Don Landry | Argonauts.ca Insider
Well, that one just isn’t sitting right.
Labour Day is now in the rearview mirror, however, and the Toronto Argonauts know that because of their loss to Hamilton on Monday, they have something to prove. To football fans, to the Ticats and to themselves. They are determined to start delivering positive proof immediately – as in Friday night – when they take on the Ticats once again, this time on home field.
Defensive end Ricky Foley is one of the Argos’ veterans who will be expected to lead the team out of the echoes of that 42-12 loss at Tim Hortons Field and into the immediate future, in effective fashion.
“I think you’ll see a much closer game and a much better effort by us,” Foley said, just after practice on Thursday. “I honestly think it’s gonna be good for us in the long term.”
Foley was speaking soberly about lessons learned as a team with so many young players took its medicine against its biggest rival. With first place on the line, the Ticats came away with a thorough win, leaving a frustrated Foley wondering what went wrong. Now, after a look at the film and a couple of days of installing adjustments, the 33-year-old vet is feeling optimistic that Friday night’s rematch will showcase an Argos team that is back on the rise.
“I’m confident the changes we’ve made are going to make it a lot different ball game,” Foley said, happy that film study of Labour Day illuminated some execution breakdowns. That might sound a little odd, but as he explained, it’s much better to see a struggle with the x’s and o’s as opposed to what would really be a back breaker – seeing personnel overwhelmed. “If you see that this team, one on one, athlete to athlete, is beating us, what do you do?” he asked rhetorically, satisfied that is not what happened on Monday.
It was just a lot of things that kept on happening over and over again but I think they’re correctable,” he said. “Some bad habits got exposed and brought to the surface when a little more emphasis gets put on them, right?”
Foley’s last point had to do with the living on the edge kind of act the Argos had been pulling off. Starting slowly in many games, they’d nonetheless been able to charge back and take victories in the late stages of games. They did it against Saskatchewan twice. Did it in Winnipeg. Did it in B.C., rallying from a 21 point deficit in that one. “We kind of snuck away with some victories, it’s no secret,” he said. “Can’t do that against Hamilton.”
With two losses in a row and Hamilton winning the season series, the climb to first place got a little steeper for the Argonauts and there is company just below them in the standings as well, with Ottawa sitting two points back. After Friday night’s tilt with the Ticats, the Argos will meet the Redblacks twice in a row. The proving ground is at hand.
“It’s going to be telling,” said Foley, a Grey Cup Champion with the Argos in 2012 and then again with the Roughriders in 2013. “It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the next few games, especially (against Hamilton) and see how we bounce back.”
“Every championship team I’ve been a part of has had a lull, a point in the season where things aren’t going well and they had to turn things around. I’ve also been a part of teams that haven’t been so successful and they don’t bounce back.”
Short weeks are tough on a football team, but that usually is only a disadvantage if the opponent has had more time to prepare, which was the case when the Argos travelled to Edmonton for Week 10. That they were fatigued must certainly have been a factor in that game, as the Eskimos pulled away in the fourth quarter. However, with Hamilton in the same situation as the Argonauts, there is no advantage taken or given. Something the short week can do, Foley argues, is allow you to get right back into it when you’ve got things to straighten out.
“One good thing – the only good thing – about the short week is you’re able to get it out of your system right away,” he said. “Go correct things right now. If we had the bye week (now), that sucks. That’s crappy where you’ve gotta spend ten days, two weeks dwelling on what happened.”
Following the Labour Day Game, head coach Scott Milanovich honestly seemed more surprised than anything else. Foley says that’s a sentiment that was shared through the ranks of the players, too.
“We all really did feel good. Big game. Huge game. Hyped, everything. Big stage, like a playoff game. It sucks. It definitely felt bad.”
“It was just things like being a second away from a sack, or (even) a split second. Just things like that,” he said.
Now comes an opportunity to wash that bad taste out of their mouths. Foley is confident of a step forward and is hopeful that the first year players came out of the Labour Day blast furnace as tempered steel.
“Maybe now we’re used to that big scene and the atmosphere and we’ll be able to step into some big games now and be better for it.”