Ticats play national catch
It’s not a flow, but it’s more than a trickle.
After using up most of the city’s duct tape and binder twine to patch together enough national starters to satisfy CFL rules the past few weeks, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats are starting to get Canucks into the lineup rather than onto the injured list.
Canadian linebacker Nick Shortill might be ready to play in B.C. Friday night. He returned to practice yesterday after being on the injured list since late July, as did national defensive tackle Mike Atkinson, who’d been out since early August. Atkinson likely isn’t an option against the Lions but Shortill, a valuable depth player, is.
The franchise’s all-time singleseason reception leader, Andy Fantuz, sidelined since last Oct. 28 with ACL injury, surgery and recovery, went through a full practice for the first time Monday. A free agent, he’d been listed as the club’s co-ordinator of player development until he was cleared to be in uniform for Monday’s practice.
Head coach June Jones says Fantuz won’t play in B.C. on Friday night and might be “two or three weeks” before returning to the game-day roster, but Fantuz counters, “I’m thinking as soon as possible. If I keep going like I was going today, keep ramping up, it’ll be no time.”
There is slightly less urgency around Fantuz’s return date with the acquisition of 28year-old national receiver Shamawd Chambers from the Edmonton Eskimos over the weekend.
Chambers, the top Canadian in the 2015 Grey Cup, will likely start in place of Mike Jones, who has had issues hanging onto the ball and had a critical fumble in the first quarter of last weekend’s loss to Saskatchewan. He was benched in the second half. “I’m probably Mike’s biggest fan,” Jones said Monday. “I think he has a chance to be a really good football player. Anybody who can run like that, if they can fight through the negative things that happened to them will only make them better.
“I’ve had a couple of long talks with him over the last month about what he needs to do to be the best he can be,” he said.
“I told him he has to live in the weight room this off-season because it makes him mentally tougher.”
Chambers was the fastest player in the CFL’s 2012 university combine and went to Edmonton sixth overall in that spring’s draft. He caught 79 passes over his first two years, but suffered a season-ending knee injury — against the TigerCats — a dozen games into the 2014 season.
He signed as a free agent with Saskatchewan prior to last season, but was released in the off-season and re-signed with the Eskimos.
A native of Markham, Chambers had tried to sign with the Tiger-Cats rather than the Roughriders a yearand-a-half-ago, but he and the team couldn’t close the deal.
“Everything comes full circle,” he says of his arrival. “I thought I should have been here two years ago after we won the Grey Cup in Edmonton. I was trying to come here, and it was close to happening. At the end of the day, it didn’t, but I’m here now.”
Chambers seems happy to be in town, within a short drive of his family home. He played university ball at Laurier with Courtney Stephen, and Chambers, linebacker Simoni Lawrence and quarterback Jeremiah Masoli were rookies with Edmonton in 2012.
He and Lawrence have stayed good friends. “We were roommates in my first year in Edmonton,” he said. “We were 23 years old. We’re a month apart in age, and our families are very, very close. We kind of learned how to be professionals together. We got split up the second year, but my mom (Nancy) and a couple of my friends made the transition here to the east easier for him. They come to the games.
“She’s probably seen Simoni play more than she’s seen me play the last six years.”
Now she’ll be able to see her son play more, and he says his best football is still in front of him.
“He’s a good looking kid,” Jones said. “He can run, he’s big-bodied, and he’s a veteran. We’ll try to get him plugged in as soon as we can.”
With the only other Canadian receivers available being the struggling Jones and rookie Mitchell Baines, who caught the first two passes of his career against the Riders, ‘as soon as we can’ is likely Friday in Vancouver.