7 squawk box? Seems to me that the Quiet Dickenson deserves to be in the discussion.
What’s the deal with the CFL giving three teams a bye on this Labor Day weekend? Shouldn’t the Montreal Larks and Bytown RedBlacks be included in the fun? As for the also-inactive B.C. Lions, they don’t have a natural rivalry and, frankly, the 12,000 people in Lotus Land who actually know the Leos exist probably prefer to sit on a patio sipping their latté or having a toke rather than watch Mike O’Reilly be roughed up like a Gitmo prisoner one more time.
Speaking of indifference, can anyone at Sportsnet explain why they basically ignore the CFL? I realize that Rouge Football is a TSN property, but sports news is sports news is sports news. Call up the CFL on the Sportsnet website and you’ll find three videos: One from July, one from February and one from December 2018. That’s disgraceful.
As a folo to an item in my Sunday smorgas-bored, in which I insisted Edmonton is a better CFL market than Winnipeg, I feel obliged to point out that not since 1973 have the Bombers out-performed the Eskimos at the box office, never mind on the field. This will make it 46 successive seasons with a higher head count in E-Town, and you simply can’t argue with that. Good Ol’ Hometown is a boffo market but, as much as it pains me to say it, both E-Town and Saskatchewan are better.
So, Carli Lloyd hoofed a 55-yard field goal at a Philadelphia Eagles/Baltimore Ravens training exercise, and there’s been breathless natter about the U.S. women’s fitba star booting balls in the National Football League. Uh, not so fast says old friend Troy Westwood. “Carli Lloyd could not beat out the best competing for the job and kick in the #NFL. No chance,” he tweets. Is it because she’s a she? Or because she lacks the skill? Ol’ Lefty declined to explain why Carli would be in over her head, and I can see how someone would view his blunt analysis as sexist. Well, that ain’t Westwood. I submit that Ol’ Lefty was speaking purely from his vantage point as a former place-kicker with the Bombers, so you might want to holster any PC outrage.
Longtime NFL boot meister Adam Venatieri is among the many to weigh in on Carli’s right leg: “For you to go out and hit a ball without a rush and a snap and a hold and no get-off time and stuff, it’s different than doing live stuff. But I saw it, it was pretty impressive how far she kicked the ball.” I guess there’s only one way to know for sure: Give that girl a tryout.
Except there’s this: On the day in question, video evidence showed Lloyd whomping that 55-yarder, but we didn’t see two misses at shorter distances and at 57 yards. By her own accounting, Lloyd was 2-for-5 in pristine conditions. No pads, no defence, no urgency, and a five-yard runup to the ball. NFL kickers who go 2-for-5 also go to the unemployment queue.
Commentary on Lloyd’s kick ranged from enthusiastic to supportive to dismissive to absolute drivel. Not surprisingly, the latter was supplied by Nancy Armour of USA Today. Armour writes, “Lloyd absolutely deserves a chance with an NFL team.” Based on what? One kick? “There is little doubt Lloyd could be an NFL placekicker.” Well, actually, there’s considerable doubt. “The heckles and jeers of ignorant and misogynistic NFL fans aren’t going to faze Lloyd.” So, if Lloyd were to get booed off the field after going 2-for-5, it’s not because she’s lousy at her job, it’s because all those loutish, beer-swilling men are empty-headed oinkers? I see. Armour’s gob-smackingly uninformed piece suggests she landed her columnist gig as part of a PR stunt or she won it in a raffle. (Yes, it’s that bad, and so is she.)
On the subject of female athletes, Ponytail Puck will be coming to a neighborhood rink near you this autumn if you live in the Republic of Tranna, Hudson, N.H., Chicago, Boston and San Jose, and the ForTheGame200 boycotting players also have barnstorming plans for other locales. They’re calling it the Dream Gap Tour, and I say good for them. Stay visible. Don’t let the rabble forget about you. But here’s what scares me: There’ll be regional training centres hither and yon, two of them in The ROT, and Jayna Hefford tells The Athletic “(They could play) against men’s teams…” Whoa. Stop it right there. Jayna, head of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, might want to rethink that part of the scheme. Our Olympic distaff team is tooth-and-toenail to beat Midget boys in exhibition skirmishes, and those results are usually kept on the QT. But skating against, and possibly losing to, a bunch of beer-leaguers is a marketing grenade waiting to go ka-boom. That wouldn’t be ignored and the argument that the women “deserve” a living wage would be totally lost, if it hasn’t been already.
Why are people calling Arthur Ashe Stadium in Gotham the “biggest court” in tennis when we all know it’s Centre Court Wimbledon? In literal terms, sure, Ashe can accommodate a flock of 23,771 observers and that dwarfs the main stage at SW19 (14,979), but in stature you’ll find the “biggest court” in tennis is a lawn and it’s at the All-England Club.
I don’t get it. Why is Denis Shapovalov losing at the U.S. Open a bigger story than Bianca Andreescu winning at the U.S. Open? It shouldn’t be, of course, but Shapo’s loss to Gael Monfils was the lead story on TSN at 3 in the a.m. on Sunday and that’s just wrong.
The Minnesota Twins swatted six home runs on Saturday and lost. How do you do that?
Definition of Ruffled Feathers: See Puljujarvi, Jesse. Many among the rabble in River City believe a “fractured” dressing room undid the Winnipeg Jets last spring, in part because head coach Paul Maurice mentioned something about “ruffled feathers” in his season-over natter with news snoops, but mainly due to the narrative the Drab Slab has been spreading for five months. Now along comes Puljujarvi in E-Town to show us what ruffled feathers actually look like. Not only has the Finnish forward bailed on the Oilers, choosing to stay home and play with Oulun Karpat of the Liiga, he’ll only return to the National Hockey League if given a new postal code. Those, kids, are ruffled feathers.
Murat Ates of The Athletic has taken a deep dive into the Jets (it’s an excellent late-summer perspective), and he briefly touches on the “ruffled feathers” issue. “Let me state this clearly: I have been asked about ‘the room’ all summer and my position is the same as it’s always been; if I ever learn anything that I can fairly and accurately attribute, I’ll write that,” he scribbles. “Until then, not only do I allow for discord as a healthy component of a team’s dynamics, I expect it—Winnipeg was a bottom-third NHL team in the second half of 2018-19. That should piss people off.” So, he hasn’t sniffed out a smoking gun. No one at the Winnipeg Sun has sniffed out a smoking gun. No one at the Drab Slab has sniffed out a smoking gun. No on-air pundits have produced a smoking gun. Ergo, there is no smoking gun.
And, finally, it was 20 years tomorrow when I put Good Ol’ Hometown in the rear-view mirror and arrived in Victoria with little money, no job and no prospects for work. Since then, I’ve been an apartment block manager, a golf club maintenance/office/desktop publishing guru, an editor, a cleaner at a pub, a golf pro shop call centre/graphics guru, an antique/vintage furniture salesperson, a cleaner at a downtown eatery, a cleaner/cover girl/Jill of all trades at a gay nightclub, and I live in poverty. So why am I smiling? Because I can step outside today, take a 20-minute stroll and dip my toes into the Pacific Ocean while gazing at the Olympic Mountains and maybe observe some bald eagles or orcas. And I can do it 12 months of the year. Na, na, na, na, na.
The River City Renegade 
You must be logged in to post a comment.