Mack the Knife starts cutting with Murphy

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/01/2010 (6089 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Back-to-back sub-.500 seasons, back-to-back off-seasons that saw head coaches fired, and now a new football czar in Bomberland could spell the beginning of a bloody next couple of weeks.

Bombers vice-president and general manager of football operations Joe Mack waited less than 24 hours to make the decision to fire director of player personnel John Murphy and, reading into his words the day he was introduced as the boss, this could be just the beginning of change within the club’s football operation.

"Football and all sports is a difficult business. I am sensitive to the fact the current staff is under a lot of pressure. They have careers and families. I intend to — and unfortunately I won’t be able to do it right away — to sit down and interview and debrief each one individually," Mack said.

"But they have to understand a head coach has to have his own lieutenants. From a practical standpoint, you can’t ask someone to be accountable for what’s on the field if he can’t have what he feels he needs as assistant coaches. But they have to understand that."

Murphy was fired over the phone by interim CEO Jim Bell and not in person by Mack, although both men were scheduled to be in Mobile, Ala., this week for the Senior Bowl.

Reports from around the CFL say the Murphy divorce was not without acrimony, and already in dispute is the money the personnel director is owed on the remainder of his contract, as well as travel expenses incurred in his role as the club’s top scout.

Murphy has some travel booked that he expected to make on behalf of the club, but was told by the organization that he’d be on the hook for any plane tickets purchased that have not been used to this point in his role with the Bombers. Reached in Orlando, where he had been scouting the Shrine Game for the Bombers, he said that after consulting with his lawyer, he would not comment on his firing.

"I’ve got nothing to say right now," he said.

Hired a year ago to replace Brendan Taman, Murphy spent much of the last two months helping to keep the Bomber football operations department running while the search for a new football boss was ongoing.

He helped in the negotiations and signing of the team’s top two free agents, defensive back/kick returner Jovon Johnson and kicker Alexis Serna, and was instrumental in the last regime’s efforts to make the team younger, faster and more salary-cap friendly.

But he was also seen by many in the organization as a "Mike Kelly guy" and the club, quite obviously, is eager to head in a different direction.

Meanwhile, reports are circulating that certain members of the team’s coaching staff have been told "to begin looking for other work," suggesting Mack wants the staff cleaned up before any new head coach is hired.

 

One staffer in particular, defensive secondary and special teams coach Rick Campbell, is rumoured to have already been given a nudge out the door. This adds credence to reports that Mack is well down the road towards hiring Greg Marshall as his head coach. Marshall and Campbell worked together in Edmonton and do not have a good relationship.

"We’ll let the process play out," Campbell said. "I’ve been told I do a good job and they like me. But some people think there is a toxic situation in the locker-room and they’d like to go outside the organization for a new coach.

"At one point, I was encouraged to apply for the head coaching position and there was talk of me being promoted to assistant head coach. Now they want to go in a different direction. Some board members want Joe Mack to go in a certain direction. I don’t want to run the organization through the mud. I’m proud of the way the defence played last year, of the job I’ve done and the way I’ve handled myself in the last month."

Murphy’s dismissal leaves director of football administration Ross Hodgkinson the lone leftover from last year’s management team. The longtime staffer, who broke in with the club as a trainer and has climbed to assistant GM status, is now invaluable with his knowledge of the team’s roster, contracts, salary cap and all things logistical.

The coaching staff, however, is a different issue. Mack is on the record as saying his new head coach will be free to make whatever moves deemed necessary in that department. The club reportedly owes close to $500,000 in assistant coaches contracts, but the board of directors has signed off on eating any and all of that if Mack and his new coach feel that is required.

gary.lawless@freepress.mb.ca ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca