Blue married to the idea of fresh start

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/05/2011 (5610 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s Paul LaPolice’s job to coax and to prod his Winnipeg Blue Bombers squad one moment and then throw an encouraging arm around it the next.

That’s the approach of any head coach who wants to squeeze the very best out of his lot during the good times and in bad, in the sickness and health that makes up any one football season.

So here’s the dilemma LaPolice and his staff must deal with as training camp begins next week: Just how do they deal with the failure that was the Bombers’ 2010 campaign, a season that featured nine losses by four points or less?

Do they:

A. Conveniently forget about the entire nightmare under a ‘new-season, new-players’ approach?

B. Throw it in the faces of his troops every single day as a form of cruel punishment/motivation?

C. Arrange for a group rate with the team shrink for those who survived last season?

D. All of the above.

“In one of our first team meetings I’m going to use the words T-B-U,” said LaPolice Tuesday in a CFL-sponsored state-of-the-franchise conference call. “Those things are absolutely true, but they’re useless.

“They were close but they were still losses. We have to understand we’re not in this to get close, we’re in this to win. I hope we’ve learned from our mistakes and learned how to finish some of these situations.”

The Bombers have been relatively quiet this offseason, choosing to re-sign and extend the contracts of their core while working to rebuild their Canadian content through the draft. To that end, Bomber brass provided an update on a couple of key components:

— Contract discussions are inching closer to a new deal with No. 1 overall pick Henoc Muamba and the club expects him to be signed before camp:

“We’re having very productive conversations and we don’t anticipate any real problems,” said GM Joe Mack. “We’re definitely in the same ball park in regards to what our expectations are.”

— The club is very interested in forfeiting a 2012 draft pick on Central Michigan receiver Kito Poblah, the gem available in this Friday’s CFL supplemental draft.

“Kito’s had a really good career, he was very productive all three years and was a captain his senior year,” said Mack. “He’s a quality individual, we’ve done a lot of research on him and we’ll probably finalize it in the next couple of days.

“Any time you get an opportunity to get a talented, non-import player it’s a good thing. We’re excited to see where it falls out and we’re certainly going to do a lot of due diligence on Kito before the draft.”

Not surprisingly, Bomber president Jim Bell was asked to comment on news of the NHL’s imminent return to Winnipeg and how that might affect the football club. Bell reiterated what he said earlier this offseason: the Bombers and Jets co-existed before and they will again.

Worth noting: the Bombers have already eclipsed last year’s season-ticket total of 17,900 and will continue to sell packages up until June 23.

“The way we look at that is as a club we have a solid business plan going forward with respect to our new stadium, with respect to how we’ve gone about our business within the city of Winnipeg and province of Manitoba,” he said. “Will there be an impact with the NHL returning to Winnipeg? There may be. But our feeling within the management of the Winnipeg Football Club is there is room for three between the Moose, the Goldeyes and the Blue Bombers.

“We feel comfortable going forward, we have a very loyal and committed fan base. We feel that with the partnership we have with our community as a whole, we don’t feel threatened. It’ll be very workable for us as a club and we look forward to that.”

BLUE NOTES: The Bombers are not interested in kicker Sandro DeAngelis, released Tuesday by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats… Here’s LaPolice summing up the Steven Jyles’ trade and the club’s QB depth: “If we never move on from people, we will never let the new leaders show up.”

ed.tait@freepress.mb.ca