When in Hamilton, don't sit near the Bomber players

From a faithful subscriber to Twelve men, we provide this story that was e mailed to us about some housekeeping issues at Ivor Wynne Stadium.

Winnipeg Blue Bomber Dan Brown occasionally pens a column for the Free Press, his latest offering portrays Hamilton's home for football as a great place to visit, as long as you're a fan or a home team player.
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If you're in the visitors dressing room, well Charles Dicken's couldn't have created a better environment for misery...

Our thanks to Sean in Winnipeg for the tip on this very entertaining story.

Look, we know Hamilton ain't heaven, but this is pathetic
Sun Jun 26 1977
Doug Brown
Winnipeg Free Press

AT this point, entering my seventh season in the CFL, I am accustomed to the fact that Hamilton is not exactly one of the most desirable road destinations in the CFL.

I've grown accustomed to the fact that if you want to grab a steak -- just a Keg steak, not a Hy's steak or 529 steak -- you may have to wait an hour outside the restaurant due to an absence of reasonable alternatives in Hamilton, and take a $15 cab ride just to sit and wait in that line.

I'm not fazed anymore by the fact that in my time spent in the CFL I have landed in Hamilton but never actually flown out of the airport. I find it quaint that it appears to be the only terminal in Canada where if you wish to leave, you have to drive to Toronto.

What used to be the biggest eyesore of a stadium in the league has now actually been somewhat improved with the addition of a jumbotron, field turf, and some new paint, so it looks like a reasonable venue to host a football game. That is, of course, until you happen upon the visiting dressing room.

Now, this is not an attempt to revive or restore the spitting match of 2006 where a Hamilton newspaper handed out inserts that read "We might be one and whatever, but at least we aren't from Winnipeg", yet more of a spotlight on conditions that aren't this bad in most high schools let alone in what is supposed to be a destination for professional football.

It's not the disrepair of the locker room that bothers me -- the heat, the smell, or the antiquated side-by-side roster seating on the field. Nope, it is the fact that in a place where professional athletes visit from all over Canada and the U.S.A., many for the first time, they discover that Hamilton does not have the most basic provision of running hot water in its locker-room.

This may not sound like a big deal to you, but after you have laid it on the line for three hours and 60-odd plays, there are some things you take for granted, like the ability to clean yourself at the end of the day.

Of course, you're probably wondering, as I was, if maybe there was just some sort of mechanical or electrical problem on the day we happened to be there. Well, that may have been, but I don't know how long it takes to fix the magic technology of heated water, because the day before, after our walk-through at the stadium, there wasn't any hot water then and several of us asked that it be brought to the attention of whomever was in charge of maintaining the stadium.

Nothing was done, so after the game you might have witnessed the spectacle of 50-odd professional football players taking their sweat-soaked gear off, putting their clean clothes on, and climbing aboard their bus without so much as a rinse.

I bring attention to this most basic of requirements for two reasons. One, to implore our own stadium managers to deny the Tiger-Cats' organization some of the most simple standards of plumbing when they visit our stadium -- or maybe even the technological marvel of ice -- so they understand how inadequate their own facilities are, and two, so the CFL brass can come up with some penalty or fining provision for road destinations that do not provide the most basic of necessities and embarrass the league and its players.

For if it's OK to not provide hot water to visiting teams, then why not stop providing ice, and toilet facilities as well? In my opinion, the first step in improving the image of the Canadian Football League is to make sure the best ambassadors of the game -- the players -- aren't embarrassed by the conditions they are forced to endure.

Doug Brown, always a hard-hitting defensive lineman and frequently a hard-hitting columnist, appears Tuesdays in the Free Press.

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