Will Blue meet their match?

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This article was published 04/09/2015 (3989 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If you’re looking for the moment it all started to go wrong for the Winnipeg Football Club, Sept. 4, 2011 would be a good place to start.

It was on that date a seemingly dominant Blue Bombers team — boasting a 7-1 record and in the midst of the phenomenon that was the “Swaggerville” defence — rode into Regina to play a lowly Saskatchewan Roughriders team that was 1-7 and had just fired head coach Greg Marshall and offensive co-ordinator Doug Berry.

The Bombers felt so confident of their chances at Mosaic Field that Labour Day weekend the team’s marketing department even took out a billboard in Regina depicting the mirror image records of the two teams and proclaiming: “We love our Saskatchewan neighbours. They’re just a little backward.”

Bad idea. History recorded it was the Bombers who went backwards after a resurgent Riders club, under the leadership of a new/old head coach in Ken Miller, drilled Winnipeg 27-7 that weekend — and did it again the following weekend in the Banjo Bowl, winning 45-23.

It marked the beginning of a precarious slide for the Bombers that you could argue they haven’t recovered from to this day. That 7-1 Winnipeg team went on to lose seven of its final 10 regular-season games in 2011.

Yes, Winnipeg still reached the Grey Cup that year, hosting and beating a woeful Hamilton Tiger-Cats team in a deep freeze East final at Canad Inns Stadium. No, Winnipeg never had a chance against a vastly superior team in the B.C. Lions in the 2011 Grey Cup game the following weekend.

And it’s been nothing good for the Bombers ever since — a 6-12 season in 2012 and a fired head coach; a 3-15 season in 2013 and a fired head coach; a 7-11 season in 2014, marking the third straight year the team missed the playoffs.

Remarkable

All of which brings us to this week and the remarkable parallels with that 2011 Labour Day game. While this year’s club at 3-6 is nothing like the 7-1 unit that was tearing up the league in the summer of 2011, Winnipeg still looks like the 1975 Pittsburgh Steelers when compared to an 0-9 Riders team that comes into this weekend having once again just made two firings — their head coach, Corey Chamblin, and general manager, Brendan Taman.

You could argue that in the same way the 2011 game marked the beginning of a long march to the bottom for the Bombers, it also marked the beginning of a long march to the top for the Riders, who after hitting rock bottom in the late summer of 2011 quickly turned things around and were Grey Cup champions — on home turf, no less — just a year and a bit later in 2013.

How much you want to bet someone on the Riders board pointed out that bit of fortuitous Riders history earlier this week when they decided to fire Taman and Chamblin? If the floundering Riders are going to turn things around, recent history certainly suggests there’s no better time to start than against Winnipeg.

And the handful of Bombers who are still around from that fateful 2011 game know that history, too.

“Yeah, I remember that game, unfortunately,” said Bombers offensive lineman Chris Greaves reflected Thursday after practice at Investors Group Field.

“The lesson I learned that year was that you can’t take anyone lightly, no matter what their record is. Even this year’s team in Saskatchewan — they might be 0-9, but they’ve still got good players and they still fight hard.

“And with a coaching change, it’s hard to know what to expect. Whether they simplify things over there — or introduce new things — you never know. And also, Chamblin was running the defence out there, so they could have something totally new dialed up.”

Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea agreed there are some dangerous unknowns for his team heading into Regina.

“There’s a little bit of uncertainty in terms of the changes they’ll make,” he said. “You have to try to extrapolate some (things). But they also have only a certain amount of time to prepare and their roster is built a certain way so I don’t think you’ll see a wholesale change.”

Bombers slotback Clarence Denmark was also a part of that 2011 team, but unlike Greaves, he has purged the memory of that year’s Labour Day weekend game — and all that came after it.

But he did remember a lesson — and it’s the same one Greaves took away.

“Maybe we overlooked them that year because of their record,” said Denmark. “But we’re not doing that this year. We know it’s going to be tough for us there — it always is.

“We know they’re going to be fired up. But so are we.”

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