Jeff Krever
CFL.ca
One of the CFL’s youngest teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats learned plenty from their week in the spotlight.
The toughest lesson of all: losing stinks.
It’s a lesson learned by every pro athlete at some point in his or her career, and one that rookie running back C.J. Gable is taking to heart.
“We don’t want to feel this way again, who wants to feel this way – it hurts,” Gable said following the Ticats’ 45-23 loss to the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the 101st Grey Cup Championship. “Everyone came in here ready to play, but [the Riders] came out and won it.”
“So everyone’s feeling hurt right now.”
Gable is no stranger to big games, especially having spent his collegiate career with the USC Trojans – one of the biggest programs in college football. Yet he’s never experienced a loss like Sunday night’s.
“I’ve never lost in a big game,” he said. “In college we won our bowl games all the time, so I felt like it really hurt me because I never lost a big game like this.”
“I’m going to use this fire for next year, and I’m going to be back again.”
Circumstances of Sunday’s loss aside, 2013 could be viewed as a watershed moment in the coming years. The Ticats took a different direction over the off-season with the hiring of Kent Austin as head coach and general manager.
That meant a transformation on the field, with the team adding youth and cutting some of the dead weight of past years. It led to a second-place finish in the division, meanwhile gearing the team up to compete for the division crown starting next season.
“We’re proud of the guys,” said linebacker Jamall Johnson, one of the veteran leaders of the team.
He witnessed the club bounce back from a tough start to eventually win 11 of 15 games on the way to an appearance in the final – despite having to travel to Guelph to play home games, among so many other potential distractions.
“It is a good experience for sure for everyone,” Andy Fantuz added. “This feeling is something you never want to have, it is something that has happened to me a few times now but I am going to do whatever I can to not let it happen again.”
“But we are proud of our team, we got it here, we had a chance and we’ve just got to finish the job next year.”
Johnson said he believes his team can build off the team’s successes this season and work to do even better next year.
“We fought through so much this year and got to the Grey Cup and it’s upsetting that we weren’t able to finish it all with a ring and bring a Grey Cup to the Hammer,” he said.
“But it’s going to be a long, productive off-season for each player in this room and for the organization, and there are a lot of young guy who played their hearts out and see what it’s all about and hopefully we can go from there and come back next year.”
Gable on the other hand was a little more certain.
“We’re gonna be great next year,” he said. “We’re gonna be great, because like I said we’re a young team – we were all young coming into this game.”
“Everybody feels the same way, we’re going to be back,” he continued. “We’re going to be back because we’re hungry and we’re a young team, and we already got a taste of it and we want more of it.”
Furthermore, he added that he’s looking forward to proving everyone wrong.
“Nobody believed in us,” said Gable. “I was watching TSN, they didn’t believe in us – nobody believed that we came this far and everyone was surprised that we came this far, and it’s luck that we came this far.”
“We’re going to prove next year that it’s not luck.”
