THE CANADIAN PRESS
If nothing else, Tim Burke has scored straight A’s for brutal honesty in his short tenure as interim head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
Burke was at the head of the class again this week in discussing Friday’s 44-3 shellacking in Calgary.
Bomber fans were outraged to see players laughing on the sideline in the late stages of Friday’s blowout, and Burke accused his players of lacking maturity, and not putting enough effort into their second blowout loss in three weeks.
At the first team meeting following the Calgary collapse, Burke showed the players excerpts from the telecast, which featured Brandon Collier and quarterback Alex Brink chuckling on the sidelines, along with biting commentary from the TSN panel. 
“I showed them the video and said ‘this is your resume, this is what people in the outside world are thinking about you. You’ve got to figure out how you’re going to respond. Are you going to respond with pride or are you going to tuck your tail and run’,” said the rookie head coach.
“So, we’ll see how they respond.”
And Burke wasn’t finished.
“It’s embarassing,” he continued. “These are professional athletes and we should act in a professional manner. You’re getting paid to play as hard as you can play. We did not play as hard as we could play in Calgary and it’s inexcusable.”
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Tough love for Bombers |
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“It’s embarassing. These are professional athletes and we should act in a professional manner. You’re getting paid to play as hard as you can play. We did not play as hard as we could play in Calgary and it’s inexcusable.” – Tim Burke |
“The good people of Winnipeg pay good money to come watch them play. Their salaries are being paid by the fans of Winnipeg. So they deserve more than they’re getting.”
How the players will respond to this type of dressing down is anyone’s guess. But at 2-9, things can’t get much worse in Bomberland, and Burke, 0-3 as interim head coach, obviously decided that if he’s going to go down, he’ll go down swinging.
Burke gets a standing ovation from this corner.
There is plenty of blame to go around for this Bomber season gone awry, and it needs to be shared by everyone involved in the football side of the organization.
Questionable personnel decisions, coaching errors and an early season epidemic of injuries have all contributed to the current malaise.
But the players have had it too easy. From game one of the season, there have been mental lapses and assignment foul-ups that speak directly to a lack of focus and attention to detail.
Good on Tim Burke for calling out his troops. If honesty is Tim Burke’s downfall, I can’t think of a more honourable way to go.
