Bombers saturated with top prospects

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This article was published 04/06/2011 (5551 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

NEVER, that’s when.

That was the definitive answer from Bombers assistant GM Ross Hodgkinson this week when he was asked the last time he could recall the Bombers headed into training camp with this many blue-chip prospects.

“Without a doubt — without a doubt at all — this is as good as I can remember,” Hodgkinson, entering his 26th year with the Bombers, said as he considered the club’s plethora of rookie riches.

The Bombers will effectively have three freshly minted first-rounders on the field when they open camp at Winnipeg Stadium at 9:30 a.m. Sunday — linebacker Henoc Muamba, the first overall pick in the 2011 CFL Canadian Draft; receiver Jade Etienne, who the Bombers took fourth overall with the first round pick they acquired from Toronto in the Steven Jyles trade; and Kito Poblah, who is expected to join the club this weekend after being selected in the supplemental draft on Monday and for whom the Bombers have surrendered their first -round pick in next year’s draft.

That is a lot of fresh, young and — perhaps most important — Canadian talent heading into the 2011 season. But there is a formidable chasm between the university/college game and the CFL and the odds of all three making a seamless transition into the Bombers regular lineup this season are long indeed.

Etienne, for one, has struggled just to catch the ball through the first two days of rookie camp, prompting head coach Paul LaPolice to sit him down Thursday and give him a pep talk. “Just relax, man — just relax,” LaPolice recalled of the conversation. “He’s got a lot of nerves, just like all these guys do. We sign all these receivers and suddenly they can’t catch.”

And the rookie wideouts aren’t the only ones feeling a bit overwhelmed.

“When they told me about all the stuff I was going to get, I knew it was a lot,” Muamba said Thursday. “But once it actually comes, it hits you. You have to sit back, think about it and then just try to apply it as best you can on the field.”

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When the Bombers took Muamba first overall, they flew him and some family to Winnipeg, picked them up at the airport in a limousine and then checked them into the Presidential Suite of a downtown hotel.

The star treatment is now over, however, for a man who is now officially just another raw rookie for the coaching staff to scream at for the next month of training camp.

“Big-time, man,” said Muamba. “All that good stuff, all that icing on the cake, it’s done. That’s behind me now and I’m just playing on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and trying to make an impression on the coaches. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.

“This is what I wanted the whole time. It’s finally come and it feels good.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca