All hail Hajrullahu

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This article was published 06/11/2014 (3985 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Lirim Hajrullahu authored one of the best stories in the CFL all season long. And he might have another chapter in him yet.

A former refugee from Kosovo who was initially passed up by every team in the CFL, Hajrullahu was named Wednesday as the Bombers’ top player in 2014 in three of seven categories — top Canadian, top rookie and top special teams player — and will now compete in voting this week to be named a West Division all-star.

The honours came yesterday after a remarkable season in which the undrafted Hajrullahu rewarded the Bombers for taking a chance on him as a free agent last winter by doing nothing less than setting a team record for field-goal accuracy, nailing 40 of 46 in 2014 or 87.0 percent.

The Western grad also had the second-longest kickoffs in the CFL in 2014 and did double duty as Winnipeg’s punter after veteran Mike Renaud went down early in the season with a leg injury.

It is sweet vindication for a man who admitted in an interview yesterday he was “pretty ticked off” when he never got drafted in 2013 after what he thought had been a pretty solid career in the CIS.

“It’s a humbling experience. All this hard work I did has paid off and it’s an exciting moment for me to be nominated for all three of those awards,” Hajrullahu said Wednesday. “But it’s also bitter too because we’re out of the playoffs. The reason you play football is to win championships.

“So I’m honoured for sure. But I’m also at home right now, while the other guys are playing.”

The Bombers finished their regular season at 7-11 and out of the playoffs last weekend and Hajrullahu was among a handful of bright spots for a team that lost eight of its last nine games — and 10 of the last 12.

No one would have blamed Hajrullahu — who, along with his parents, fled war-torn Kosovo for Canada as a child — if he used yesterday’s spotlight to point out he’d proved a lot of so-called football experts in this country wrong when they chose not to draft him when he was eligible in 2013.

But the 24-year-old insisted he wasn’t looking at it like that. “I never set it up as I wanted to prove someone wrong — I set it up as I wanted to prove to myself that I belong in this league,” Hajrullahu reflected.

“I just wanted to play in the CFL and compete in the CFL. So if people want to look at it like I proved them wrong, they can. But I didn’t do it for them, I did it for myself.”

While Hajrullahu took down almost half of his team’s honours, voters chose to give the team’s top honour — Most Outstanding Player — to the team’s starting quarterback, Drew Willy.

‘It’s a humbling experience. All this hard work I did has paid off … But it’s also bitter too because we’re out of the playoffs’

— Lirim Hajrullahu

Willy started 17 of Winnipeg’s 18 games in what was his rookie year as a starter — the most starts in a single season by a Bombers QB since Kevin Glenn started all 18 of Winnipeg’s games during the 2007 season.

While Willy threw more interceptions (16) than touchdowns (14) and struggled during the second half of the season to replicate the early success he had in leading Winnipeg to a 5-1 start, he heads home this week still second in the CFL in passing yards and with six 300-plus passing-yard games this season on his resumé.

“It means a lot to me that I have the respect of my peers and the media and coaches,” Willy said of the honour. “But my goal is the same as the organization’s — to win the Grey Cup. And hopefully next year we can get that done.

“Obviously this year we didn’t achieve that and it’s disappointing. There were some good things that we did as a team, but we just need to be more consistent going down the stretch.”

paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @PaulWiecek