9/6/2007 4:07:05 PM
Must Win

The term is thrown around loosely by players sometimes, and it is spoken infrequently by coaches. With good reason for the latter because if you’re calling out must win games often during the regular season, it means your team must not be doing very well. Having lost the first half of this Labour day matchup, I can’t rightly stress the importance of winning this game. The first half of the season is over and the second half began on Wednesday for us which happened to be our only day of practice this week, and this half will tell what the legacy of this edition of the Edmonton Eskimos becomes.
With Jason Tucker and Omarr Morgan returning, we have some strong components coming back into the fold, which will certainly help us. At the same time, we’re still without some key people and losing Dan Comiskey for the remainder of the season will certainly not be a picnic to deal with either. On a short turnaround like we have this week playing this past Monday and again on Friday, I’m actually surprised that we have as healthy a team as we’re fielding. It could definitely be a lot worse in my opinion. I know that my body still feels like it does in the middle of the practice week, and I don’t do nearly the banging that some positions do during the game so naturally, there must be some serious aches and pains that are going on behind the scenes.
That being said, Calgary is going through the exact same thing. They had the exact same time frame with which to rest and recuperate, and will experience the same fatigue and challenges that we will once the ball is kicked. In addition to that, they’ll have to deal with the potential emotional letdown of winning such a big game such a short time ago. It’s very difficult to reload emotion in a short time once it’s expelled, and there are few games as emotional as the Labour Day Classic in Alberta. Had we won that game I would be writing about my concern about a potential emotional letdown on Friday for us, but since that wasn’t the case, we have vengeance on our side. Often in this high energy, home-and-home rivalry it seems that it’s a very difficult task to win both games of this series. I’m not certain about the stats, but I’d be surprised if they showed one teams dominance over both games in the set as of late.
Believe it or not, I’m actually hoping that Calgary doesn’t experience an emotional letdown at all when they come into Commonwealth tomorrow night. Instead, I hope that they are firing on all cylinders much like they were when we were in McMahon earlier in the week. That way if we should find a way to beat them, we’ll know that we’ve beaten a good team. Not just gotten lucky that a good team was riding high off of an emotional win. Coach Maciocia said it best today I think when he explained that this half of the season should be considered a completely new one. We need to take the approach that we want to have the best record in the CFL for this new 9 game season. If we’re able to do that, to finish first in this new season, then we’ll be in fine shape for any and everything that we want to do.
Game 1 of the new season is tomorrow. Can you feel the excitement? ©

KP8