Maher making the most of it
STELLAR START FOR NEW KICKER
Before each game, Brett Maher wraps a strip of white athletic tape around his right wrist and prints the letters “M.H.” on it in black marker. Then he adds a smiley face.
His daughter Mayla just turned two, and wearing her initials — he also places another sliver of tape around his ring finger as a makeshift wedding band — allows Maher to keep perspective when dealing with the pressure of his role as the Hamilton Tiger-Cats kicker. He finds himself glancing at it often on the sidelines.
“It brings me back down to earth and puts a smile on my face,” Maher said. “Gives me a reminder of some of the bigger things in life.” It seems to be working. Maher has been mostly outstanding in his first season with the Ticats, hitting on 76.9 per cent of his field goals — including a 56-yarder among his five makes in last week’s win over Montreal — and leading the league in punting distance. It’s been an impressive display of accuracy and power for a guy who struggled with both in his one season with the Ottawa Redblacks in 2014.
“The difference is overwhelmingly due to health, or an improvement in my strength due to health,” Maher said. “There’s no question.”
Maher was diagnosed with a torn labrum in his kicking hip just before his second campaign in Ottawa was set to begin, but figures the injury had been affecting his kicking stroke for quite some time. There was no pain — just a slow decrease in his usual power.
But following surgery and months of rehab — Maher was re-
leased by Ottawa after the team deemed it a nonfootball injury — the 24-year-old is feeling both healthy and confident. He won an extended kicking contest in the Ticats’ preseason largely on the strength of his ability to perform all three duties — field goals, punting, kick offs — with good results.
Maher handled a similar workload during his junior and senior years at Nebraska — that’s rare for a big-time NCAA school — and as a result doesn’t consider himself a specialist who is saddled with other jobs in the CFL. “I didn’t feel like I had to learn something, then get thrown into a game situation that I hadn’t been in before,” he said. “I think of myself as a guy who can be a weapon doing all of it.”
It’s worth noting that Maher is — for the moment, anyway — outperforming the man he replaced. Former Hamilton kicker Justin Medlock, who signed a big-money freeagent deal with the Bombers in the off-season, trails Maher in field goal percentage (76.9 to 66.7) and average yards per punt (50.2 to 44.6), while enjoying a slight edge in average kickoff yards (64.9 to 64.4). NOTES: Centre Mike Filer didn’t practise for a third straight day on Thursday and is still in a walking boot. That means it’s virtually certain that he’s out for Saturday’s game against the Eskimos, and that Mathieu Girard will make his first start . ... Halfback Johnny Sears, who missed Tuesday’s session, was back practising with the first-team defence . ... Guard Pete Dyakowski, who missed Wednesday’s practice due to the birth of his first child, was back at his normal spot at left guard.