Jones, Reilly aim to keep team focused
WINNIPEG You don’t concede yourself victory early in the third quarter. You don’t touch the trophy. You don’t overly celebrate anything until you’ve won the championship. Everybody knows that.
OK, not the Toronto Blue Jays. And both the Ottawa Rouge et Noir and Edmonton Eskimos were guilty on all counts in getting to the Grey Cup on Sunday.
When you haven’t been there since 1981 (losing to Edmonton) as was the case with Ottawa or haven’t been there or won there since 2005 as was the case with Edmonton, it figured.
In Edmonton it seems so long, considering the history of the City of Champions, most fans probably forgot that there even was a West final trophy.
Whatever, it all didn’t go over so well with head coach Chris Jones or quarterback Mike Reilly, who both pledged to get the Eskimos’ helmets screwed back on straight by the time their Canadian North charter, with all the CFL logos painted on the body of the aircraft, lands here in Winterpeg this afternoon. Yes Winterpeg. Upon arrival you are quick to conclude there’s no plus-seven-degree weather going to be here this week.
“Mike is down in the locker-room right now telling them this is the first step,” Jones said in the postgame interview room in Edmonton Sunday.
“We have a team of guys and some kids and some young guys who have never been in this position. Let them enjoy the win but at the same time, settle them back down and let them know we are on a plane here pretty quick going to the Grey Cup.
“It’s a bang-bang turnaround for the players. We have an 8:30 meeting in the morning.”
There’s only a handful of Eskimos who have been to the Grey Cup before. But Jones knows a bit about getting to the game. It’s his seventh trip to the Canadian classic in his 14 years in the league. He has a chance to win his fourth with four different teams.
“Once we went up pretty big, I looked over and …” Jones failed to finish the sentence about the dancing and prancing and body language of a team that clearly looked like they hadn’t been there before because, well, they hadn’t.
“We can’t let that happen,” said the coach, who tore a strip off one player, Ryan Hinds, for losing his focus.
When it came time for CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge to make the presentation, captains Reilly and J.C. Sherritt looked like they were going to do what the hockey players do when Bill Daly is on the ice, which is pose for pictures with the conference cup and deliver the message to the world and each other that they didn’t feel like they’d just won the Stanley Cup.
But then Odell Willis and Adarius Bowman decided to grab it and lift it over their heads. And everyone else on stage had little choice but to follow suit. The celebration went on from there.
“This trophy just means we have the opportunity to go do what we really want to do,” said Reilly, who sat in the press-conference room with the stylized half-maple leaf trophy beside him on the table. All the work and everything we’ve done this year was for the Grey Cup and now we get a chance to go play for it. That’s the important thing.”
That said, Reilly said the way it worked out it felt sort of appropriate.
“This was the last game in our stadium this season and it was nice because the fans stuck around and to have something for them to celebrate here in our own place was fun to share because they’ve been through a lot and didn’t give up on us.
“To share it with them was great. But really, next Monday morning we want to be bringing some other hardware back home to celebrate back here in Edmonton with.”
In some ways everything fans watched in both cities Sunday was appropriate. What we’re dealing with here are two teams headed to Winnipeg thinking they’re going to Disneyland. Winnipeg and Disneyland don’t often end up in the same sentence in the last week of November.
Ottawa was 2-16 last year and wasn’t even in the league the year before that. And Edmonton was 4-14 two years ago. That’s a matchup that’s not likely to play well in Winnipeg where the Bombers are still treading water at the bottom of the standings and haven’t won a Grey Cup in 25 years. But Grey Cup organizers will welcome happy hordes of fans from Ottawa and Edmonton to scoop up the remaining couple thousand tickets.