By: Justin Boone
jboone@ticats.ca
What a difference a year makes. Spirits around the Ticats locker room, which is temporarily located at McMaster, are overflowing with optimism for the coming season.
Players kept their heads high, and the jokes flowing late last year, but when a team is eliminated from playoff contention they can’t help but have the air let out of their tires.
In contrast, 2008 has started off with everyone’s sights set on success. Head coach Charlie Taaffe enters his second-year manning the sidelines for the Tabbies, and looks more comfortable in his Steeltown surroundings.
“The second year is always easier than the first year,” said the former Coach of the Year. “You know what to expect and the veteran players know what we’re trying to get accomplished in practice. The coordinators and coaches have done a great job of taking some of that burden off me. I can kind of be more of a big picture guy now and watch the whole practice, and not just one little area.”
Now Taaffe occupies midfield and has the opportunity to walk in and out of drills on both sides of the ball. He’s also using the new technology available thanks to the Ron V. Joyce Stadium to bring a new level of control and efficiency to practice.
“We’re doing it the same way we did last year, except we didn’t have the technology. I had to keep an eye on my watch last year but now we have the great technology with the video board in the endzone,” he said.
Working closely with equipment manager R.J. James, Taaffe signals the end of each period notifying the coaches to move along to the next session.
“Coach is doing a good job with the clock,” stated all-star centre Marwan Hage. “We’re doing it the smart way, which I think will show during the season. He’s being doing a great job all around, giving us time to recuperate with no two-a-days back-to-back, but it’s still camp and it doesn’t get any easier.”
Hage isn’t the only veteran noticing a significant change in training camp in Taaffe’s second season. Quarterback Richie Williams believes the new approach came from a combination of Taaffe realizing the toll last year’s camp took on the players and coach being more open to player’s suggestions now that a trust has been built.
“It’s easier to lighten up than it is to start off soft,” explained Taaffe. “One thing you always do as a coach at the end of a season is go back and look at what you did, what was good and what wasn’t. Obviously this was something that I thought our players got fatigued early in the camp. I thought their conditioning was excellent, but it’s hard with today’s athlete to do consecutive two-a-days.”
“Coach did what he had to do last year,” expressed Hage. “Walking into a situation where he didn’t know anyone. You can’t start easy and then decide to go hard. If last year turned out different, everyone would have said it was because the way we had camp.”
With the positive feel surrounding training camp, the Ticats are hoping that come the end of the 2008 season, those same people will be looking back and identifying this year’s camp as the reason for the team’s success.
