The 2013 CFL season might not have had a storybook beginning for Yorkton's Jordan Matechuk as the veteran longsnapper/special teams weapon tried to earn a starting role in the league after a steroid bust earned him a release from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats before spending a year on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers practice squad. In the preseason Matechuk landed on his boyhood team, playing for the Roughriders and trying to crack their final roster.
In the end Matechuk was one of the final cuts on the team and they kept him on the practice squad, meaning he was free game to any team in the CFL on the waiver wire according to league rules. Still with longsnapping being an extremely hard position to earn a starting job in and an unwritten rule over not poaching other teams practice squad players it was looking like Matechuk was going to spend the year on the Riders practice squad, hoping that an injury or an issue with the Riders longsnapping gave him a chance. That chance came, it just was in Vancouver, not Regina.
Early in 2013 the Lions were having trouble with their longsnapper Tim Cronk, looking at the available players on the waiver wire across the league it was pretty much a no brainer to pick up Matechuk. An athletic player who can also be used as a gunner on kickoffs and play linebacker, Matechuk was claimed by Lions GM Wally Buono and was sent off to the West Coast. Matechuk played every game since making a long drive from Regina to BC Place, and it has been one of the league's most underrated redemption stories of 2013 considering that just two seasons ago Matechuk was looking at jail and never playing football again.
Since Matechuk has been a role model, talking about the depression that led him to the darkest part of his young life and drove him to make choices that led to an arrest at the U.S. border. In Winnipeg he faced the media and even went on TSN's Off the Record to talk about depression, becoming one the face of an ongoing mental health issue in the Winnipeg community despite not getting on the football field.
That attitude earned him a chance from Riders head coach Corey Chamblin, who was given a hard sell from his former head coach Roby Sharpe during the summer's Football Night in Saskatchewan and was brought in during the preseason and when things didn't work out in Saskatchewan he was given a chance by Buono, who at the time of the move praised Matechuk's honesty in owning up to his mistakes in the past to the media. Matechuk has been relatively error free ever since his move, partnering with a fellow former Rider in Paul McCallum, even snapping the game winning field goal at Taylor Field earlier this fall to help the Lions beat the Riders.
In front of friends and family, Matechuk was nearly 30 yards down the field with his hands extended in the air celebrating as McCallum's field goal split the uprights.
Now at 11-7 Matechuk will be returning to face his home province at Taylor Field on Sunday when the Lions square off with the Roughriders in the 2013 West Division Semifinal. Something his former head coach is extremely proud of. "To see Jordan take what could have been something very negative and to turn it into a positive and to get back into the CFL is something we at the YRHS are all proud of especially his former coaches," says Sharpe.
While Matechuk won't be one of the key figures in the game outside of delivering snaps for field goals and punts, his Lions are in the position to spoil the Roughriders party as they eye a rematch with the Calgary Stampeders next week. With the Lions having an identical record to the Roughriders and Travis Lulay back taking snaps with the first team offense this week the Lions present a potential trap game for the hosts who have spent a ton of time talking about Calgary in recent weeks.
With the Riders winning the last two games over the Lions they will be considered favourites with the homefield advantage at Taylor Field, but Matechuk will be eyeing an upset for his Lions as the dream of a Grey Cup season is still alive for the Yorkton native.
Regardless of the score on Sunday 2013 will go down as a year of redemption for Matechuk, who has turned his life and career around, win or loss he will be a winner.
