That was then, T.O. is now

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/09/2010 (5850 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Paul LaPolice stood in front of a row of television cameras, his brow furrowed, his face stone-cold serious.

And over the course of a 12-minute media scrum Monday afternoon the Bomber boss refused to gush or gloat in the wake of the 31-2 Banjo Bowl blowout win over the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

He wouldn’t bite when asked whether the victory could mark a second-half turnaround or provide a new lease on the season.

“It’s a new lease on this WEEK,” he said.

The most complete Bomber effort of the year?

“Yeah, it was,” he offered and then stopped short of adding any insight.

Will it be hard to repeat that?

“I hope not. I hope that’s the average, that’s the norm,” LaPolice said with a shrug. “We talked to our defence all week and said. ‘A lot of people said you played really well last week (in the Labour Day loss). But that’s not good enough for us. We want you to play better.’ And they responded and played even better. Those are the expectations we have: to play consistent football and play on all three phases.”

And so it went over the course of LaPolice’s daily chat as he stiff-armed any opportunity to boast about his team. You get the impression that the head coach, to borrow an old line, celebrated Sunday’s victory by heading out and painting the town beige.

All of this is by design, of course. LaPolice may be a rookie head coach, but he knows a 3-7 record is hardly worth thumping chests about. And so he’ll keep it low key leading up to Sunday’s critical contest in Toronto against the Argonauts and make sure his charges do as well.

“It’s how we’ve done it all year,” said LaPolice. “Our success is a one-week thing. We have to make sure we come back and be prepared and ready to go compete and have three great days of practice and then go play Toronto. This is one game out of an 18-game season. You can’t look past it.”

Here’s the lay of the land for The Bomb Squad:

— At 3-7 they trail the Argos and Hamilton Tiger-Cats, both 5-5, by four points. The Bombers are done with Hamilton and have already lost the season series. Winnipeg has two more games remaining with the Argos after losing the first meeting 36-34.

— The Bombers are tied with the B.C. Lions, also 3-7, and are two points ahead of the Edmonton Eskimos, 2-8. But in order for Winnipeg to qualify as a cross-over playoff team, they’d have to finish ahead of both the Esks and Leos. The Bombers have two more games against B.C. and one more vs. Edmonton.

And so LaPolice will continue with his weekly mantra when the team returns to work on Wednesday by defining their reality and then giving them hope.

“We’re going to watch the (Banjo Bowl) highlight tape,” he said. “We’re going to watch all the great plays set to music and say that was a great win. But it really is just two points out of the course of a lot of football games. We have to focus in on Toronto.

“If you don’t take care of business against Toronto, it doesn’t really matter what happened last week. The players have to be process-oriented to the next opponent. I’m sure they’re taking the next two days to be excited and watch the film and see what they can do and get better at. But they better forget about that game because Toronto is a good football team, it’s a team we didn’t beat earlier in the year. I know they’ll have confidence from this next game. I know they’ll be excited and ready for the game and all those things. But they’d better be focus on getting back to work.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca