Harris eager for hometown debut in Blue

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This article was published 06/06/2016 (3477 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Andrew Harris was a Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan long before he was a Winnipeg Blue Bombers player.

And so yeah, the Bombers running back has been thinking a lot lately about what it will be like to make his Bombers debut at Investors Group Field Wednesday night when the Bombers open the 2016 CFL pre-season with a home tilt against the Montreal Alouettes.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun. Obviously, it’s pre-season so it’s not going to be as intense…but it’s going to be an exciting day and an exciting time for me,” Harris said Monday following his club’s final full practice before facing the Als.

“At the end of the day it’s still just football, but there’s obviously a lot more on the line for me and lot more importance for me being a hometown kid and just being such a big fan as a youngster…

“It’s kind of surreal.”

It’s not clear yet just how much Harris and the rest of the projected Winnipeg Blue Bombers starters this season will actually play on Wednesday.

The Bombers have an unusual pre-season schedule. They are the very first game on the entire CFL pre-season schedule and then they play their second and final pre-season game just five days later, next Monday in Ottawa.

But after that whirlwind of activity, the Bombers then get 11 days off before they finally return to the field June 24, opening their regular season schedule at home against the Montreal Alouettes.

And so put it altogether and Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea has to juggle his need to evaluate talent with his need to get his starters reps, while at the same time not burning anyone out in the early flurry of action and making sure everyone is sharp when the football actually matters.

Harris says he’d like to play on Wednesday as long as starting QB Drew Willy is in the game, but it’s not clear how long that will be. O’Shea refused to say Monday how he will handle his QB rotation on Wednesday and was coy about how much action his starters will get.

“We met last night to talk about those kinds of things,” said O’Shea. “But we’ll have another meeting and re-evaluate based on the injuries and more information. We’ll probably have it honed down at gametime.”

Among those game-time decisions, O’Shea said, will be whether slotback Weston Dressler will play. Dressler did not practice again on Monday and O’Shea said he won’t decide until Wednesday afternoon whether Dressler will make his Bombers debut this week.

O’Shea said linebacker Sam Hurl, who was also again absent from practice on Monday, is not expected to play Wednesday.

The list of injuries continued to swell at practice on Monday. Linebacker Kyle Knox — a former NFLer from whom much is expected this season — sustained what appeared to be a leg injury on Monday and left early.

Knox missed the entire first week of training camp and was only taking part in his second practice when the injury occurred. O’Shea said it’s not clear how serious Knox’s injury is but the player was clearly frustrated, slamming his helmet to the turf afterward.

Meanwhile, the Bombers on Monday announced a couple of tweaks to their game-day transportation plan this year. The club says it has cut the number of park and ride routes this season from nine to seven with the elimination of the Garden City Shopping Centre and Kildonan Place locations.

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The club says fans who used those routes in previous seasons are encouraged to use McPhillips Street Station and Club Regent routes respectively as alternates this year.

Bombers CEO Wade Miller said in a statement that reducing the number of park and ride routes this season will lead to cost-savings for the Bombers.

“We are always looking at ways to reduce the time it takes for our fans to transport to and from games, as well as provide fans a number of transportation alternatives. We feel that reducing the number of park and rides should help speed up the existing process, and also reduce costs of the transportation plan.”

email: paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @PaulWiecek