Outgoing field boss ‘confused’ by firing

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/11/2008 (6532 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Doug Berry didn’t see it coming.

Thought he had a good year, as a matter of fact. One of his most rewarding, what with rebounding from a horrendous 1-6 start to finish 8-10.

"I’m more confused than angry," Berry told reporters Wednesday, his head probably still swirling from his sudden dismissal as head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Kinda sounds like a Bombers fan, right? Except for the angry part.

That Berry was canned so suddenly, just a few sleeps after a disappointing end to yet another lost season, was certainly not shocking. But it was somewhat surprising, given the Bombers 6-3 finish to the 2008 season.

It was believed the final few months might cut Berry some slack. Obviously, he thought so.

Which makes you wonder what it was about Berry — who finished with a 27-26-1 record in his three-year stint in Bomberville — that made him so expendable in the eyes of Bombers president and GM Lyle Bauer?

Berry said he was given no reasons for his dismissal. He should have attended Bauer’s press conference, only moments before, when the CEO told reporters that he believed the Bombers talent level wasn’t the problem. It was just that the coaching staff was unable to "extract" that performance level from team.

In other words, Bauer believes he had the horses, not the wrangler.

Championship

Bauer added that, after putting more of a happy face on the books of a once insolvent franchise, the time has come to focus more on winning a first championship since 1990. "There is one thing that hasn’t been done and we probably need a little more focus on that," he said.

So what was Berry’s downfall? After all, he’d guided the Bombers to the Grey Cup in only his second season — and losing with a rookie quarterback making his first professional start ever — before taking a step back last season.

We’re guessing that Berry’s personality played no small part. His on-going feud with former placekicker Troy Westwood was legendary. And it didn’t take Westwood long, given pen and paper, to suggest Berry had lost the team.

Personally, I always thought Berry was a bit of a social misfit; not unlike any number of head football coaches, many of them successful. But Berry never seemed to display the human touch of, say, a Dave Ritchie, or the fear factor of a Cal Murphy, the football acumen of a Wally Buono or the lovability of a Pinball Clemons.

Berry was evolving, of course, but his first few months set a tone that never really seemed to dissipate in terms of public perception.

He bristled at any criticism, to the point there callers to his open-line show every Monday were greeted with silence in response to any pointed concerns.

And what was with this inexplicable hatred of Westwood?

I remember during the 2007 Grey Cup in Toronto during the week when, just prior to a Berry press conference, the players were being herded by from one meeting room to another. I quickly grabbed Westwood to ask him a couple questions as his fellow players filed by, when out of the corner of him eye, there’s Berry having a conniption, grabbing then Bombers PR spokesman Jim Timlick in an effort, I guess, to stop the interview.

You should have seen the look on Berry’s face. He was so angry, as though he’d just seen someone set fire to his home. He was seething.

About what? A harmless interview? That Westwood might be 10 seconds late walking from one meeting room to another (which he wasn’t)?

Remember, Westwood was a well-respected, thoughtful veteran in the Bombers locker-room. Kicker or not, he was connected. Don’t think for a second that his treatment by Berry went unnoticed, regardless of how selfish professional athletes can be. And if you don’t have the troops heart, you don’t have that at all.

Berry denies this, absolutely.

"If I’d lost the locker-room and lost the team," he said Wednesday, "we never would have finished as strong as we did."

Maybe. But if the pathetic Toronto Argonauts and Hamilton Tiger-Cats — along with the listless Montreal Alouettes– weren’t on the schedule down the stretch, we’re not sure if that 6-2 would have held.

After all, when a real, motivated football team finally did come to town in the form of the Edmonton Eskimos, we all saw just how much intensity and preparation the local twelve could muster.

Bauer certainly saw, too.

So Berry paid the price. But this much is also certain. Bauer and Brendan Taman are running out of coaches to fire (that’s three now). They’re running out of quarterbacks to blame (that’s about 20 now). They’re running out of excuses, period.

Bauer is right. It’s 18 years and counting, so whatever they’re plans now, which will include restructuring Taman’s position, they better get it right.

Because if there’s any justice, it will be their last chance.

They should not be able to say they never saw it coming.

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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