B.C. gets Lions share of player awards

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This article was published 17/11/2006 (6909 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is still some rather pressing business to deal with on Grey Cup Sunday, but if this keeps up the B.C. Lions may need to charter a cargo plane to haul all their hardware back to Vancouver.

The Lions, as they have done on the football field throughout the 2006 season, thoroughly dominated the proceedings at Thursday night’s Rogers CFL Player Awards at the Centennial Concert Hall by capturing five of the six individual honours.

Slotback Geroy Simon was named the league’s Most Outstanding Player and was joined in the winner’s circle by double-winner Brent Johnson, the Most Outstanding Defensive and Canadian Player, Rob Murphy as the Most Outstanding Offensive Lineman and Aaron Hunt as the Most Outstanding Rookie.

Simon also took home the Rogers Fans’ Choice Award while Lions defensive back Mark Washington took home the Tom Pate Award. The only non-Lion to win was Calgary Stampeders placekicker Sandro DeAngelis, voted the Most Outstanding Special Teams Player.

The voting was conducted by 47 members of The Football Reporters of Canada.

“When I first came to the CFL my goal was to receive for over 1,000 yards. And now to be named the Most Outstanding Player of a league… it’s been amazing,” said Simon, who received 44 first-place votes.

“I’ve been saying it all year: this has been a dream season. We just have to finish it off now. It’s a good feeling. I’m on cloud nine right now but we’ve got to come down pretty quick because we’ve got a game to play in two days.”

The Lions domination meant all three Winnipeg Blue Bomber nominees — Charles Roberts (Outstanding), Barrin Simpson (Defence) and Doug Brown (Canadian) — were kept out of the winner’s circle.

And watching the Lions dominate the awards reminded Brown of a similar situation. Five years ago the Bombers dominated the Most Outstanding Player Awards, but were beaten on Grey Cup Sunday by the Calgary Stampeders.

“The only warning the B.C. Lions have to be leery of is I had the eerie sensation back in 2001 when we cleaned up a lot of hardware and it didn’t bode so well the next day for us,” said Brown. “Hopefully, that same trap will not unveil itself for the Lions because they did pretty well.”

“I’m definitely happy for them,” added Simpson of his former Lion teammates. “Those guys are definitely well deserving and I felt they would be right there as a team. And they’re here.”

Roberts, meanwhile, had already changed out of his tuxedo within 10 minutes of the show’s conclusion.

“I’m Houdini,” he said. “That was a super-imposed image of me sitting there losing. It was expected. He had a good season, I can’t take that from him. It felt good to be recognized and get to the next level. All I can do is keep chugging up the charts and hopefully one day I’ll win it.”

The only Bomber representatives to walk away with any hardware were the men who call themselves ‘The Winnipeg Blue Bomber Ghosts’, who were presented with the Commissioner’s Award for their special contributions to the CFL. The ‘Ghosts’ and former club presidents and chairmen of the Bombers who are still actively involved in work for the club.