Mr. Brown is feeling down

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This article was published 28/11/2011 (5179 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

VANCOUVER — It all ended for Doug Brown the way it has always ended for Doug Brown in a Winnipeg Blue Bombers uniform — in disappointment.

The 11-year Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive tackle — who had said Sunday’s Grey Cup was the final game of his career — will now, in all likelihood, retire with a certain spot waiting for him in the CFL Hall of Fame, but no Grey Cup ring after a 34-23 Bombers loss to the B.C. Lions here in the 99th Grey Cup at BC Place.

Brown accepted a hug from another veteran of the CFL wars — B.C. offensive lineman Angus Reid — as he made his way to the Bombers’ locker-room here last night and then this 6-8, 290-pound monster of a man dissolved into tears,

Were the tears because he had just lost his third Grey Cup game, Brown was asked in the locker-room afterward, or because he had just played the final game of a remarkable career?

“Hard to say, man. Like I said, I’m just disappointed for the 2011 Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I thought this group, because of what we’ve gone through and what we’ve suffered through and how, when the chips were down, we were able to respond… But to fall short on this day of all days, that’s hard to take right now…

“It’s overwhelming, the gravity of the situation right now. I’m just trying to focus in on this being the last game of the season for this team. I don’t really want to comment or think about anything else right now.”

Brown was asked if he’d prepared himself for the prospect that it might end the way it did, playing as he did for a team that hasn’t won a Grey Cup since 1990 and who were seven-point underdogs in this game. “I don’t know. I like to think I did, but it doesn’t feel like it right now. I just kind of feel like I’m in shock that we had such an opportunity in front of us and to let it get away like this, it’s hard to comprehend.”

Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice was asked if he felt a particular sense of loss Sunday night for a player who had a chance to author a fairy-tale ending to his career — a long-awaited Grey Cup title on the same field he won a high school championship growing up just down the road in Port Moody.

“I feel privileged to have been able to have been his head coach for two years,” LaPolice said. “He’s a consumate pro. They don’t come around very often.”

With another nightmare ending to another season in a Bombers uniform, Brown was asked if he might reopen the door to playing one more season, even a tiny sliver.

“I just don’t know if I can physically do it anymore,” he said. “But like I say, I don’t want to think about that right now. This is enough disappointment for one day.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca