By Jeremy Sandler,
National Post
TORONTO – The Winnipeg Blue Bombers will not be the only football team without its starting quarterback for a championship game in Toronto this weekend.
While the CFL’s East Division champions prepare to contest Sunday’s Grey Cup without starting pivot Kevin Glenn, the Saint Mary’s Huskies will have Ted Abraham filling in for Erik Glavic when they face the University of Manitoba Bisons in the Vanier Cup on Friday night.
“Ted’s been the backup all year, he’s had opportunities to play,” said Steve Sumarah, Saint Mary’s second-year head coach, who was offensive co-ordinator for the Huskies team that beat Manitoba 42-16 in the 2001 Vanier Cup. “With Ted, it’s going to be managing the game just like he did with the second half of last week.”
That was the Huskies’ 24-2 win over Laval in the Uteck Bowl that earned Saint Mary’s its Vanier Cup berth but cost Glavic a torn anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee late in the second quarter.
“As a quarterback, you’re not always expected to carry all the play and do those things,” said Sumarah, when asked how his team would handle losing the Atlantic Conference nominee for the Hec Crighton Trophy as Canada’s top university football player. “These are playoff games and defence and special teams are the keys in these games.”
While Saint Mary’s defence ranked first in the country by allowing just 252 yards per game this season, Glavic is a huge loss for the offence.
Besides passing for 1,843 yards and 16 touchdowns in eight games this season, the 6-foot-6 Pickering native ranked second on his team with 478 rushing yards. Glavic’s five rushing touchdowns were second in the Atlantic Conference .
Abraham, who threw just 19 passes all season, said he was excited about the chance to play.
“Erik is a friend of mine, I would never hope for anything bad to happen to him, but as an athlete I have to be ready ” said the Bedford, N.S., native. “I’m not acting any differently than I would any other week because otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job as a backup.”
Abraham, who went 0-for-4 in relief of Glavic against the Rouge et Or, said he would keep things simple on Friday with a lot of pre-snap reads.
“You watch tape and learn your opponent and find out where there are holes and where there aren’t and what you can and can’t take from them,” he said.
The Huskies’ win last week snapped a 14-game winning streak by a Laval team that won three of the last four Vanier Cups.
Manitoba, 11-0 this season and 20-1 over the past two years, can give coach Brian Dobie the national title denied by Saint Mary’s in 2001.
“For us, it’s not about revenge,” he said. “This is our own entity, this is our own time. We’re much further along the road as a program than we were in 2001. Our team is on a mission to take one more step.”
