ESKIMOS’ FANS LEFT TO LAMENT WHAT IF
Lions’ ineptitude in playoff loss to Ticats particularly galling for those on sidelines
It’s all in the eye of the beholder, of course.
But in the eyes of the fans in Edmonton, who don’t have a horse in the race as they await the match being made for the 106th Grey Cup here Nov. 25, the initial reaction to semifinal Sunday in the CFL had to be infuriating.
But their anger was likely more than matched by the Saskatchewan fan base for the flawed CFL rule that prevented a review and a penalty for an unquestionable hit to the head of quarterback Brandon Bridge with time for only one play remaining to author a remarkable come-frombehind finish to keep the Riders in the mix to get to the Edmonton 2018 Grey Cup. But that’s another story.
The day saw the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Winnipeg Blue Bombers advance to the Final 4. And it didn’t play well in Edmonton because of what happened in Hamilton and, you’d suspect, because Grey Cup organizers lost the possibility of all those fans flooding over the straw curtain from Saskatchewan.
What happened in Hamilton had to make the Edmonton fan baseasirateastheywerewhen the Eskimos missed the playoffs in the first place.
How could the Eskimos — a team that had missed the playoffs only 11 times in 70 seasons and been in and won more Grey Cups than any team in the league since 1949 — manage to miss them this Grey Cup hosting season essentially by losing two post-Labour Daygamestothatgawdawful B.C. Lions football team?
The Lions were so woeful against the Ticats they were down 14-0 after the first quarter, 28-0 at halftime and 44-0 after the third quarter before ending up embarrassing legendary coach Wally Buono with a 48-8 loss to put on his record for his last game coached in his exceptional career.
I mean there is no way on God’s green (and gold) earth that the Eskimos could possibly have embarrassed themselves like that in this game. Could they?
Edmonton fans had to be livid that they now go forward to Grey Cup week in their own town having to live down being worse than the horse-crap club from the left coast.
The Lions despite pathetic attendance this season spared no expense to fly to the game a day before normal to acclimatize to the time zone and they didn’t even show up for the game.
I mean, they started out down 7-0 and Travis Lulay threw an interception on his first play to find himself down 14-0 before he got back on the field and then down 21-0 with a third consecutive touchdown.
Grey Cup week was a loser, too, because it would have been great for Buono involved with a chance to rewrite the story the last time he announced it would be his final season as head coach and won the Grey Cup in 2001.
The Lions loss guaranteed another East-West Grey Cup game. No crossover club has ever made it to the show.
Saskatchewan fans also have every right to be enraged.
The Bombers were, despite the exasperating incident at the end of the game, worthy winners. And Winnipeg has to be over the moon at getting to a division final for the first time since 2011 with hopes of ending the league’s longest drought and getting here and winning their first Grey Cup in 28 years.
But the question. How did semifinal Sunday play with Edmonton 2018 Grey Cup organizers?
They sold more than 52,000 of the 55,819 tickets available in a span of six days before the regular season even started. But they made the conscious decision to not aggressively sell the rest of them. They wanted tickets to be available to bring as many visitors as possible to town and 1,956 remained going into the playoffs. Did they gamble and lose?
“The plan has always been to target the markets of the final four teams to buy the remaining tickets for the Grey Cup,” said executive director Duane Vienneau. “We have already made arrangements with the final four teams to send it out to their fan bases. We know from experience that the fans that have teams remaining alive at this stage buy up a lot of tickets. For example, in 2010, when Saskatchewan made the game, the fan base bought up every possible ticket they could find. There is a high, high pickup rate on playoff teams. That’s from experience. And with this Grey Cup, we think a lot of those people don’t know we have tickets.”
Vienneau says he’s good with semifinal Sunday.
“We’re not at all disappointed. From my perspective we have two clubs alone in the West who, no matter which one we get, will support the game.
“Not including Edmonton fans, Calgary fans have purchased the most tickets of any fan base. We know that out of just pure proximity Calgary would be very good for this Grey Cup. We also believe that Winnipeg, not having won aGreyCupin28yearshavea hungry, hungry fan base, so we also believe they’d have strong representation. Hamilton and Ottawa are both very strong and loyal fan bases that will travel.
“We like the four teams that could still get here.”