the 4th star

Remember Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly’s press conference on Monday? Of course you do. The Freep advertised the weekly scrum on its website, and suddenly my email machine was lighting up with questions about what’s going on. What have you heard? Is Kelly getting fired?

Nothing and no.

Kelly’s presser consisted of the usual message of hard work and keeping the faith (a warm-up for the dreadfully boring coach’s show on the radio last night), but what came out of that media scrum was just how clueless the coach actually is. This isn’t about insulting fans or calling media members names or constructing an offence that is as pleasing to the eyes as Rita MacNeil in a thong bikini.

(Yes! I call dibs! That line is up for grabs now, right?)

No, this is about consistency and paying attention to the little things. You know, like what you are actually saying to people. Want to control the message, Mike? You might want to start with staying on message.

“It’s a pleasure to come in here and work. I don’t pay any attention to all that stuff going on on the outside.”

In the same press conference, Kelly referred to how he’s paying attention to all that stuff that is going on on the outside.

“I’m on the TSN website and it says I’m losing the players. I just got a text from a player; it says, ‘Well said today coach, guys still with you.’ And that’s how we are. There’s all this sensationalism outside of the building but in the building we’re here. We come to work every day and we still believe in one another and our mental toughness is greater than anything outside this building.”

Nothing sensational going on in the building so that’s a fair comment, I guess.

Then there’s the remark about all the Riders fans who came down through the sea of empty seats with eight minutes left in the fourth quarter to sit and continue the party behind the Saskatchewan bench.

Remember earlier in the season when Kelly said he didn’t understand fans and didn’t understand why people would paint their faces blue? That might have been before the time he compared the big, bad Bombers fans to Philadelphia fans — a demographic he apparently has a firm handle on. Well, his tune has changed now. He thought it was cool on Sunday, seeing all those people wearing green and painting their faces green.

Yeah, it is cool when a visiting team and a boatload of supporters come into a inter-provincial rivals’ home stadium and lay the boots to ‘em by 45 points. It could have been more, as the coach tells everyone, if it wasn’t for the tireless work of the defence. Fifty-five points against is exhausting. No wonder everyone wearing Blue and Gold had to go home early.

“It would be nice if we were all in this together and we’re all supporting each other,” Kelly said.

After calling the fans ‘schizophrenic’ and then taking away their phone privileges, the coach is now asking the fans to be like the Riders fans and show their pride for a winning team. All that is needed is a winning team. That should be no problem, right? This is Winnipeg. Everyone is so sick of winning here. According to Kelly, winning has little to do with the support — the drink the Kool-Aid kind, not the monetary kind where fans sell out a decrepit stadium — a home team should receive.

“You’re either a fan of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers or you’re a fair-weather (fan) that only likes them when they’re winning. We’ll find out who the real fans are, and then the other ones, when we do start winning, there won’t be any room on the bandwagon for ‘em.”

Right. And if the fans hold their breath for that, their faces will be permanently blue.

But this is all part of a contradiction pattern Kelly has established right when he got here. There was the time when he didn’t want any assholes on the team at the start of the year. He wanted good citizens, good guys, to help restore the fine history of this wonderful franchise. That was followed up by flirting with legally-challenged guys like Craphonso Thorpe and Pacman Jones. Those guys don’t exactly spend their free time as volunteers at Siloam Mission — not without a court order, anyway.

Even after the Banjo Beating, Kelly couldn’t stop contradicting himself. Post game show. He says his defence looked like a deer in headlights out there, suggesting that they, like a deer on the highway with a car approaching, froze when not certain of what to do. Later in the interview, he states that Saskatchewan didn’t show one thing that his group didn’t prepare for. They knew exactly what they were getting.

Un-huh.

It’s almost like a little game right now. Listen to what Kelly says and then either go back to a different message earlier in his tenure or predict when he’ll tell the media the exact opposite without so much as a blink. Confusing the hell out of everyone in an interesting way to control the message, but I guess that’s how they do it in Philly. Or is it in Chicago now? Somewhere in the NFL, that’s for sure.

It makes you wonder why anyone would believe anything he says anymore. It makes you wonder if he uses the same double speak with players, too. Maybe that’s why they look like they’re so confused. Like that deer we were just talking about.

Last one. Fresh out of the wrapper. In speaking with Bob Irving today, the subject of who will get the start under centre in Montreal on Sunday came up. Will it be Damon Allen Michael Bishop? Or will Kelly hand the keys over to Winnipeg’s latest quarterback hope Casey Bramlet? The coach wasn’t sure, but at least he’s taken a more efficient approach to his message deficiency, contradicting himself when answering the same question now:

“I want to make decisions that are based on pertinent information. Sometimes you have to go with your gut a little bit.”

Sensational.

After ignoring a 25 year layoff, with three of those spent begging to play, I have decided to make a triumphant return to the beautiful game. In a stunning act of charity, the Crescentwood Saturday Soccer Club has done the unthinkable and allowed me to play with them in the Winnipeg Soccer Division this summer. If I can score one goal this year, I’d be pretty happy. Judging from my inconsistent play, my teammates would be equally ecstatic, too. Here’s the weekly update:

So much for that momentum.

Two quick games over the last four days to close out the regular season with all eyes now on the post season. The CSSC finished the schedule with an 8-6-4 record, good for sixth place in the 10-team Winnipeg Soccer Division. Why this might not sound like much, the placement does accomplish two things:

1. It gets us out of the play-in games at the bottom of the table. Am I saying that right? Bottom of the table? Doesn’t sound great. Anyway, we get a full week of rest. Yahoo.

2. It also puts us in a first round match-up with Red Devils United (11-7-0), a team that we seem to encounter every other week. Oh, check that, we’ve only played them three times this season, with a 4-1 loss and victories of 3-1 and 1-0 in the last two meetings. Though the CSSC has lost its last two (including a 4-2 decision to Inter-Milan which I will get to in a moment), we have won four of our last six games overall. RDU have lost five of its last six games.

To wrap things up this week, an email from the team thread:

I will take losing a game with class and dignity over winning a game and being disrespectful any day of the week. We deserved better tonight but either way, we play as a team which is more than I can say for our opponents. Good effort from everyone. As far as I am concerned Raina can play with us whenever she wants as she has as much skill as anyone else on that field and the classless individual that made those comments only made himself look more pathetic.

Raina is a young woman who occasionally plays with us. The comment that she has much skill as anyone on the field is spot on. I have only seen her in limited time, but no one on our club delivers a better one-touch ball than her. No one. I don’t know if this is any indication of her talent, as it applies for every player who has or aspires to play soccer, but she is 10 times more skilled than I am. That is an indisputable fact, so for an opposition player to call her out and make a classless comment in a Winnipeg Soccer Division game — a game that really meant nothing in the standings — is not only inappropriate, it is also an incorrect evaluation of her abilities. Anyway you slice it, No. 12 on Inter-Milan is a piece of shit. His own teammates weren’t interested in defending him last night. No one would.

I felt really bad after the game. I can only imagine how Raina felt. I hope she will join us Monday.