Blue give pink slip to veteran Sheridan

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This article was published 01/02/2009 (6452 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

 IT’S not exactly a transaction that will send shockwaves through the Canadian Football League. In fact, most would say the marriage between Matt Sheri­dan and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers ended long before Saturday’s official divorce.

  After being in football purgatory for months, the Bombers Saturday released the eight-year veteran — a University of Manitoba product drafted and de­veloped by the club into a two-time winner of their top offensive lineman award — with the simple message from new head coach Mike Kelly that Sheri­dan, like Kevin Glenn, was ‘another guy who needed a fresh start elsewhere.’ The Bombers did try to trade him, but said there was no interest in the 31-year-old native of Montreal who grew up in Winnipeg.
 
 The move brings to an end an ugly separation between Sheridan and the Bombers that came to a head last sum­mer when the mammoth guard/centre injured his groin, then his shoulder and was then shut down by the team for the season. In November, Sheridan criti­cized the organization’s handling of his shoulder injury, essentially assuring he would not be back in 2009 even with a coaching and management change.
 
 “Disappointment is one of the ways I would describe how it ended,” said Sheridan who, this time last year, was one of the team’s ‘Big Three’ free-agent signings along with Dan Goodspeed and Tom Canada. “I guess I’m still process­ing it on some levels. You don’t want to find yourself in a position where you’re forced to choose between your liveli­hood and your principles but, unfortu­nately, that in my opinion is what hap­pened.”

  A deep-thinker type who has many interests outside of the game, Sheri­dan still figures he’s got some football in him. If healthy, he could get another look. One possible destination could be Hamilton, where former Bomber O-line coach Mike Gibson is now the Tiger­Cats’ offensive co-ordinator. Gibson raved about Sheridan’s skill set when the two worked together in Winnipeg.
 
“I feel in my gut that I’ve still got something left to put on the football field. I feel like there’s still something to prove, if you want to put it that way. Most certainly, I don’t want the end of my career to be the situation that tran­spired at the end of this season. For lack of a better term, ‘I ain’t going out like that.’ A lot of that will depend on what may present itself in the coming months. While I’m preparing to play at some point this season, I’m not neces­sarily holding my breath.”
 
Meanwhile, director of football oper­ations Ross Hodgkinson denied reports that defensive end Canada had been re­leased by the team. That said, Canada’s future with the team is iffy as the team attempted to trade him to the Ticats last September before it was discovered he had an enlarged spleen..