Ottawa’s Grey Cup-bound

Fans go crazy as team nails win in high drama — with The Catch

Redblacks fans now have one more colour to cheer about: Grey.

One year after finishing dead last, and only two years into their reincarnation as a CFL franchise, the Ottawa Redblacks have earned a trip to the 103rd Grey Cup.

Thanks to a heart-stopping 35-28 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, the Ottawa Redblacks will continue their storybook season and travel to Winnipeg for the big game next Sunday.

It will be the first time an Ottawa team has competed in the CFL championship since 1981, when the Ottawa Rough Riders, led by quarterback J.C. Watts, lost to the powerhouse Edmonton Eskimos. Ottawa last won the Grey Cup almost 40 years ago when the Rough Riders beat Saskatchewan’s Roughriders in 1976, thanks a sensational late-game pass from quarterback Tom Clements to receiver Tony Gabriel that became known simply as “The Catch.”

Sunday’s miraculous 93-yard touchdown strike from 40-yearold pivot Henry Burris to receiver Greg Ellingson might quickly obtain the same kind of place in Ottawa football lore.

The late-game heroics came with Ottawa pinned deep in its own end, battling the wind and facing long yardage on a second down. The score was knotted at 28, and Hamilton seemed poised to pull off the upset: all the Tiger-Cats needed was a field goal, even a single point.

Eric McEvoy, 47, watched the miracle unfold inside the Joey Lansdowne bar across from TD Place Stadium.

“We’re going to the Grey Cup, Ottawa, we’re going to the Grey Cup!” McEvoy shouted as the bar erupted in jubilation.

“I can’t believe it: I thought we were dead,” McEvoy said after the game. “It’s hard to believe, but this team is going to the Grey Cup after just two years.”

Bruce Johnson, 46, vowed to travel to Winnipeg to watch the Redblacks battle for the Grey Cup. “It’s going to be one heckuva party and we’re going,” said Johnson, a season’s ticket holder for the past two years. “I’ve been waiting for this for a long time and I’m not going to miss it.”

Tom Scribner, 45, watched the game with about 200 others standing on top of the berm in the east-end zone. He credited the team’s management with pulling all the right strings: Signing a veteran quarterback in Burris and bringing in a solid receiving corps this year. Four Ottawa receivers finished with more than 1,000 yards in receptions this year.

“They brought some good receivers into this offence — that was key — and the defence has been getting better and better for the last two years,” he said.

This year’s remarkable turnaround has thrilled Ottawa fans, most of whom would have been happy with earning a playoff spot after the team struggled to a woeful 2-16 record last year. Instead, the Redblacks raced to a 12-6 record this season and earned a home playoff game by finishing in first place in the Eastern Conference with a 12-6 record.

Now, incredibly, they have a chance to compete for the Grey Cup on the strength of another defiant performance by 40-yearold quarterback Henry Burris, a finalist for this year’s most outstanding player award.

“The man (Burris) is incredible to be doing what he’s doing at that age, ” said Steve Barkhouse, who also praised coach Rick Campbell for the team’s rapid rise in the CFL. Campbell is a finalist for coach of the year in the CFL.

“I think it’s coaching: it has to be coaching,” said Barkhouse, 50.

“There’s no other way you can do what they’ve done this year.”