Retirement made sense for Renaud

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This article was published 06/02/2015 (4220 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More than half a decade later, Mike Renaud still remembers the day he learned he would ply his trade in Winnipeg, the day that changed his life around.

It was June 13, 2009, midway through training camp that year. Four months earlier, the Ottawa-raised punter had signed with Calgary and Western Canada was still a whole new world to him — up until that point, Renaud said, he’d never been further west than Sudbury, Ont.

On that day, Stampeders vice-president Jim Barker called him into the office.

“(He) said, ‘I have good news and bad news,'” Renaud recalled. “‘The good news is, you’ll be playing in the CFL. The bad news is, it won’t be as a Stampeder.’ I said, ‘Where the heck am I going now?’ “

He wouldn’t change a thing, now. Days later, a Bombers employee picked him up at the airport and that is how Renaud became a Winnipegger, and a Blue Bomber.

Now, after six seasons with the club, the football part of his life is over.

On Thursday, the Bombers announced that Renaud, 31, would retire from football after punting in 86 games and 28,490 yards in blue and gold, the fourth-highest totals of any punter in franchise history.

If it wasn’t for the hamstring injury that knocked him out last year, he might have finished higher.

“Maybe, a couple more weeks or a season, I could have been second all-time,” quipped Renaud at a jovial press conference at Investors Group Field. “Not that I would think I could ever catch Bob (Cameron).”

No matter. Even before the 2014 season started, Renaud thought it would likely be his last. His friend, former Bombers linebacker Pierre-Luc Labbe, had just retired after six seasons to pursue a career with the RCMP, and Renaud thought the approach made a lot of sense.

And like every athlete, he know that the pro game wasn’t going to last forever.

“I chose the day and I take pride in that,” Renaud said. “I was lucky enough to play six years… it’s such a ruthless sport and a business at times, that you don’t really know if you’ll get that opportunity… at the end of the day, I decided to stick to my plan, regardless of injury or not.”

He’d also already proved something important to himself. In 2009, Renaud suffered a serious ACL injury that threatened to put his career on ice forever.

The next year, after intense rehabilitation with Bombers medical and athletic staff, he returned to the field and was named an East Division all-star.

‘I was lucky enough to play six years… it’s such a ruthless sport and a business at times, that you don’t really know if you’ll get that opportunity… at the end of the day, I decided to stick to my plan, regardless of injury or not’

— Mike Renaud

Besides, Renaud recently got married to his wife Jill, a Winnipegger. He’d been working the last couple of years with Enns Brothers, where he will now pursue a full-time career as a marketing manager for farming equipment — so yeah, he’s basically a Manitoban now.

And now, his Bombers jersey will rest in a frame on his wall, instead of on his back.

Blue Bombers CEO Wade Miller presented Renaud with the memento Thursday.

It was a bittersweet moment, Renaud agreed, but “it’s something that I’ll treasure forever.”

On that note, is there any chance the punter will keep his leg in shape, just in case some ill befalls kicker-punter Lirim Hajrullahu?

“There’s no contingency plan here,” he said before he started laughing. “But it happened before with Troy (Westwood), right, when I got hurt in 2009. Hey, those things run through your mind. It’d be cool if they call me in Week 18, so I can have a good playoff run and win a Grey Cup, that’d be great. Otherwise, don’t bother.”

melissa.martin@freepress.mb.ca