The Edmonton Eskimos’ late season surge proved to be too little too late two weekends ago, and this year’s Grey Cup host team will have to watch from the sidelines during the 2010 Grey Cup two weekends from now.
It was a tumultuous season that was a farce from what used to be one of the top tier CFL teams. The Eskimos started with a 0 – 4 record, “improving” to 2 – 9, before finishing a remarkable 5 – 2 run on Nov. 6 with a 23 - 31 loss against the Roughriders. Now, the Eskimos, its management and its coaching staff will go through months of asking themselves, and being hounded by fans and media alike, what went wrong?
Eskimos head coach Richie Hall was let go last Thursday by Eric Tillman, the team’s GM, and the firing brings back memories of Danny Maciocia’s booting from the club back in July, only five games into the season.
Hall’s tenure with the Eskimos in his first gig as a CFL head coach started back in the December of 2008, and he managed to help the team to qualify for the playoffs last year. However, the disappointment of the host city’s team not making the playoffs, not even mentioning the Grey Cup game, proved to be too much for the Eskimos management to bear.
Did the team’s performance (or lack of) this season rest entirely on one person’s shoulders? I think there is plenty of blame to go around, and hopefully the changes to the team, which has gone for five years in a row without going to the Grey Cup, won’t end with Hall being let go.
One can only hope that whoever runs the Eskimos won’t make the same mistake by hanging on to incompetent coaching staff, players or management, and costing the team another two to three years dry-spell in a highly competitive Canadian pro football scene.
Edmonton is, after all, a city that claims the title City of Champions, but when was the last time any of the city’s pro sports clubs actually won a championship?
