Angry Bomber Fans

A Coward that Would Apall the Devil Is Bid Farewell.

By Mike Alexander

I had just finished putting memories of this years’ season down for a long winters’ nap when my inbox suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree yesterday around noon. I thought that Tee Martin and others might have been trying to pull a fast one on me for reasons that didn’t make very much sense. But a couple of clicks later and I almost swallowed my tongue. It was like reading the end of Macbeth for the first time. My copy of it even had a picture of Macbeth’s decapitated skull on a stake in it for good measure and intellectual enrichment. How bizarre indeed to discover that the Mike Kelly era of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was in the process of grinding to a full stop before my very eyes.

The details will emerge and they will be brutal. Moral compasses no longer work, civilizations have literally evaporated, parents are refusing to let their children out anymore and I have never heard the expression “community owned football team” uttered so many times in my life. Very soon now, jubilant mobs will fill barstools across the city as a savage, vindicating celebration takes over, placing every car on the road in serious jeopardy of being torched tonight. There is a corpse that needs to be ripped to pieces and everyone wants a slice of the action.

Last night, Bombers chairman Ken Hildahl look like a man blacked out drunk on the blood of a murder victim as he announced that Mike Kelly had been relieved of his duties. Anyone on Maroons road must have been cowering under desk tables as a grizzly massacre took place. Long time CEO and President Lyle Bauer was the first to go and before nails could even be hammered into his coffin, word got out that Mike Kelly had been arrested outside of Philly as a result of pounding on his ex girlfriend who was in the process of getting her things out of his place.

It’s an obvious breach of contract and the actions of a desperate failure of a man. A man who gutted a team, threw in an unqualified quarterback, who benched veterans, who was unable to find any answers offensively all season long and who fielded a team that somehow managed to fare worse than the utterly dismal 2008 season.

It was a terrible year with a terrible human being at the helm.

I gave him a chance to win my heart. For four games (maybe more), I listened to the skeptics who accused guys like me of drinking Mike Kelly’s Kool-Aid. The team almost showed promise today, I told myself. I kept looking for signs of life and if there were, it wasn’t long until the flat line could not be ignored any longer. Being that people in Philadelphia boo Santa and cheer when hockey players break their necks on the ice, I got a kick out of Kelly’s outbursts. I think local media and fans of sports in general all need to be told to eat a piece of shit from time to time. But the play on the field got worse and worse. Pre-game shows became things of dark embarrassment for your humble narrator as sportscasters took turns summing up another week of dismal failure as Winnipeg prepared to get torn to pieces and then stomped on the field. There were threats, bad feelings, and angry rogue bands of drunks with weapons in Bomber jerseys making life in this town terrible for everyone. Who could blame us? We were confused, clinically depressed and we saw no way out of this terrible leg hold trap that Mike Kelly had snapped on us. We drove around town drinking beer in the back of pickup trucks and the only answer that ever made sense to anyone was to fire Mike Kelly. It became a mantra. In their desperation, some people even had the nerve to mention Jeff Reinbold as a valid replacement to Kelly. There was no joy and no future in the hearts of Bomber faithful. We were horrible to be around because we looked so goddamned sad all the time.

People wanted him gone but I would always pipe up with the news that no one wanted to commit to their memory. Kelly had been given a three year contract and there was no way in hell he was going anywhere. We are still paying for Doug Berry’s hookers and drugs for crissakes, thanks to Lyle Bauer. Firing him just wasn’t an option.

Who could have possibly guessed that Kelly’s days here would end this way? That deep inside that useless skull, resides an angry and cowardly bully with no control? Apparently plenty of people. When they threatened to blow up Portage and Main if Kelly wasn’t fired, I thought they were over-doing it a bit. But there has been more than one voice asking aloud if Kelly was the wife beating type over the last few months. A football team does not get chewed to pieces and then thrown up on as bad as the Bombers did without a dangerous fat-headed idiot running the show.

We live in dark days. Saskatchewan has made it to the Grey Cup twice in the last three years and we don’t have a quarterback. Like Macbeth who did not have a natural propensity to murder, Mike Kelly had bold ambitions for the club. They were strange and wrong and for reasons unknown to me, his evil actions placed him in a downward spiral of evil that could only be resolved with him finding himself with his skull now removed from his body and placed on a stake, hopefully in place of the Christmas tree outside of city hall. But we can finally rest a bit now that the king is dead. Another board meeting has been scheduled for Saturday on Maroons Road and there are many more sharp turns on this lonely, savage road for Bomber brass in the days ahead. Still, for those long suffering few that are reading this, who are somehow still walking after bearing witness to this terrible year, raise a toast to Hildahl and 2010 and enjoy the moment.

And Merry Christmas.

BREAKING NEWS: Mike Kelly Arrested

Winnipeg Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly was arrested this morning and charged with assault and harrassment following a domestic dispute.

Police in Bridgeport, Penn., responded to Kelly’s home in the Philadelphia area at 11:03 a.m.

The other person involved in the incident is Andrea Peterson, Kelly’s former girlfriend.

Police said she had a cut on her lip, redness on her neck and a small cut on her finger. Police said Kelly also had some bruising on his face.

Kelly was released on his own recognizance.

Kelly was reached by the Free Press on his cell phone but did not offer comment simply saying, “I can’t talk right now,” before hanging up.

Blue Bombers chairman Ken Hildahl learned of the incident minutes after he ended a press conference announcing the resignation of CEO Lyle Bauer.

“At this point, what we’ll be looking to do is get all the facts surrounding the incident in Philadelphia,” said Hildahl. “We’’ll deal with it at that point. We’ve heard a lot of rumours, a lot of innuendo over the last hour. These are issues that this football club and this board are obviously very concerned with. Any incidents that involve violence, and at this point they are allegations, it’s something we will and do take seriously.”

- with files from Aldo Santin and Jason Bell

via: Winnipeg Free Press

The Final PacNu Report of 2009 - Grey Cup

Like a lot of diehard CFL fans, PacNu thinks Montreal is a strong team, but that the Roughriders have more heart. Montreal might be the better team on paper, but PacNu and Ridernation are hoping they can pull off the big upset.

See you next season.

Go Riders.

(this is the only time you will read about any Angry Bomber Fans cheering for any time other than the Blue & Gold…unless we have a big Sport Select ticket on the go)

Final Crappy Honker Award of the Season

by H.F. Salisbury

In the great tradition of recognizing “Cactus” Jack Wells and the Happy Honker Award given out on C-Job radio here in Winnipeg, I present for you yet another instalment of the Happy Crappy Honker Award given to an individual(s) for a fantastic unforgivable performance directly related to the continued floundering of our once beloved Winnipeg Blue Bombers.. and believe me Bomber nation, while this is no surprise, it clearly hurts. Perhaps more than other losses.

Loyal readers, please continue to read on.  While this may seem like a bit of déjà vu, and that you are in fact reading an old post, let me reassure you that this is the most current/latest post.  These are statistics for the last (oh and I do mean last) Bomber game against Hamilton.

This was the most important game of the year.  Win and you’re in.  Out and well… Crappy Honker is awarded.  This was essentially a playoff game. The fact that we were beaten by a group of “Bombers past” doesn’t mean anything to me.  Our old QB Kevin Glenn seeing karma in action by beating his old team that gave him a way doesn’t even interest me.  I’ll tell you what really ticks me off – we now have a 19 year Grey Cup drought.  Yes, it was 1990 and the 78^th Grey Cup that we last won.  I don’t blame our Crappy Honker Award winner for all those years but this current year…

Mr. Bishop, please step forward to collect you award.  Yes here is where that déjà vu may come in.  Our QB’s stats for the most important game of the year are as follows:

• Passes completed / Passes Attempted: 8/26 (30%)
• Touchdowns / Interceptions: 1 / 2
• Points Hamilton scored off of QB turnovers: 14

Yuck.  That was the worst performance I’ve seen from Bishop this year.  Seriously, the Tiger Cat defense was not that good.  He was that bad.  I think we only had one first down in the entire second half.  Yes there were poor offensive coordinator calls made (second and 10 from our own 9 yard line and we run it when the run clearly was not working) but at the end of the day, poor passes and interceptions killed us.

To sum it all up, I’d like to use a quote from Doug Brown – “You don’t lose by 22 points at home to a team that’s already made the playoffs.  We got a sold-out crowd, and the Blueout’s happening, and we have a province that really didn’t have a lot of reasons to get behind us tonight, and they did. We let everybody down.”

Well Doug, some players let us down more than others.

Good Riddance

By Ernie “This Is The” Pitts

I almost didn’t want to hear what Mike Kelly had to say about the loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

Would he tell Bob Irving to go fuck himself? Maybe he’d challenge Bob Cameron to a cage match. Or kick Kenny Ploen in the crotch with steel-toed boots. Maybe set Buzz and Boomer on fire and slap a few cheerleaders. Take a dump on the logo at midfield and wipe his ass with a game-worn Milt Stegall jersey?

I just didn’t want to hear Kelly do any more damage to this team and its legacy. I didn’t want to hear any asinine comments, and I didn’t want to hear about “great efforts,” “rebuilding” and “next year.” I’m sick of that trash. It’s redundant sports cliches clumsily smeared across a portrait of ineptitude in a ham-fisted attempt to explain a season defined by failure and incompetence. The only thing Mike Kelly owes me is an apology for wasting 10 days of my life spent watching mediocre players paddle a rudderless ship captained by an arrogant asshole.

For the record: Apology not accepted. Go back to Philadelphia. Google Map the fastest route, Professor.

But I couldn’t resist watching a post-game interview. Call me a fool or a glutton for punishment.

And so I watch the interview on the Free Press website, probably shot by Ed Tait with a point-and-shoot camera when he should be learning how to write better or maybe delivering issues of On7 in some ridiculous cost-cutting measure by Winnipeg’s so-called “major daily.” I watch, and what do I hear? I hear Kelly say he wants Michael Bishop at training camp next year.

What?

No, really— what the fuck are you talking about?

Aside from Kelly himself, Bishop the predominant reason for the wasted season. He’s a terrible quarterback. He makes bad decisions. He can’t scramble for shit. His accuracy sucks. His pocket presence is non-existent. He can’t read defences. And did I mention his accuracy makes drunken fucks playing Big Buckhunter at a Canad Inns bar look like spec-ops sharpshooters?

I can only assume Kelly is playing the media game the only way he knows how, treating the interaction like Edward Scissorhands might treat a violin. Maybe Kelly isn’t ready to throw Bishop under the bus yet and he’s reluctant to punt the dude moments after the game. Maybe.

But what if he’s serious? What if he really believes Bishop deserves to take another snap in a Winnipeg uniform? What if he’s going to piss away another season and another 150 hours of my life? What if he really thinks Bishop can be a part of our future rather than another one-year bit player in a two-decade comedy of errors?

If that’s the case—if Michael Bishop is truly welcome back into Canad Inns Stadium ever again—then this team is truly lost.

You Are The Reason Why We Can Never Have Anything Nice.

by Mike A.

I had nodded off on the couch when something caused to wake up suddenly. TSN’s Chris Cuthbert had possibly just said something about Michael Bishop throwing a pick that had just been returned by the Hamilton Ti-Cats for a touchdown late the 4th quarter. I turned around and saw the score and realized that the 2009 Winnipeg Blue Bomber season had just been fucking ended by a team full of former Bomber personnel including Kevin Glenn, Kahari Jones and Greg Marshall. I probably should have not bothered waking up.

The game story was punishing and familiar. It’s a sale tale, one that is painful to hear told time and time again. After a strong start out of the gate that looked promising at first, Michel Bishop and the entire offensive line fell apart leaving the defense to pick up the pieces. One the inevitable collapse occurred on the field, it did not take Hamilton very long to finish the Bombers off and to put an end to a season that looked suitable for rush delivery to the local gas chamber.

After the first interception that Bishop threw in the fourth quarter to Markeith Knowlton, Michael Bishop decided to cap things off by adding a personal signature, throwing another interception to Jykine Bradley that lead in a Hamilton touchdown late in the game. As Bradley ran 49 yards for the score, Chris Cuthbert was screaming about how Winnipeg’s football season was over. It was actually very bizarre. That’s two picks for two major scores in one quarter of football. Michael Bishop was 1 for 11 in the second half.

So it’s over. Many questions remain and to me there is one more important than any other. Who is to be the starting QB in 2010? The Michael Bishop experiment has failed as he was unable to deliver results when he was most needed. BC will release Pierce, Jackson or Printers at the end of the season. In Montreal, McPherson is a free agent after this season. For some reason Kerry Joseph’s name has come up as well.

But all of this really doesn’t matter right now. The sting of watching Winnipeg auto corpse themselves into a very long winters’ dirt nap has passed. Like any relationship poisoned by mistrust and a lack of respect, I need time away from this reality. I am quite relieved that this season is over. This team did not deserve to be in the playoffs.

The lights can finally be mercifully turned off on one of the most wretched seasons of football I have ever had the displeasure of watching. It’s back to the drawing board for the brain surgeons over on Maroons Road. As for me, it’s time to pretend like none of this ever happened. See you in 2010.

Maybe I’m Just Cranky

by H.F. Salisbury

I must be cranky because this really got under my skin.  I think Coach Kelly got this one right!!!  Football is a team sport.  Period.

I do not care if Fred Reid is correct or not in his assessment regarding the Offensive Line needing to do a better job of creating holes for “Thunder” to run through.  You don’t publicly call out your offensive line ESPECIALLY before the last regular season and most important game of the year.  Talk to them in practice or in a private meeting.

So Fred, how is that guaranteed rushing title (i.e. personal rather than team award) going for you?  Guess it is as hard to be a team player as it is to run for big yardage with your jaw waggin’.

My advice to you is stop guaranteeing things.  Stop using the media to get a message to your teammates.  Start focusing and working hard on winning on Sunday.  Be a team player.

And I actually thought this team had bonded.  Nobody in “Swaggerville” is acting like a champion therefore; they will never be a champion.

Geeze… I’m thinking I’m doomed to be an Angry Bomber Fan forever?!!?!?!?