Tracker

I am going to retreat into a feeble* position in the corner now.

Now you are going to give me nightmares.

Maybe he is tired of the team he is playing for being almost good enough?

Winning is nice, but being able to to respect yourself and the organization you work for is a whole lot more important at the end of the day. Don Matthews didn't get many Christmas cards from his players but he managed to win without being complete jackhole. O'Shea has his faults but at least he has the respect of the fans.

Nichols was nothing short of great, even if he was totally healthy. He had patchwork receivers and I would bet that neither Harris nor Flanders were 100% either. Hall and his defence let Nichols and the fans down once again.

Firing Hall is not just about ridding the team of an incompetent coach. It also has to be about sending a clear message to the rest of the team (including the scouts and coaches) that continued bad performances will result in heads rolling. The players that have been giving their best are going to be disheartened if their efforts are being undermined by bad coaching, the retention of players and coaches that are demonstrably bad and any kind of favouritism.

If he was, he would be bubbling about all the progress the team has made and how rosy the future is.

Four years of "rebuilding" and we have yet to win a playoff game? Four years and teams who were just as crappy (Riders, Argos and TiCats) have managed to make the necessary changes to become competitive and the Bombers back into the playoffs and embarrass themselves in front of their fans in a winnable game? If this is good enough, there is something dreadfully wrong. As one vulture said to the other, "Patience my a$$, I'm going to go kill something".

As another nail in Richie Hall's coffin: the Bombers were in the game for the first half and the offence was still perking in the second half, but the Eskimos made half-time adjustments and shredded the Bomber defence. Hall's offence made no corrections and the Esks ran away with the game. Westerman and Leggett would have made no difference and even if Hurl had been a decent MLB, that would not have stopped the slaughter, just slowed it down a bit.

....but no "happy ending"

Is this the attitude of Walters, O'shea and Hall?

Washington made a few catches as well, so he may be worth bringing back next year, but Givens showed very little despite his apparent promise.

Mercifully, you will have a reprieve until at least next year.

Now you're just being mean, and will cause Hurl (and possibly Hall and )'Shea) to snivel.

Leggett would not have saved the game, and I'm not if Hurl had been replaced with a MLB even vaguely like a legit player that would have made a difference. We are going to find out if O'Shea has the smarts to see the glaringly obvious about Hall and if Walters has the gonads to order O'Shea to turf Hall or walk out the door with him.

If you were running a hamburger restaurant and your cook kept burning the patties over and over and you did nothing about it, it is your problem. How long were we told that Roc was a good player? And don't get me started about Hurl.

Its the coaching, and you can take that to the bank.

My heart goes out to Nichols, Harris, Dressler and all the other players who gave it their best shot only to be let down by a poorly executed fake gamble and two free touchdowns by the defence. I am as mad as a wet hen right now but O'Shea has about four weeks to show that he can make the decisions needed to make the team a contender. The lack of good replacement players for those screwing up or injured is all on Walters and the scouting. Not. Good. Enough.

I pray that O'Shea has Noel Thorpe's phone number on speed-dial.

I think that there is a very good case to make that its not the talent, its the coaching. We need to import a load of manure from Regina for Hall's driveway. Fortunately, there's a lot of manure there.

The real question is whether the good players have seen that no matter how hard they try, Hall's "defensive strategies" are going to let them down in the crunch. The problems have been painfully obvious and there for most of the year and in all of the Bomber losses. Hall and maybe even O'Shea and Walters can try to explain it by blaming poor execution ie" the coaches do not blow their assignments, the players do", but Hall is responsible. Period. If O'Shea believes that Hall is a good coach and is worth keeping, then we are are down to a two-for-one special- out with both of them. I suspect that the reason we did not get a sellout today was that a lot of fans did not believe that the Bombers were going to win. Not only did we lose, but we lost badly for the same freaking reasons we lost most of the other games this year. Enough.

That has to be very high on the recruitment list for next year. If Hurl isn't the worst MLB in the league, he has to be very close.

That's a looong way away.

Yes he does, but the problem is whether they can catch.

Connery would have wanted a vodka martini (shaken not stirred) and a Beretta to be behind center. Or a Walther PPK.