And on to glory… or not

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/06/2015 (3768 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is more than a little symmetry to the fact the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are hosting the Grey Cup on the 25th anniversary of the last time they won the Grey Cup.

If you were putting together the makings of a great party, that wouldn’t be a bad start. Just picture it: A long-suffering fan base takes to Portage and Main on the final Sunday of November to celebrate their first CFL title in a quarter century, won moments earlier just a few miles up the road in front of a delirious hometown crowd.

You’d probably be able to get a beer, is what we’re saying.

It would be a dream finish to a dream season and you’ve got to figure that track has played more than a few times lately on the eyelids of Wade Miller as he lies tucked under the sheets in his jammies.

But there’s a thin line between dreams and nightmares, of course, and picture that same movie — only with Saskatchewan Roughrider fans doing the partying at Portage and Main — and, well, Miller’s jammies are now soaked in a cold sweat.

All of which is an exceedingly round-about way of getting us to the fact the Bombers’ seemingly never-ending quest to end the longest continuous Grey Cup drought in the CFL gets underway in earnest tonight when the club plays its first pre-season game of 2015 at Varsity Stadium in Toronto against the Argonauts.

The consensus in CFL circles is all those player moves Bombers GM Kyle Walters made in the off-season have the Bombers heading into the 2015 season as, by far, the most improved team in the CFL.

But that’s on paper. And it’s not until we can get our first good look at this team — or at least parts of it — on the field tonight that we can judge whether all those changes and all that promise and all that potential on paper really is substantial enough to take a team that went 7-11 last season and missed the playoffs for the third year in a row all the way to Portage and Main on the last Sunday in November.

And that’s not just us talking — Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea said almost exactly the same thing Monday morning after putting his charges through one final light practice at the University of Manitoba before boarding a plane for Toronto.

“We need to find out what these guys do when the lights come on,” O’Shea said of a very green 55-man roster he will take with him to Toronto.

“We’ve seen them obviously from Florida to practice here in rookie camp to practice in training camp. And does that change or does it just verify what we see?

“Sometimes it changes. Sometimes the lights come on and guys shrink a little bit. And sometimes a bunch of guys rise to the occasion and make plays.”

‘We need to find out what these guys do when the lights come on… Sometimes the lights come on and guys shrink a little bit. And sometimes a bunch of guys rise to the occasion and make plays’

— Bombers coach Mike O’Shea

While there will definitely be lights at Varsity Stadium tonight and they will most assuredly be on, it’s not clear how hot or bright they will be, at least metaphorically speaking, at a venue that will hold barely 5,000 people.

While the Argos have new ownership and a new home beginning in the 2016 season at the previously soccer-only BMO Field, they remain for this season at least still a dysfunctional organization, as evidenced by the fact the CFL team in the country’s biggest city is playing a game tonight in a stadium smaller than most of the players on the field — at least the American ones — have seen since high school.

The fact tonight’s game also isn’t being televised by TSN (but is being streamed on TSN.ca) means it’s going to be scrutinized by fewer eyeballs than a guy such as quarterback Drew Willy has had watch him play since probably his Pop Warner days.

Still, even if it’s being played in a closet, combat is combat and all those exciting new players Walters and O’Shea and Miller are hoping will finally lead this team to the long-awaited promised land are going to be tested in a way they haven’t until today.

It’s a short drive from Investors Group Field to Portage and Main, but the journey from here to there — as Bombers fans know better than any others in the CFL — is long and hard and full of unexpected potholes.

It promises to be an interesting ride — and it starts tonight.

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek