From opening night to open workout
Locally based Tiger-Cats return to Tim Hortons Field for limited and voluntary exercising
Instead of pushing weights, they should have been pushing Blue Bombers.
But, on the very weekend the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ 2020 regular season would have started — tonight’s home Grey Cup rematch against Winnipeg — Tim Hortons Field finally opened to football players, but only a small handful.
“It is kind of surreal hearing that the season would have kicked off this weekend,” said centre Mike Filer, the longest-tenured Ticat. “You’ve been thinking more about how we’re going to be able to play again, to have a locker room full of guys again.”
Late last week, the Tiger-Cats and soccer’s Forge FC got permission from the appropriate city departments to return to the stadium, in limited usage. The soccer team, restricted to the playing field, began morning practices Monday. The Tiger-Cats, who can use the field and their weight room but nothing else, started their voluntary workouts just after noon Friday in three-man groups, separated by more than an hour.
Only 11 Ticats will take advantage of the opportunity to lift weights and do some sprint and agility running under the watch of strength and conditioning coach Ike Brown and head athletic therapist Claire Toffelmire. Six of them — offensive linemen Filer, Darius Ciraco, Brett Golding and Jesse Gibbon, defensive end Malcolm Campbell and receiver/fullback Nikola Kalinic — were on hand Friday.
All 11 live locally, all are doing this voluntarily, all set up and took their own COVID-19 tests. Like Forge players, they answer a health questionnaire and have their temperatures taken before being allowed in.
“As an organization, we appreciate working with the city on the plan,” said co-GM Shawn Burke.
“We believe we have a plan in place that keeps our players healthy and safe but allows them to take advantage of our facilities. It’s strictly volunteer-based, just like any other off-season.”
The players will use the facility three days a week and Ticat officials emphasize that, unlike Forge FC, which had already started training camp when the stadium was shut down, the Tiger-Cats were in the off-season, and still are. So, the coaching staff is not present during these workouts.
There will be no footballs used, and there are also no quarterbacks. Jeremiah Masoli, who was in town for several weeks, has gone home to San Francisco.
“It’s a sense of camaraderie for us,” Golding said. “You don’t feel like you’re just grinding at it by yourself, when you can get lost in it. This way you have someone going through the same stuff.”
Gibbons said that, returning in a February-March workout mode when the season was originally supposed to start, “crosses your mind for sure. It would have been an awesome way to start, against Winnipeg. It’s not that I don’t think about it, it’s that I think about what we can do right now.
“Nothing can beat these facilities, and this is about as close as we’re going to get right now.”
NOTES: The Tiger-Cats are hosting a virtual tailgate party on Facebook on Saturday, beginning at 6 p.m., to celebrate the original and now-postponed season opener against Winnipeg. Thirteen prominent Ticats will sign virtual autographs and anybody can take part.