Kamau Peterson
CFL.ca
Fans across the country wait all year for the season to get to this point. With only 2 weeks remaining most fans feel like they have a good idea as to where their team will land in the playoffs, or whether they’ll be watching the action from their living rooms as fans themselves.
Part of the beauty of this game is that regardless of your team’s previous body of work in past years, match-ups with rivals, or even their past weeks performance, it’s just not possible to gauge how your team will fare when the chips are truly down. And this year poses a wonderfully exciting set of circumstances for all but the far and away leader of the regular season (Montreal), and the team who’s endured the most struggles (Toronto.)
Everyone else is locked into a situation in which they must play, and win all the way through the 18th game in order to allow themselves the best playoff position possible en route to the Grey Cup in Calgary. In my 9 years playing I’ve never seen the last two weeks set up so meaningfully for 6 teams.
It’s during these weeks that teams that once seemed to be in disarray have been known to come together for one big run at the cup. The 2005 Eskimos, and 2001 Stampeders are two that come to mind as teams that needed wins in the last two weeks in order to even get into the playoffs after performing in fits and bursts all season. Both teams were able to get their bearings and run the table for the stretch, much to the dismay of the Als, and Bombers whom they met in the Grey Cups those years and had fantastic regular-season records.
I was on that 2001 team as a rookie in this league and remember vividly how it was at this time of year that the team all of the sudden unified and we hit our stride in spite of everything that we had endured that year. Since I’ve been in that situation, I have a strong sense of what that team dynamic feels like. Although it’s maddening throughout the season, it’s absolute magic down the stretch when a team responds best when it absolutely must.
I’ve never been on a dominant regular season team, and I often wonder how different that must be. The Als have been such a good regular season team for so long, I’ve always thought they must just get used to that kind of success and transfer it down to any new players who come in through that strong veteran core they keep in place. It must take a tremendous amount of focus to attain that level of success for 18 weeks and still put on a show in the playoffs.
It’s certainly an understandably strong motivator in that city however, knowing that if you can take care of business throughout the season, when it winds down and everyone else is truly taxing themselves for the final weeks, you can recharge and prime yourself for the Eastern Final held in the Big O, away from the elements, with a massive home field advantage on your side. Win that one – and you’re off to the show.
I must admit I have a ton of respect for the players over there, especially the Calvillo’s, Cahoon’s, and Chiu’s that have been putting themselves in such an ideal situation for so many years…it’s quite remarkable.
The parity of the league seems to be always so evident in the shootout that is the West division. Lately, the crossover has been in play more and more as western teams that have scratched and clawed to stay close in the West spill over and take their playoff shot any way they can. Last year our Eskimo team became the first crossover team to win when we did so in Winnipeg. You can’t help but wonder what the outcome will be this year with such a tight race.
The schedulers really must be patting themselves on the back for the matchups they laid out for Week 18. First, you have Calgary and Saskatchewan going up against each other in the final week with a potential first place seed and bye into the West Final on the line. They also nailed the Winnipeg and Hamilton showdown as both could be playing for not only home field advantage as the 2nd place team in the East, but could also be looking to avoid elimination thanks to a western crossover taking the 3rd spot out East once again. And finally, my Eskimos will play the Lions in a game that could mean either a West, or East playoff spot.
Fans can take pride in knowing that they won’t get much in the way of “B-team” football as we come down to the wire in this 2009 season. In any photo finish race, the real winners are those who witness it.
Kp8
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