Bloodied Bombers get up off the canvas

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/10/2009 (5902 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

You know that part of the movie Rocky where Sly Stallone’s face has been turned to mush by Apollo Creed?

Rocky’s eyes are almost swollen shut by the beating he’d taken and Balboa was screaming, “Cut me, Mic! Cut me!!”

It’s almost too painful to watch, right? You wanted Mic to throw in the towel. For mercy’s sake. Just end it all, and Rocky can go back to a loser collecting debts for local gangsters.

We all know the ending, how Rocky scrapes himself off the canvas and, spitting blood, miraculously pulls off the greatest comeback in fake pugilistic history.

Question: Not to get ahead of ourselves, but could that be the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ season?

Bear with us, please. Because it wasn’t so long ago that the Bombers looked a lot more like the side of beef than Rocky. They were 3-8, on the fast track to Nowheresville and widely considered the CFL’s resident punch line.

The only headlines this team could make were made up with words like “Embarrassment” or “Disgrace”.

Playoffs? What are you, hard of thinking? The only “P”-word being used to describe the Bombers a month ago was “P-uuuu.”

But what are we to make of these once-bedraggled Bombers now, what with a two-game winning streak (hey, we don’t ask for much anymore) and a 5-8 record after Friday night’s 27-17 victory over Edmonton? Sure, it’s admittedly far from awe-inspiring, but at least trending towards respectable.

Not only that, but the Bombers’ next two assignments are — relax now — decidedly winnable: off to face the 6-6 Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Steeltown next long weekend before hosting the B.C. Lions (5-7 prior to last night) two weeks hence.

Perhaps two straight Bombers victories in a nightmarish season can trick the brain. After all, if you’re starving on a desert island, even a lizard can look delicious. Perspectives can get skewed.

It’s just that only a fortnight ago, there was open talk — in this space, too — suggesting that the Bombers, then 3-8 and running out of their own feet to shoot, should start to focus on next year. Given the mounting and depressing evidence, it was a reasonable argument. I mean, when your post-season hopes run along the lines of, “Yeah, we suck. But those other guys suck even more,” you’ve got yourself some problems.

Now there’s every chance, should the Ticats lose in Calgary tonight, that the local 12 could be one game out of second place in the East, with the opportunity to pull even next Monday.

Talk about Thanksgiving.

Maybe it’s just a big tease. But to underestimate the critical nature of the Bombers’ modest winning streak is to ignore the enormous stakes for the franchise itself. There were fewer than 22,000 tickets sold to Friday night’s contest, a troubling and visual indication of how dire this team’s fortunes (and business) have become. At this rate, the winner of the 50-50 draw is going to OWE money.

But if crowd size is directly related to victories, then the Bombers have at least avoided what could have been utter disaster. On the contrary, in fact, they’ve somehow managed to breathe new life, no matter how tenuous, into a season many considered lost.

So let’s break with tradition and throw Mike Kelly a bone. The Bombers’ head coach, for all his rookie mistakes, did, in the face of self-inflicted adversity, manage to prevent his football team from degenerating into complete chaos. And, who knows, maybe Kelly even learned a few hard lessons along the way.

Regardless, I’ll bet that the coach can relate to the Rocky analogy, especially the first few rounds. Because if the Bombers’ 2009 season had been a fight, it would have been stopped a long time ago.

Give them all the credit. Nobody threw in the towel. Kelly and Co. took the body blows, staggered, took a few standing 10-counts, but have survived to wait in their corner for the next round to begin.

We know, we know. Miracle comebacks are the stuff of make-believe.

There never was a Rocky Balboa, really. Never came off the canvas for real.

Fair enough. But at least the Bombers have earned the possibility, no matter how slim, to write their own ending.

Once, the eyes of this beaten-down football team were swollen shut. A growing number of their shrinking fan base probably wished theirs were, too.

For what it’s worth, at least now they can see again.

randy.turner@freepress.mb.ca

Randy Turner
Reporter

Randy Turner spent much of his journalistic career on the road. A lot of roads. Dirt roads, snow-packed roads, U.S. interstates and foreign highways. In other words, he got a lot of kilometres on the odometer, if you know what we mean.

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