BMO Field long-awaited oasis for CFL
After years of uncertainty and toil, the Argonauts finally have fitting home
Jim Barker has been with the Toronto Argonauts for seven seasons, six as the team’s GM.
Think about what that has the potential to do to a person.
Last year, the Argos played four ‘home’ dates on the road. They opened in Fort McMurray against Edmonton; they played twice in arch-rival territory in Hamilton and once in Ottawa because of a combination of the Pan Am Games, the Blue Jays’ playoff run and the rigidity of their former landlord, the Rogers Centre.
Barker has watched his team’s practice venue shift from the University of Toronto’s Mississauga campus to York University then Downsview Park. Oh, and the U of T practice facility waslost to a mysterious fire in 2011.
There’s been an ownership change, attendance issues that come with playing in a 50,000-seat venue and uncertainty over the franchise’s future.
On Friday, Barker stood in the Argos’ brand new dressing room at BMO Field — the latest and what the organization and the league both hope is the team’s greatest change — and he looked genuinely relieved.
When the Argos host the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in Saturday’s pre-season game at BMO, Barker will be thinking of his veteran players.
“I can’t wait to get here early and watch Andre Durie and Chris Van Zeyl, those guys that have been here and through playing home games in Fort McMurray and in Ottawa, and meeting in dingy hockey locker rooms because there was nowhere else to be,” Barker said.
“To be able to walk in and this is theirs . . . what a gift.”
If you’d never been to a soccer game at BMO Field, you could walk into Saturday’s game and see what looks like just about any other CFL stadium across the country. There are slight differences, like a logo-free centre field and 18-yard deep end zones instead of the standard 20yard scoring areas most fields have and of course the natural grass field that’s been out of the CFL since 2010.
But overall, Canada’s soccer hub looks ready to host the CFL.
The playing surface is a little different, but in so many ways, putting the Argos on even playing ground with the rest of the league is a huge thing for the organization.
“We’ve gone the last seven years in a different world,” Barker said. “There are a lot of things this team has gone through that you don’t make public, but it’s been a very difficult seven years.”
Despite there being an uneven playing field so to speak the last seven years, the Argos have been competitive on it, for the most part. They won the Grey Cup in 2012 and have been in the playoffs four of the last six years.
“Scott (Milanovich, the Argos head coach), I felt bad for him,” Barker said.
Milanovich has gone 38-34 in some adverse coaching conditions.
“There’s no asterisk next to his record . . . ‘By the way the last three years he’s had no home field, and by the way they met in a bar because they had nowhere to meet, or they’d come to practice not know where they were practising until an hour into their meetings and then we’d bring the busses and take them to their meetings,” Barker said.
“How do you put a value on that? But his record is what it is and I give him a ton of credit for that.”
True to pre-season form, the Argos likely won’t put their key players on the field for long Saturday.
Ricky Ray is third on the quarterback depth chart, with Adrian McPherson looking like he’ll get the start. The Tiger-Cats will sit linebacker Simoni Lawrence, former Argos receiver Chad Owens, receiver Andy Fantuz and running back C.J. Gable.