Ed Philion
CFL.ca
You never like excuses in sports as to reasons why you lose football games. Like I said, you don’t like to use em’ but somehow references to that effect usually find their way into a player or coache’s post game press conference.
You can believe that over the year, players, coaches and management have at one time or another used phrases that when you read between the lines reflect such excuses. Although abundant, some excuses get more air time.
Since most professional teams use airplanes as their choice of transportation, “passing the buck” and blaming the aviation world is often quite convenient. The one I prefer begins something to the effect of: “We got in off the plane very late which didn’t allow us much time to prepare for the game, but we’re not going to use that as an excuse as to why we lost”.
Some are rather obvious: “The weather was a huge factor, making the field a mess and limiting our game plan, but we are professionals and both teams had to deal with similar conditions”.
Most coaches try to have their players avoid such temptations; however they often find themselves self-loathing in the excuses they ask their players to avoid. If there is a team in the CFL that deserves the benefit of an excuse it would be the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Not only have they had twenty one players at one time or another on the injured reserve, six of those twenty one have been put on the shelf with fractured fibulas. Hell, most head trainers in the CFL would be lucky if just one of their players had such an injury during the course of the season.
Although the Alouettes gave them a thorough spanking this past week, nobody would bat an eyelash if Coach Miller and his guys would have pulled a cliché out of their bag. Instead, the Riders choose to focus on what they did right in the 37-12 loss instead of dwelling on the obvious, “this team just don’t have enough in the tank”.
Congrats to Coach Miller and his boys for not taking the bait. Like they say excuses are for…
Ed Philion played eight seasons along the defensive line for the Montreal Alouettes. He was a three-time East Division All-Star and helped the Alouettes win the Grey Cup in 2002. Currently, he is a member of the Alouettes’ broadcast team on CJAD Radio in Montreal.
