Friday the 13th for Blue

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/08/2010 (5745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Odd that there was so much yakking in Bomberville this week about finishing.

You know, killer instinct and all. Closing games when it counted.

There were analogies made to sharks and gladiators and chainsaw-wielding masked men in slasher flicks.

Hey, not for nothing, but here’s a novel idea: How about starting instead?

Because for the umpteenth time this season, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers — perhaps in honour of Retro Week — started like a ’77 Gremlin. In February.

How slow, you ask? The construction on the new football stadium started faster. Really.

Maybe we should have seen this coming. Because one of those fictional "finishers" the Bombers wanted to emulate was in the mold of Jason from all those Friday the 13th flicks.

So they take to the field at Canad Inns Stadium on Friday the 13th. And just moments before opening kickoff, the Bombers announce that newly-acquired placekicker Louie Sakoda — signed just a few days ago to replaced the jettisoned Alexis Serna — was scratched due to a pulled calf muscle.

Sakoda’s jersey number? Yeah, it was 13.

And then it got worse.

When Hamilton Tiger-Cats quarterback Kevin Glenn wasn’t torching the Winnipeg secondary, the Bombers offence was busily committing turnovers — three in the first half alone.

It was 14-0 Cats less than five minutes in and 21-7 on the first play of the second quarter and 32-14 at the half.

Brutal, especially considering the massive implications of losing the season series to the Tiger-Cats 1-3; especially given that the Bombers’ next four games will be played against opponents who, as of Friday night, were a combined 14-5 (Montreal, Saskatchewan, Toronto).

Where was the urgency? Why would a team so desperate for a victory come out of the gate making the Keystone Kops look like the Israeli secret police?

This isn’t a new development, of course. This is a Bombers squad that ominously gave up the touchdown return on the opening kick-off of the 2010 season. They’ve pretty much been playing uphill ever since.

No question, the Bombers have been game. There’s no quit in them. Even after that disastrous start, the home team, with backup pivot Steven Jyles called from the bullpen just before the end of the first half, pulled to within 32-21 late in the third quarter.

But the hole the Bombers so furiously dug themselves was just too deep. Again.

Look, it’s not like the Tiger-Cats don’t deserve the lion’s share of credit. They simply whupped the Bombers, plain and simple. Indeed, Mr. Glenn seems to have made it a personal career goal to haunt the team that unceremoniously cut him loose a few years back.

That doesn’t forgive the home team’s flat-lining performance, however. Neither does it give any confidence that the Bombers, under rookie head coach Paul LaPolice, are making progress. That’s unsettling, since the Bombers have a recent history of going though head coaches like Elizabeth Taylor goes through husbands.

But here’s the hard truth: The Bombers started the season eating dust and now they’re dead last in the East at 2-5 with several street fights looming on the horizon.

Hey, Bombers fans, you think it sucks now? Close your eyes and imagine 3-8 or 2-9.

Because that’s exactly where the Bombers are headed, and this season could be a lost cause before the end of September.

Yeah, it’s the CFL, where even the bottomfeeders can cling to slim hopes of a post-season with even the most marginal of win-loss records.

But in the end, a football season is just a macrocosm of a game, isn’t it? Put yourself in a large enough deficit and the rest is just Hail Marys and wishful thinking.

Sure, it’s only mid-August. Plenty of games left. Almost two-thirds of a season, in fact.

Chances are, that’s precisely what the Bombers were telling themselves at half-time on Friday the 13th. Probably still believed they had a shot.

Instead, a team that can’t start was already finished.

And all the gladiators and sharks couldn’t have saved them at all.

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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