Football: Vanier Cup rematch set, Grey Cup tickets on line
Tiger-Cats must end trend of not capitalizing against the Redblacks
The Western Mustangs set up a Vanier Cup rematch with Laval by disposing of the Saskatchewan Huskies in Saturday’s Mitchell Bowl, 47-24, after the Rouge et Or crushed the St. Francis Xavier X-Men 63-0 in the Uteck Bowl. The Mustangs won last year’s U Sports football championship 39-17 over Laval at Hamilton’s Tim Hortons Field. Quebec City will host next Saturday’s national title game.
There will be no repeat in the CFL, of course, with the 2017 champion Toronto Argonauts missing the post-season. The matchup for next Sunday’s Grey Cup in Edmonton will be set today, with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Ottawa to take on the Redblacks in the East Division final ( TSN, 1 p.m.) before the Calgary Stampeders host the Winnipeg Blue Bombers for supremacy in the West ( TSN, 4:30 p.m.). The Stamps have lost the last two Grey Cup games.
Sunday’s frosty forecast in Ottawa calls for partly sunny skies with a high of -3C and 14-km/h winds. The Redblacks swept the three-game season series with the Ticats. Hamilton quarterback Jeremiah Masoli, the East’s nominee for outstanding player and the Ticats’ starter in the 2015 division final, says that stat is overrated: “(Sunday) is its own game. It’s a one-game season.”
OTTAWA— In their previous three meetings it was mostly win and get home, in the fourth it’s win or go home.
AGrey Cup berth is on the line here Sunday afternoon when the Ottawa Redblacks try to beat the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for the fourth time in 2018.
Without those three games between them, the Ticats had more wins than losses and the Redblacks were a .500 club.
But there is no world in which those three games — two close ones, followed by a lopsided Ottawa win in Hamilton — do not exist, so with them the Redblacks get to host the Eastern Final for the third time in four years.
Football wisdom says it’s difficult for one team to beat another four times in a year, but it also says it’s hard to do it three times. And Ottawa did.
“I haven’t got caught up in that, just because it’s a playoff game now,” Ottawa head coach Rick Campbell said Friday. “The only thing I take away from the games we’ve played against Hamilton this year — and it’s not just against them — it’s winning those close games. Two of the three came down to the last series and we were able to win those, and that’s a confidence thing. It’s being prepared and also having a bit of luck, too.”
Including victories over Hamilton by six and four points, the Redblacks were 5-2 in games decided by eight or fewer points. The Ticats went 1-6.
So often the Ticats had a chance to win a close one, but were done in by penalties, a missed play or the turnover ratio.
Last week’s 48-8 drubbing of the B.C. Lions may have signalled some kind of turnaround in that department, as they derived 31 points from forcing six turnovers, while surrendering none. But they manhandled the Lions in late September, too, and three weeks later were victims of Trevor Harris and his stupendous second-half comeback. It’s only a week between B.C. and Ottawa this time, so maybe the momentum will decide to hang around.
“When you get on a certain kind of roll, everything just starts happening,” says highenergy Ticat linebacker Simoni Lawrence. “That’s what we need to get into in Ottawa. Whenever you start making plays, everything keeps stacking up and stacking up.”
Neither Campbell nor Ticat head coach June Jones thinks the other will change much, at least philosophically, for this elimination match.
Expect, then, that the Redblacks will try to establish running back William Powell, especially since there’s been a lot of snow, ice and frigid air pounding Ottawa’s Glebe district this week. Powell finished second to Winnipeg’s Andrew Harris in individual rushing with 1,362 yards and accounted for the greatest portion (80.5 per cent) of his team’s rushing yardage by anyone in the CFL.
And expect Harris to again probe the wide side of the Hamilton defence. He was devastatingly effective going there in Ottawa’s victory in the pivotal sec- ond meeting, and the Ticats’ starting field corner Jumal Rolle, who’s had a commendable debut CFL season, is out for this game.
“I feel they’re going to attack as much as they can to the field side,” says Josh Johnson, who’ll play field halfback.
“We just have to be aggressive, get hands on them. The biggest thing is that we have to make the plays when they come to us. We gave them a lot of opportunities to make just easy catches. We have to contest.”
Jones praises the ability of the Ottawa line to both protect Harris and promote Johnson. That keys a quick-set, hightempo offence so the onus will be on the Ticats’ defensive front to force the Ottawa quarterback out of his rhythm and comfort zone.
And it’s on the secondary to play tighter and tougher when they know, from a blitz call, that the ball’s coming out quickly.
Conversely, Tiger-Cats quarterback Jeremiah Masoli and his receivers have to convert drives into majors. They haven’t scored a touchdown against Ottawa in the last 94 minutes of play.
“When I look at Hamilton I see a team that has responded well to adversity, that seems to be playing their best ball of the season just at the right time,” says Ottawa defensive back Rico Murray, who was four years a Ticat before becoming an Argonaut and, this year, a Redblack.
“Jeremiah’s got a gunslinger mentality. He’s a dual-threat quarterback.”
If they want to reach the Grey Cup for the first time in four years the Ticats are going to need that duality, and lots more from everyone else, against a team that has had their number — as in “three” — all year.