It’s a reverse! Just one win and Winnipeg is your oyster

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/09/2009 (5847 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There are currently 35 players on the 2009 Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ roster that had never played for the team prior to this season. Many of these players came on board in the off-season, and others have been signed as the season has unfolded. What all 35 should now begin to understand is how radically different an environment it is in Manitoba when you are winning and when you are losing.

Even I have to admit, because we hadn’t won since before the bye week, that I was starting to forget how dramatically the landscape changes when you are successful over the course of three hours, one night a week.

It starts in the locker-room. When you lose nobody is in any hurry to go anywhere. The players take their time getting showered, getting ice and treatment, and generally mope and shuffle around the carpeted floor getting ready to leave the stadium for the night. The lingering probably has a lot to do with the fact that the only place you are free and safe from scrutiny and scowls is the sanctity of that locker-room. Once you leave, as a member of a 3-8 football team you are judged and scrutinized, to varying degrees… and rightfully so.

On the night of a victory over what was now, categorically, the worst team in the CFL, and a result that only puts the home team at a meager 4-8 on the season, the changes are much more pronounced.

The locker-room cleans out in half the time, because the players are eager to bask in the glow from a win, regardless of the opponent and the season standings.

People everywhere around you are smiling, albeit it only for a night, and it reaches far beyond the stadium, restaurants and bars you may visit the evening of a victory.

On Sunday, my dog took me for a walk around all the man-made lakes in Lindenwoods where we had no fewer than 10 people congratulate me on our team’s performance the night before. These are people I have never met who took it upon themselves to approach and express their pride and satisfaction with your previous night’s work. They are all upbeat and the fact that there are still twice as many losses buffering that win is secondary to them. All that seemingly matters is for the moment their football team was successful.

A trip to my local Safeway later that day was much the same.

“Congratulations on the win Doug,” was what I heard from numerous shoppers who would stop me in the middle of an aisle and offer words of encouragement and relief after a tough-fought 29-24 victory.

Even the world on the Internet turns topsy-turvey after a win. For much of the season, my Facebook page usually attracts a few words of encouragement before the game and then, as has been the case for most of the year, turns into a ghost town after any one of our defeats. But once again, win a game, albeit the smallest of first steps in a season with six games remaining, and my Facebook wall gets splashed all over with plenty of celebratory remarks and congratulations.

The thing to take from all of this good will and revelry after only the fourth win in 12 weeks of football, is the beginning of an understanding of what it is like around here when you win more than you lose, when you position yourself to take a run at the playoffs, and God forbid, when you actually end the championship drought that has been ongoing since 1990.

Make it to that point my friends, and the people at the park will walk your dog for you, the people at the supermarket will kiss you and pay for your groceries, and you will own the keys to this town for as long as you care to stay.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.