Buono aiming to restore Lions’ roar

in Vancouver

He became the winningest coach of all time in the Canadian Football League and capped an exemplary career with a remarkable sleight of hand in 2011, pulling a Grey Cup out of the ether following an 0-5 start to the season.

Then Wally Buono gracefully retired from coaching, handing off the ball to Mike Benevides, the man they called “Little Wally,” since he had been schooled in the black arts of the trade like a favoured son.

Now, four seasons later, Buono is back, his return to coaching greeted by some like the second coming of a football messiah. The 60-month interval since he last addressed his team at the opening of training camp will end Sunday morning in Kamloops, B.C., when the Lions begin their 63rd year of football operations.

“It’s not just like getting on a bike again and finding you can still do it,” Buono admits. “It’s not a regular year. It’s a critical year. Am I aware of that? Yes. Does that change anything? No. It’s always been about trying to be a winner, I believe.”

After three seasons of regular season success but post-season failure, Benevides was fired. Buono, the GM, didn’ t have to search long and hard for a replacement. Jeff Tedford, a man once in demand by every big-time U.S. college program, took care of that with one phone call.

But Tedford was gone after just one season, exiting with a 7-12 overall record in 2015. Initially imperious yet awkward in his return to the CFL after a 20-year absence, he showed some progress as the season evolved, but it was evident Tedford was not the hiring coup he was supposed to be.

While reporters trafficked in the narrative that Buono’s whistle was headed toward permanent enshrinement in Hamilton, his actions indicated a man still drawn to the coaching profession like cat nip.

He would sit on the roof top at the Surrey, B.C., training facility as a Bear Bryantstyle overseer or wander onto the practice field, dispensing important advice to coaches and players.

In the locker-room, a place general managers usually avoid, he was an avuncular presence, shooting the breeze with players to create a culture of accessibility while drawn to the camaraderie of a familiar domain.

On his office white board, Buono still took up a felt pen to happily outline to reporters a play or formation he felt might improve their cursory knowledge of the game’s intricacies.

Now he is about to confront his own legend, his larger-than-life image, with the aim of righting the fallen star the Lions have become on the football field — and in the consciousness of many Lower Mainland sports fans.

He has to make more of them start caring about the Lions again.

“We live in a superstar market,” Buono admits. “People want you to win. People want you to be exciting. People want you to be competitive. This is not a market that necessarily supports you whatever. You have to earn the right for people to spend their dollars on you.”

He refuses to compete with his ghost, knowing that this is a new era, a new team, and anything he accomplished before shouldn’t have any bearing in this new incarnation.

“As coaches, we’re all interim, and that includes me,” Buono says. “I have a mandate to win and I feel the urgency. Just because you ex- tend a contract, you hope to God that you can fulfil that extension — because there are consequences if you don’t win. We understand that.”

The passage of time is the greatest of tests, and time has flattered him. Buono is 66, with a thick head of grandfatherly white hair that only serves to lend more gravitas to his air of authority.

While other retired CFL and NFL players of his age struggle physically with the game’s grim legacy, he still seems a bit like a masters athlete-in-training, going on his daily run and monitoring his diet carefully. Energy and passion for the game pour out of him, as if he knows he has more to give.

OK, maybe the legs and the body aren’t what they used to be when Buono was a linebacker/punter with the Montreal for 10 seasons, largely in the 1970s. But his heart, given a rebuild in 2004, and his head are strong and functioning.

Having never been in the habit of paying retail, Buono engaged in what amounted to a post-holiday spending spree In February. He signed eight CFL free agents. By comparison, he signed exactly zero for six straight seasons — from 2005-2012 — and just one in 2013.

Buono is bringing back receiver Nick Moore, whom he lost to Winnipeg in 2014, and adding Jeremiah Johnson and Anthony Allen as tag team replacements for departed running back Andrew Harris. The Lions also made a ninth off-season transaction, dropping import centre Jason Foster and trading with the Hamilton TigerCats to acquire 36-year-old replacement Tim O’Neill, a Canadian.

Like a producer opening a promising show out of town before taking it to Broadway, he’ll have a better idea of what he has wrought when the Lions break camp on June 15, two days before a pre-season game against the Calgary Stampeders at BC Place Stadium and 10 days before the Stamps return for the season opener.

“You ask me — do I believe I worked harder this year?” says Buono, speaking as the GM. “I don’t believe I worked harder. I just believe things unfolded in a way that looks very positive. We’ve put a lot of good pieces in place, and we’ve got to make a good football team out of it. But we won’t know that until we start playing.

“At the end of the year, if we win the Grey Cup, will it be my best off-season? I guess then, you can say yes.”