Eskimos strap on the pads in practice
With new rules governing safety, chances to dust off the pads in camp are scarce
Thursday was the second of only seven designated days this season for the snot bubbles to fly.
Only seven times during the season — zero during the regular season — the Edmonton Eskimos will don the pads and attempt to hit the stuffing out of each other.
Predictably, there were a couple of brawls during the session. But no player left the field and came back swinging a shovel as happened a few years back at Clarke Park when Commonwealth Stadium was a bit of a construction site.
“Day 4,” said coach Jason Maas of the skirmishes. “At some point of the camp, you’re going to have those kinds of things. If we learn from it, that’s the way we want it. Obviously, I don’t want to see fists go flying. You want them to control that. But you are generally going to have that in a football camp when it’s hot and you put pads on. Guys get overly aggressive. But they have to be smart, too.”
It used to be you’d get quotes two or three days prior to the first pre-season game from players saying they can’t wait to hit players from a team other than their own.
But yesterday, Eskimos were hitting Eskimos and some were quite happy to be doing it in advance of Sunday’s 3 p.m. home pre-season game against the Saskatchewan Roughriders at Commonwealth Stadium.
Football is a tough sport. Physical play and contact are a big part of it, particularly for a team with the stated goal of dominating in the trenches on both sides of the ball.
How do those types of players show their value if they’re playing flag football out there?
Maas doesn’t come right out and say it, but you get the idea he’d like to sneak his team out into a back alley somewhere with pads on and go at it a few times. But he’ll stick with the rules. Actually, he says, the rule is no more than 10 times during training camp but when they give you a game seven days after it starts and another five days later, what
Pads are there for a purpose and I totally believe we should be able to wear them ... but I understand the rules.
do you do?
“There aren’t enough days to put 10 days of pads on, particularly when you are playing a game seven days into a season,” he said.
“In regular season, there’s none. This will be seven all year. This is what the league wanted. It’s part of the rules now and we’re abiding by them. We’ll have seven padded practices all year.” So how does he feel about that? “It doesn’t matter how I feel about that. Pads are there for a purpose and I totally believe we should be able to wear them, if you want my opinion on it. But I still understand the rules and we’ll abide by them.”
I have a problem with it. More and more you see games where it looks like nobody knows how to make a tackle anymore. How can you expect them to make a tackle when they never practise it?
And while player safety ought to be a priority, especially with what we now know about concussions, part of player safety is to know how to deliver and take a clean hit.
It’s a tough game. One of the real appeals of the sport from a fan’s point of view is the gladiator aspect of it.
“At the end of the day we play a very violent sport. It’s a collision sport. You have bumps and bruises. You can’t piss and moan about it, you just abide by the rules,” said Maas.
The head coach says at least you have the two pre-season games and seven days wearing the pads to make evaluations. The real problem comes during the regular season when you bring a player in.
“You bring a new guy up and put him on your roster without him putting on pads. You’re going to have watched enough film of him prior to him coming up here to see if he’s good enough to do that.”
Maas thinks with imports coming in and having to get used to being a yard off the ball and some of the other differences involved in Canadian football, that the players would want to be out there banging a bit to work some things out.
“I’m sure they’d all want to put them on and see what that’s like before they get to a game, but they understand that’s the rule now,” said Maas.
“I understand the player safety side of things,” said centre Justin Sorensen. “When I came into the league we wore them every day, but they’ve done all these studies and said it’s safer for us. The thing about training camp though is, with the veterans you know if they can hit or not. That’s why training camp is so important for rookies, to see their level of competition, how hard they want to hit and all of that.”
The bottom line is you might want to bring your binoculars Sunday. There’s going to be a real focus on the prospects and the extent they’re able to bring it and make those snot bubbles fly.