Ticats’ Reinebold feels O’Shea’s pain

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This article was published 06/07/2016 (3373 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

HAMILTON — Jeff Reinebold knows.

The bleached-blond, tattooed, rock star-like coach roared into Winnipeg aboard a motorcycle to take over the Blue Bombers before the start of the 1997 campaign.

But it went from enthusiastic flash to hopeless crash. Reinebold was looking for work again 14 games into the 1998 season after guiding the team to a woeful 6-26 record.

The situation was not unlike that of current head man Mike O’Shea, who in 38 games with the Blue and Gold has a mark of 12-26.

So it was interesting to hear Reinebold, now the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ special-teams coach, talk about his time in River City before the two teams line up Thursday at Tim Hortons Field.

“I respect Mike a great deal,” Reinebold said following the Ticats’ walk-through Wednesday. “He’s a great coach, he’s been a formidable opponent as a special-teams coach for all those years. I know how he feels and I lived through what he’s experiencing right now.

“He’s going to come out of it OK because he’s a quality guy and they’ve got a good football team. I just hope they don’t become a good football team until next week.”

In his only stint as a CFL head coach, Reinebold went 4-14 in 1997 and the Bombers finished third in the East Division ahead of a Hamilton team that won just two games. Winnipeg opened the following season with 10 straight losses before beating Saskatchewan in a 36-35 squeaker. Reinebold was canned three games later, following a 35-21 loss in Hamilton.

“I know that there’s some things you can’t control — that was such a great learning experience for me,” said Reinebold. “It took me a couple of years to kind of sort through the pain of it and really get the lessons but I became a much better coach, having experienced that time there.”

Reinebold, 58, just signed a contract extension that will keep him in Hamilton through 2017. He said he can now look back fondly at his time with the Bombers.

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“Winnipeg is such an incredible city, they’ve got such passionate fans and they love their football team,” he said. “The people there were really good to me and I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for that place.”

But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hope to send his former team a special message Thursday.

“We’re going to try and pound them if we can; even if we could just beat them by one that’s enough. But if we can beat them by more that’s even better,” he said. “That’s just the competitiveness of the business.”

jeff.hamilton@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @jeffkhamilton

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Jeff Hamilton
Multimedia producer

Jeff Hamilton is a sports and investigative reporter. Jeff joined the Free Press newsroom in April 2015, and has been covering the local sports scene since graduating from Carleton University’s journalism program in 2012. Read more about Jeff.

Every piece of reporting Jeff produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.