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Sports This Week - Credit the Stampeders and wait for next year

The 106th Grey Cup was admittedly one of the most lacklustre in years. That the game fell short of expectations is surprising given the quarterbacks involved.
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The 106th Grey Cup was admittedly one of the most lacklustre in years.

That the game fell short of expectations is surprising given the quarterbacks involved.

Trevor Harris was coming off a storied performance in the east final, and Bo Levi Mitchell is the CFL Most Outstanding Player for 2018.

Unfortunately the field at Commonwealth Stadium was slipperier than fresh ice at the Farrell Agencies Arena, and that limited the offences from really excelling.

Mitchell adapted better, earning Most Outstanding Player in the Cup, and Harris faltered badly. Yes, he actually threw for more yards, 288 to Mitchell’s 253. But he completed only 52.6 per cent of his passes. The three interceptions he tossed were also critical in the loss.

Mitchell did throw two interceptions too, but they were not at game changing moments, and he did complete 66.7 per cent of his passes.

So after losses in the last two Grey Cups the Stamps have a win 27-16. It is not a bad thing to have four different winners the last four years, which does make for a rather interesting league that can stand a clunker Grey Cup on occasion, remembering the previous four were decided by a combined difference of only 19 points.

Big news for rugby fans

While the Grey Cup is a favoured sport event in my world, and the Vanier Cup always something I enjoy, frankly both were over-shadowed for me this year by a rugby game played on a muddy field in the rain in Marseilles, France Friday.

The Canadian Men’s 15s Team were playing the national team from Hong Kong for a final chance to play in the 2019 World Cup which will be held in Japan.

The Canadian team had had earlier chances to advance to the World Cup, an event the team had never before failed to qualify for, but had key losses to the United States and Uruguay which put the team into a must win situation.

The Canadians were one of four teams in the World Cup repechage, which is literally “a practice in series competitions that allows participants who failed to meet qualifying standards by a small margin to continue to the next round” according to Wikipedia.

In this last chance situation Canada was in a four-team round robin tournament alongside Germany, Hong Kong, and Kenya.

The Canadians started the repechage blitzing an obviously over-matched squad from Kenya 65-19, then on the 17th the Canadian team defeated Germany 29-10.

The two wins left Canada needing one point Friday against Hong Kong, but they wound up the repechage with a 27-10 win.

The game started out with Hong Kong on the offensive but the Canadian defence held, and by the latter half of the second 40-minutes the conditioning and experience if Canada was clearly in evidence, although I admit I was talking to my TV set often, something I admit to with 15s rugby as my favourite sport.

So Canada is headed back to the World Cup for a ninth straight time. They will be in arguably the toughest five-team pool, slotting in with two-time defending world champion All Blacks from New Zealand, South Africa who are number five in world rankings, Italy and Namibia.

It will be tough to get wins for Canada, but at least they are on the world stage, and with a new pro team; the Toronto Arrows, starting play in January in Major League Rugby (MLR), the sport should be strengthening its foundation nicely in 2019.

It’s about time …

All I can say is that this was something that just had to happen for the good of the league, and the sport.

The National Lacrosse League and the Professional Lacrosse Players Association (PLPA) announced Saturday they had agreed to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement.

That was huge news after the league had earlier cancelled the first two weeks of the season, which didn’t set well with Saskatchewan Rush fans if you follow the team via social media.

The unhappiness was legitimate as this is the season where good things for the league are supposed to start with Philadelphia and San Diego joining as expansion teams. They are very much the vanguard of growth, with five more teams expected by the start of the 2020-21 season.

The collective bargaining agreement is for a five-year term beginning with the 2018-19 season, which means it extends beyond the current growth spurt to get to a foundation of 16 teams, sort of a bare minimum for legitimacy as a pro league.

It was frustrating waiting, but now we can get back to just being fans as part of Rush Nation.