Thursday, August 03, 2006

Hospital Ship Argonaut lists badly in Montreal!

When the schedule was drawn up the August 3rd match up between Montreal and Toronto no doubt was considered a nice measuring stick for these two Eastern rivals. But with the Argonauts roster depleted by injury and Montreal on high octane, August 3rd instead became the night of the blow out.

Montreal cruised to an easy 31-7 victory and the only good thing for Toronto is that the score wasn’t much worse. Montreal too often had their drives stall out in the last stages resulting in five Damon Duval field goals, had those drives continued on to eventual success this would have been one of those 60 something blow outs that even the ever positive Pinball Clemons might have frowned over.

Toronto using Spurgeon Wynn at QB for three quarters in place of the injured Damon Allen, could not generate much in the way of forward progress at Molson Stadium. The Argos spent most of the night flirting with the possible fate of the Ti Cats of last week in serving up a second goose egg on the season. Wynn had problems all night with receivers dropping the ball, missed passes on his part, confusion in the backfield and an onrushing Alouette defense that showed no mercy. By the time he gave way to Eric Crouch in the fourth quarter, the game was safely in the hands of Anthony Cavillo’s offence that put points on the board at will.

Crouch didn’t do very much as well, the malaise of defeat seeming to hang over the Argos by the fourth quarter. However, for the third string quarterback still looking to find his way into the CFL, the playing experience was no doubt valuable, but in the savior category he’s still a bit off the pace.

The Alouettes gave Nealon Greene a chance to work out with the offence as well, perhaps Don Matthews realizing that playing time in the early to mid season will bode well should his starter Calvillo unfortunately go down by playoff time. Greene ran a safe offense for the most part, but one errant pass in the fourth gave the Argos the opportunity to break the shut out. Kahlil Carter ran the pick back 84 yards for the only scoring play for the double blue on the night, something which won’t win Greene any fans on the Als Defensive corps, which did a good job of punishing the Argos all night long.

The Als improve their record to 7 and 0 and look to be the cream of the CFL crop once again. Making for another entertaining night out for the traditional sold out crowd of 20,202, no doubt they wish they could have expanded their staidum by now, with a team of this quality 30,000 plus a night would not be out of the question.

The Argos for their part stumble to 2-5 on the year so far. Toronto can get back on track when they visit Hamilton next week, a game which will pit two struggling East Division teams against each other. Montreal takes its undefeated record into Calgary on August 12th, and considering the struggles of the Stamps these days, there’s a good chance the Als will be 8 and 0 by mid august and mid season!

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