Monday, September 04, 2006

Three quarter football!

The Ti-Cats should petition the CFL league office for a rule change, effective immediately all CFL contests should only be three quarters in length, eliminating the need for a final fifteen minutes and the ever popular Ti-Cat melt down.

For Three quarters in front of the traditional sold out Labour Day multitudes at Ivor Wynne Stadium, the Tiger Cats resembled the team everyone thought they would see from Game One on.

An offensive line suddenly remembered the name of their game was to PROTECT the quarterback, Jason Maas remembered that there were guys on his team that could catch balls. Corey Holms got to feel what a football felt like again. The defence found that knocking an Argo on his can was a fun feeling to have on Labour Day. They even managed to overcome the loss of Josh Ranek who suffered a ghastly looking injury on one of his trademark straight ahead runs.

For three quarters it was a football game, a low scoring smash mouth of a game, but at least the beer concessions didn’t have to close early in fear of a riot or because no one was left around to buy the product.

The Ti Cats resplendent in their fancy White helmets came out and roared on their very first set of downs, actually scoring offensive points in the first few minutes of a game. The first offensive points put on the board by an offensive drive in a long time. So long in fact that Ron Lancaster actually looked as though coaching might be a fun thing to do to help out his team in desperate trouble.

However, by the end of the game, Ronnie would look like he has on far too many nights since taking over from Greg Marshall, looking to the skies and seeking out signs that the Apocalypse is nearly over.

Things went down hill for the Cats right after Damon Allen made his latest mark in professional football, a slight little hitch pass to Arlan Bruce III early in the third quarter turned into a touchdown scamper, putting the Argos ahead for good and making Allen a record holder par extraordinaire. They trotted out his old college coach Steve Mariucci and the Commissioner said a few words (other than will work for food) on behalf of the league as Allen celebrated his eclipse of the Moon record of 70553 yards passing, now sitting at 70596 and counting!

The brief disruption in routine seemed to take all the gas out of the Ticat tank, from that moment on the game was all Allen’s and all Argos. They scored another 27 points before the final gun mercifully went off.

The Ticats couldn’t find the endzone once more, as the Argos continued their domination on defence if fourth quarters refusing to surrender so much as a single.

There were some bright moments for the fans of the Yellow and Black; Maas looked more like what Cat fans were promised than at any time in the season. The O line finally found a way to provide some protection, Corey Holmes announced that he wants the ball and knows what to do with it and the Defence refused to yield for 45 minutes. Things to work on we guess, as Dr. Phil might say Baby steps.

For the Ti-Cat fans it was a switch and bait kind of night, they were promised a never say die squad for three quarters only to see them expire in the fourth. There provided for so much promise early on, giving way to so much disappointment by games end. The game by the end served as a metaphor for the season so far.

For Ticat fans, it’s a single thought, if only the three down game, only lasted three quarters!

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