Whenever a head coach doesn't take a loss personally, or immediately looks to the lighter side of it, it's a good sign.
Football is a funny game. Football is unlike any other sport. Players make mistakes. Coaches make them too (Ken Miller over the weekend against the best team in the CFL??)
Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's not so funny.
What I find funny is when the pros make the mistakes only because technically, they aren't supposed to make mistakes.
It makes it easier to understand when a 15 or 16-year-old high school player makes a mistake.At least not when your getting paid all kinds of money to perform. During the Labour Day football games, Saskatchewan's Chris Getzlaf went offside on a play at the line of scrimmage Sunday. In that same game, Winnipeg's Brock Ralph put himself offside when the Blue Bombers were facing a second-and-long attempt from their own goal line (of all places).
These guys make mistake because they're human beings. They're pros of course, but they're still human.
The biggest difference is you've got coaches who have different ways of reacting to it. I don't know what Ken Miller said when Getzlaf went offside and I don't have a clue what Paul LaPolice was thinking, even though LaPolice had a ton of reason to wonder what Ralph was thinking. Winnipeg was forced to punt from their own end zone and that set up the Roughriders in good field position in that particular game.Over the weekend here in Yorkton, the Pee Wee Gridders (kids ages 11-13) were taking on one of the teams based out of Regina. These kids kept the officials busier than government officials on election night.
On one series deep in Yorkton territory, the refs moved the yard sticks on three plays in a row and there weren't any gains. Instead, the Gridders had been charged with three offside calls in a row. One right after the other. The looks on the faces of the coaching staff...
During the Yorkton Regional High School Raider junior game, also against Regina, a Raider defensive lineman was charged with a horse-collar call (grabbing the opponents jersey collar long enough for the ref to catch it).
When the YRHS senior team took on O' Neill later that same day, a handful of penalties set Yorkton back inside their own five-yard line.
Guys get called for anything the official considers to be an infraction. The worst ones have got to be offsides, roughing the passer and face mask.
If you get called for face mask, you should be sent back to your school team for immediate remedial help and not released until you score 100 on the exam.
There's the college ranks right below the pros. Everyone gets called. There are a couple guys from right here in Yorkton who are dressing for their respective university programs (RJ Skinner, YRHS grad, University of Manitoba, Logan Wilk, YRHS grad, University of Saskatchewan). They are going to be exposed to a much higher level of football but to make the assumption that neither will ever make mistakes is slightly ridiculous.
When it happens, it's interesting to see the kind of reaction it draws from the coach.
When they do it on TV, when you're watching the Riders, or the Alouettes, or the Stampeders, or the Tiger-Cats on the TV set, and Durant, or Calvillo, or Burris or Glenn screws up a play, or doesn't get the ball into the end zone from a few yards out, everybody watching at home wants their heads.Jordan Matechuk of the Tiger-Cats said that sometimes the team that wins is the team that makes the fewest mistakes.
The YRHS junior football team has had an interesting season so far. Obviously, at the high school level, and the youngest ones on the football field, they are prone to making mistakes. Lots of them. Just ask head coach Roby Sharpe, Jason Farrell or Joe Toppi.
There's a bunch of bright spots on the junior team, which most of the current players will only play on it for one year before moving up to the senior team.
But Saturday's game was one of those anything-that-can-go-wrong-will-go wrong situations.
Every now and then one of the coaches on the sidelines finds themselves screaming at a bunch of kids in uniform because none of them are where they're supposed to be.
The juniors made quite the comeback in the second half two weeks ago but were completely outplayed in the game on Friday of the long weekend.
Sharpe said there wasn't anything he could do other than laugh; partly because there isn't a whole lot of other options.
Then he started talking about practice.
After the game, he was like Allen Iverson on Sportsnet Connected's Top Sports Blowups. Iverson got into it with a reporter who asked about practices. It was funny to watch because Iverson didn't get mad, he just used the word practice 15.5 times in a time span of about 45 seconds to answer the question.
That's what Sharpe was like after this particular game after Regina blew up for 34 unanswered points against the Raiders.
Should be an interesting practice this week. If there's anything you'd like to see covered by Game 7, please forward your suggestions to the Yorkton This Week sportsdesk by phone (306) 782-2465..
