Bert Faibish
Ticats.ca
On Saturday afternoon the Ticats will face off against the Calgary Stampeders in their first home tilt of the season.
Head Coach Marcel Bellefeuille and the team realize the importance of getting things on the right track and answering last week’s loss with a win on Saturday.
“I think it’s extremely important that we play better, that’s the first step,” said Bellefeuille.
“We got back to practice, we practiced better than we did the week before, now it’s a matter of playing better and following that process,” added Bellefeuille.
Bellefeuille believes the process is a simple one.
“If you start to play better and do the little things better then the results take care of themselves as you move along,” he said.
One positive thing that came out of practice this week was the return of off-season acquisition Maurice Mann, who returned to practice after sitting out week 1 with an ankle injury.
Mann will bring not only veteran experience but a legitimate threat to take some of the focus off of Arland Bruce III.
However after sitting on the sidelines for so long, it will be key for the coaching staff to keep an eye on him throughout the game.
“He’ll play, hopefully he’ll bring some playmaking ability to the table but at the same time we have to watch that situation, monitor it, obviously conditioning and game speed is a little different than practice,” said Bellefeuille.
“We’re in a fortunate situation because we have the five Canadian offensive linemen and we have other American receivers so we can look at the playing time and mix them all in,” he added.
While the Ticats may not have been outwardly overconfident heading into last week’s game, it certainly was an important lesson in managing expectations.
“Anytime you deal with the conscious you know what you get, and you just don’t always know what you get with the sub-conscious,” said Bellefeuille. “It’s one of those situations where I felt like we came out and played hard but we didn’t do enough of the little things,” he said.
It’s hard to manage your emotions when your team jumps out to a 7-0 lead, eight seconds into the game.
“I think getting off to that lead like we did, obviously might have had an impact but, again, it’s one of those things that players have to play through,” said Bellefeuille.
“You can warn them all you want and talk to them about it but sometimes as a team you have to go through it and unfortunately we went through it the first game,” he said.
A lot had to do with the team on the other side of the field however.
“Having said that too I think it’s important to give Winnipeg some credit, they played a good football game,” said Bellefeuille.
“They were on target, they were on mark, the quarterback played well and they did a lot of things to help themselves,” he said.
Hopefully with the support of the home fans the Ticats will get back to their winning ways, and take out some of the frustration they felt last week on the players wearing red and white jerseys.
