TICATS TAKING BALANCED APPROACH
Veteran Tasker says Tabbies all business, but still having fun heading into Grey Cup
Luke Tasker was nine days old when he went to his first football game — Super Bowl XXV on Jan. 27, 1991 in Tampa — to watch his dad Steve, a special-teams star and receiver with the Buffalo Bills.
The Bills lost the NFL championship game 20-19 to the New York Giants.
Maybe the writing was on the wall for him at an early age. Luke was just six when Steve — seven times named to the Pro Bowl and later added to the Buffalo Bills Wall of Fame — retired from the NFL. Steve Tasker’s career with Houston and Buffalo extended from 1985-97.
“I remember the colours, the locker-room, the glow of the game, but nothing about the importance of the games,” said Luke. “(As I got older) I really, really wanted to play football professionally. Going to college (at Cornell), I wanted to go to a place where I could play and have a good college career, but I really wanted to get noticed and do this professionally.”
Father never coached son.
Luke found his own way to the pros thanks to lots of hard work and talent.
“I don’t think he wanted to be overbearing in terms of what he expected from me or my brothers and sister athletically,” Luke said of his father.
“I’m thankful he was that way. You can probably imagine it would be easy to burn out a young kid trying to live in the shadow of a career like my dad had. I never felt that, not from my family. I played because it was fun. I recognize how much fun he had playing and that’s what I emulated the most.”
Through seven campaigns in the CFL as a Hamilton Tigercats receiver, Luke has done what he set out to do and more. He’s enjoyed three 1,000-yard plus seasons. It’s been a pretty good run that has included two Grey Cup appearances, and now a third on Sunday, when the East champion Ticats take on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers from the West.
“Everything gets romanticized,” Tasker said following practice on Wednesday. “The future and the past get romanticized in your head. The reality of what my career has been, I think 10th Grade Luke Tasker would have been pretty impressed, actually pretty happy. It’s my seventh season, same team, close to where I grew up. It’s been a really great experience. Now I have a chance to really add another note to my football career.”
This season was disrupted by an injury — he played just nine games. But he got back into the lineup late in the season, just in time to help his team get to the Grey Cup.
“We play a really physical sport and the season is 18 games long,” said Tasker. “I had my hardest season in terms of injuries and adversity. I honestly feel really, really just blessed. I’m just happy to be playing now at this time of year — when it’s important — and to be feeling healthy.
“Last year when I played, for the most part, the whole season, there was that midseason level of comfort you feel, with catching, with your conditioning, meshing with the offence. For me, this year, it took longer for me to do that. But I’m really thankful I was able to get a couple of games in before the end of the season.”
The Ticats were the best team in the CFL through the regular season with a 15-3 record. That’s not good enough for the coaches, the players or anyone in the organization. There’s unfinished business.
“We didn’t lose at home, we were pretty much first in the
East from the start, and held that through the season,” said Luke. “Our mentality, this was the most championship-focused team from Day 1 that I’ve ever been part of. That starts at the top, it really does. Our message has been to be great at everything and to win everything from the very start.”
Heading into the Grey Cup, he said the team is finding a balance between having fun and going about its business.
“For me, I’ve found I play the best when I’m having fun,” he said. “The way we’ve approached football as a team this year is that every game is important. Whatever game you’re playing, that’s your job. Last week, the Eastern final was the most important thing to us, not the Grey Cup. We’ve approached each week like that . ... Obviously you can’t misstate how important the Grey Cup is, but in a lot of ways, we’re just doing our job again, the way we’ve done it all year. Personally, I like to keep it in perspective a bit: enjoy the game and try to be great because that’s the way I want to play football.”