Bombers warm up to the cold

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/10/2011 (5163 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A week after clinching their first playoff berth since 2008, it began to feel like playoff time on Thursday for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers at a frigid Canad Inns Stadium.

And not a moment too soon, either. If practice is all about preparing for game conditions, then Thursday’s two-hour Bombers practice at the stadium in single digit temperatures and an unrelenting wind seemed just about right for what the Bombers can expect in Edmonton against the Eskimos this Saturday evening.

To wit: fierce, cold and inhospitable.

With Environment Canada calling for a low of 1 C in Edmonton Saturday night, the weather will be frosty and playoffs in the air as the Bombers and Eskimos renew a very old CFL rivalry.

Bring it on, said a rosy-cheeked Bombers starting quarterback Buck Pierce.

“It was howling today,” Pierce said after practice. “You knew it was coming. I was telling some of the guys, it’s only going to get colder. It’s not going to get warmer. I think the warm days are behind us. This is right for this time of year. This is the CFL. This is the stuff I watched on TV growing up. Watching the CFL, it was always cold and snow on the ground, everybody bundled up on the sidelines.

“This is the fun time of year, though. It gets cold and you rise up against it and go out there and battle.”

The Bombers expect to have one of those battles in Edmonton in a game with key playoff implications. The Bombers head into the weekend tied for first in the East Division with the Montreal Alouettes at 9-5, while the Eskimos are presently locked in a three-way tie for first in the West Division with the Calgary Stampeders and BC Lions at 8-6.

The Eskimos also have a little something to prove against Winnipeg. It was the Bombers, remember, who way back in Week 6 handed Edmonton what was at that time their first loss of the season, 28-16 at Canad Inns Stadium.

The loss to Winnipeg snapped a tidy 5-0 Eskimos run to start the season and sparked a mini-slump in which Edmonton lost three of its next four games.

Some Bombers players were getting their first glimpse Thursday into what the next month in the CFL is going to be like.

The group includes receiver Clarence Denmark, who grew up in Florida and went to school in Arkansas. But true to form, the unflappable Denmark was just that on Thursday.

“I actually saw real snow in Arkansas one time,” said Denmark. “And I remember one time in (junior college in Mississippi), we played and it was 19 F (minus-7 C)… It’s no problem.”

Pierce recalled Thursday his naivete during his first experience with football in the snow — a game in Edmonton while he was playing with the B.C. Lions. “They were bulldozing the field a day before,” said Pierce. “I was like, ‘Are they still going to play the game? What’s going on?’

“They still played the game… But yeah, it was a shock.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca