Molson Stadium sells out as curious fans look to see if Chapdelaine can save team’s season
The love affair with Jacques Chapdelaine, it seems, will last at least one game.
The Alouettes announced Friday afternoon that Sunday’s home game against the Toronto Argonauts (1 p.m., TSN, RDS, TSN Radio 690) is sold out at 23,420seat Molson Stadium. This marks the team’s first capacity crowd since the end of the 2010 season, when the capacity was 25,000, and its largest attendance since 2011. The McGill University venue was reconfigured, and seats were removed, for the start of 2014.
While it’s true Sunday afternoon games in the fall are more popular than weeknight summer contests in Montreal, it’s unlikely fans are coming out in droves to see a 3-9 last-place team. Instead, it’s the curiosity over Chapdelaine, the Als’ interim head coach and its first francophone bench boss in team history.
“We have fantastic fans ... that want to see what change brings,” Als president Mark Weightman said. “I’ll be very transparent with you: the latest news and, obviously, a lot of positive media coverage with Jacques Chapdelaine. There’s a lot of excitement being generated with that.”
Chapdelaine, who started the season as the Als’ receivers coach and adviser to offensive co-ordinator Anthony Calvillo, was promoted almost two weeks ago, replacing Jim Popp, who remains general manager but hasn’t been heard from since the conference call announcing the switch. Chapdelaine is a longtime Canadian Football League OC himself, having served in that capacity with four organizations. He’ll call the plays starting with this week’s game.
“We’ve had a tough patch. We haven’t won a lot of games. Any time you have a change with something new, people are excited about and are going to hang their hat on that. They get excited about it,” Weightman said. “I think the change has brought a renewed excitement and a renewed interest in our 2016 season.”
Despite the Als’ futility and poor record, the team hasn’t been eliminated from playoff contention in the weak East Division, where no club has more than six victories. But only six games remain for Montreal.
The Als can’t afford to look at the big picture, of course, for now, and realize any winning streak can only begin with one victory. The Argos (5-8) are themselves reeling without starting quarterback Ricky Ray, having lost six of their last seven games. And Toronto is hosting this year’s Grey Cup.
“We understand this game is a must-win,” said receiver Samuel Giguère, who has worked closely with Chapdelaine since the beginning of training camp.
The new coach has worked tirelessly this week on the players’ psyche, trying to alter their mindset so they become more engaged while paying attention to details. The Als certainly have appeared more structured and disciplined at practice, the visible disagreements involving quarterback Rakeem Cato now becoming ancient history.
But this team’s problems, obviously, don’t end there. Montreal has struggled offensively most of the last two seasons, at least, while going through numerous coaches and coordinators. No one has discovered the elixir to ending this malaise — the end zone remains foreign territory for this club.
And none of the players, with any degree of certainty, can speculate on what might now transpire. Even Chapdelaine is reluctant to predict the future.
“Right now the guys are embracing what we’re doing. There’s an element of positivity. We’d like to take it into the game and move forward,” Chapdelaine said. “I’m not going to change things. Our role, as coaches, is to control the rudder to a certain extent. The ship and engine, those are the players. There’s been a bit of a change this week in the right direction. They’re going to tell us where they want to go. It’s our job, as coaches, to make sure we keep navigating in the right direction so they go along with that. I’m feeling a lot of excitement and a positive mindset.
“I don’t know for a fact what will be different. I’d hope the fans see our guys playing with a level of energy that maybe we haven’t had all the time, (although) we’ve had it often. I want to see them overcoming adversity. When we’ve had bumps in the road, we’ve had a tendency to maybe withdraw from that energy level. We still have to run and throw the ball, tackle people and put pressure. That’s not going to change. How we get to it as the game unfolds? We’ll see.”
There’s no doubt the Als still are playing hard. They displayed that in their last game, again, at Hamilton. Instead, when the outcome of a match is on the line, this team repeatedly has succumbed to the pressure and has been unable to win. The Als’ record easily could be 6-6 with some luck and breaks. But there’s also no sense contemplating what could have been.
“We haven’t been a very successful organization for the last three or four years on the field,” Weightman said. “That means all of our players, coaches, the general manager ... everybody needs to do better. We’re 3-9. I’d include all of us (the president also) in that. We win and lose as a team. We need to address this collectively and we all need to do better.”
The future’s now for the Als. And it seems, unless the results improve over the remaining six weeks, nobody’s impervious.