Rick Moffat
CFL.ca
Dana Carvey will be thrilled. The mantra for year three of the Trestman Era: “Stay the Course.” You can hear the rest, SNL fans: “Wouldn’t be prudent. A thousand points of light!”
Carvey’s mockery of George Bush the first aside, the new theme for the Alouettes season has been a burning issue of curiosity on the part of fans and players. “Everything Matters” in year one under Marc Trestman spoke of the well-travelled former NFL assistant coach’s attention to detail.
“Win the Day” became a rallying war cry en route to the Alouettes’ stirring Grey Cup victory in Calgary. During the battle against the Riders last November, many Als players wore t-shirts designed by defensive lineman Keron Williams whose fashion-statement crunched their guru’s message into: “WTD” and the letters transformed into a stylized sword.
“Stay the Course”? Sounds dangerously conservative. Wouldn’t be prudent!
“That’s the challenge for all of us right now,” says Anthony Calvillo on the final day of Training Camp at Bishop’s University before debuting for 2010 at newly-expanded Molson Stadium.
“To build this team we have, because even though we have a lot of returning players, even four or five new guys changes the locker room. Some backups become starters and we’ve got new guys. We’re trying to build something special.”
Calvillo, still munching daily on his quinoa care packages imported to the Bishop’s dining hall to maintain his ever leaner 200 pounds of throwing machine, says the importance of the Trestman phrase is not lost on the veterans. “We understand it and are trying to spread it to the entire team. Then we can get better as a team as we move along.”
Does this permit time for the rest of the CFL to catch up?
“This year everything is starting fresh. We have to make sure we come out with the same intensity, that same edge we had in Calgary Week 1 last year ‘cuz we know they’ll have it in Saskatchewan.”
Coach Trestman calls it “buy-in”. His new book Perseverance is all about getting the players to be accountable and to spread that responsibility themselves.
The Trestman Way has ended one longstanding Alouettes tradition. No Training Camp pranks. Not even a Rookie Show Night or a college fight song-fest.
“That aspect died when Trestman came aboard and honestly, the club now, looking at his vision – we’re better for it now,” says veteran Paul Lambert, moving fulltime to centre since the Bryan Chiu retirement. “It’s brought the team closer together. It’s allowed older guys to embrace the younger guys and allowed them to come up to us and ask us questions. It’s pretty remarkable one little thing eliminated from a camp can do.”
“The Phantom” would be horrified to hear that. The mystery man (or men) behind “leaners” – buckets of water propped against dorm-room doors at the Fort St. Jean military base in previous years would be aghast. The gags that broke the drudgery at previous camps often included fish from the nearby Richelieu River.
“I still remember getting into the ice tub only to find catfish swimming around me,” says Chiu, who surely guards some of the Phantom’s secrets until further statutes of limitations run out.
Under Don Mathews, Als pranksters flourished. Where once former all-star Ed Philion was hunted down and prosecuted for pulling “victory donuts” on the practise field with his Ford Bronco under Rod Rust, “The Don” believed the team that laughed often would also laugh best. Players organized their own Training Camp Survivor, complete with players competing in worm-swallowing and swimming down a scuzzy drainage-way into the river.
Lambert and Calvillo agree. Coach Trestman has lived up to his promise, or was that a warning, to make each and every training camp more challenging than the previous.
Counting on the Als to falter Y3T? Wouldn’t be prudent.
