Wanted: Three home wins
No matter how the playoff situation sorts itself out, over the next two weekends the Hamilton Tiger-Cats need to reacquire a firm grip on something that’s been unpardonably slippery. Home field advantage.
The Ticats play their next three games — starting with Saturday afternoon’s rematch against the now, and again, first-place Ottawa Redblacks — at Tim Hortons Field, but it’s the third one which looms largest. It will decide if their 2018 ends for good or is extended at least another week.
Whether they’re the eastern runner-up in a semifinal against the western crossover team, or they’re the first-place team with a bye into the East Final, the Ticats want to head into that playoff game with a head of home-field steam.
They’ve actually been filling the vapour chamber reasonably well over the past couple of months, winning three of their last four at home, mixing victories over Edmonton, B.C. and Toronto with a loss to Calgary. If they win against Ottawa this weekend and Montreal next Saturday, they’d go into a postseason home game with a solid 5-1 recent history at home.
Prior to this mini-surge, they’d been beaten in two of their first three home games this season — including a six-point loss to Ottawa — shrinking their home record to just seven wins and 19 losses since, and including, Sept. 19, 2015. Head coach June Jones says that, over time, winning at home becomes a habit and reproduces itself. But that time is characterized by more than four games, so you can’t yet say the Ticats have turned Tim Hortons Field back into their own personal win factory, which it certainly was when they won their first 11 games at their new home under Kent Austin. That was the kind of self-propelling motion to which Jones alludes, but it’s been frustratingly AWOL for over three years.
“This is an important game,” Jones emphasized in reference to both requiring a win Saturday to maintain their faint hope of finishing first, and to continue stoking momentum into the postseason.
“Before the season started, we said you can’t lose home games, then you only have to win a couple on the road to get a bye. Hopefully we’ve learned how to win at home and we win this week and win next week,” he said.
“If we hadn’t lost any home games right now — which was our goal, to not lose one — we’d
be where we want to be. We’re at that point right now where winning at home is mandatory.”
The Redblacks present a formidable obstacle to Ticat aspirations, as they did in their 35-31 comeback victory in Ottawa last Friday. They’ve won their last four games in Hamilton.
“We’ve had some fun games here because they’ve been close and they’ve usually been impactful, big, games,” says Redblacks head coach Rick Campbell.
Ticats fans probably wouldn’t use ‘fun’ to describe those games. Their noun would have more than three letters. Redblacks wide receiver and returner Diontae Spencer, who had 146 allpurpose yards and a touchdown last week, played a couple of seasons in Toronto and says the burgeoning Ottawa rivalry with Hamilton doesn’t have the intensity of Argos-Ticats, but is definitely increasing in fervour.
“It’s a good stadium to come to,” he said Friday. “The fans are really great and I feel their guys feed off this energy here. We have to stay sharp, stay focused and weather the storm.”
To feed off that energy, the Ticats first have to stimulate it with some big plays, sustained offensive drives and emphatic defensive stops at turning-point moments. That’s part of the ebb and flow Jones says is so important in Canadian football: immediately answering anything positive the other team does. This didn’t happen beyond the first 28 minutes in Ottawa.
Both teams might have to weather a storm, as Saturday’s conditions are predicted to be wet, cold and windy. Hanging onto the football and inducing the other team to mishandle it, become primary goals under those circumstances, Campbell says. With game-changing receiver Brandon Banks lost for the season due to a broken clavicle, it’s incumbent on the rest of the Ticats to ratchet up their game.
That really applies to the defence, which has shown recent backslide traces. Its three highest season totals in both points and yards surrendered have all occurred within in the past five games. An admittedly small sample size — and only one of those games (against Calgary) was at home — but it has to be halted before it becomes a trend.
With three straight games in your own backyard, this is not the time to let anything eat into potential home field advantage.