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Noeller

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Everything posted by Noeller

  1. My girlfriend thinks Super Girl is the greatest thing ever. She also thinks Days Of Our Lives and the movie "Sydney White" are the greatest thing ever. Ergo, Super Girl needs to be dumped immediately.
  2. And as Mike pointed out, neither is Waggoner......most of the time.
  3. Messier was awful in the WHA and nobody wanted him, and most people thought Gretzky was going to be killed in the NHL. His stats in WHA weren't All-World yet, and he wasn't as much of a coveted commodity. K-Lowe, I'm not as sure of, but the other two....it's not like they were 1986-versions of themselves at that point, so other teams weren't quite as interested in taking them.
  4. Based on what I've read about how tight The Trinity are, and how much the board likes 'em, I feel like Wade has a contract ready, but is very aware of the optics. I hope for a red hot start to the year, so he can pull it outta the desk and get it signed while things are rosy still...
  5. I think I actually heard Walters snort from all the way here in Alberta. The amount of time and effort that goes into research on every single player in the draft would blow your mind......just ask Rids.
  6. While I understand that winning is the be all and end all, I don't think you can say "He's a good coach" or "He's a bad coach" simply based on W/L. There's more that determines coaching ability.
  7. Not for nothing, but I'd be curious to compare the rosters of all those teams...see who had what to work with.
  8. and man I'd hate to be the team that gave him the experience so he could become a legend in Toronto........like, sick to my stomach....
  9. Some will laugh, I'm sure, but the biggest thing I got out of this article was "That's a man....that's what every guy should strive to be"...
  10. I am still really skeptical of Lapo as OC, but hope to God he can find a way to keep Drew Willy upright. Do that, and we're in every game...
  11. I've always believed that this guy is the coach we've been desperately looking for, for so long. Best coach since Ritchie, by a mile. I understand that the results aren't there, and if that continues, he'll be gone. Having said that, I think he's going to be one of the all time great coaches one day, and if we let him go now, it'll be a huge mistake. In the end, here's hoping the results come fast and furious to start the year and they lock him in with a 3 year extension.....
  12. http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/football/bombers/snappy-hed-373580051.html#st_refDomain=t.co&st_refQuery=/QmAbKLelGf He’s got a football team counting on him. And he’s got a city of frustrated football fans counting on him. But it wasn’t until our discussion this week turned to the wife and three children that are also counting on him that it became clear just how much weight Mike O’Shea feels pressing down upon him right now as he heads into what is a make-or-break season for the beleaguered Winnipeg Football Club. Make no mistake — one of two things is going to happen in 2016: either the Blue Bombers are going to make the playoffs for the first time since 2011, or the head coach — and probably a few others in the Bombers front office — are going to be looking for a new job. And it’s that latter prospect, and what it would do to his young family, that this week brought tears to the eyes of one of the most feared linebackers the Canadian game has ever known. Yes, you read that right: Mike O’Shea cries. And yes, it was uncomfortable to watch — and not just because it was happening in a crowded restaurant. "I’m getting emotional now and I’ll tell you why," the Bombers head coach said over lunch this week. "I’ve got a great family. They really do a good job in making their dad feel comfortable at work… "They’re doing more than holding up their end." The question heading into this season is whether O’Shea can now hold up his end of a family bargain that saw his wife, Richere, and the couple’s three children — Michael, 16, Ailish, 13 and Aisling, 10 — leave the only home they ever knew in southern Ontario in 2014 to follow O’Shea to Winnipeg so he could fulfill his dream of being a pro football head coach. It was a bold move for a young family that O’Shea had gone to extraordinary lengths to protect from the itinerant pro football lifestyle. Indeed, O’Shea says he played his entire 16-year CFL career with just two teams in Toronto and Hamilton — turning down, he says, more lucrative offers to play in Western Canada — precisely so he wouldn’t have to uproot his family. So moving to Winnipeg was a big thing for the entire O’Shea family. And now that they’ve finally settled in — his son is on high school football and hockey teams, his daughters are competitive gymnasts, the family spent the entire winter here, save for a week-long Bombers cruise — the idea that they’d have to move again this year because O’Shea’s head coaching dream turned into a nightmare weighs on the man of the house. Don’t misunderstand — he says he is at peace with the fact 2016 is the final year of his three-year contract with the Bombers and there is going to be no contract extension on offer until there are first some winning results on display. Head coaches who go 12-24 in their first two seasons don’t get contract extensions and O’Shea accepts that. What troubles him more, however, is that he cannot insulate his family from the uncertainty. "I’ve just realized recently that my kids really do follow all that stuff (on social media)," said O’Shea. "So it’d be naive for me to think they don’t know about the contract or lack thereof. All of that stuff — they understand... "And that comes as bit of a shock to me — that they know more maybe than I want them to." Now make no mistake: O’Shea is not unique. Almost every head coach in pro sports also has a team at home that is counting on him. And O’Shea is not complaining, either. I dragged this stuff about his family out of him because it interests me to know how a guy in the spotlight copes with the vagaries of chronic job insecurity when those lights are turned off and the house is quiet and it’s just you alone in the dark with your thoughts. The answer, it seems, is you spend a lot more time worrying about how it will affect those around you than you do about how it affect yourself. The good news for O’Shea is that while there is no room for error in 2016, he will have by far the best team he’s had in Winnipeg with which to work. Off-season free agent signings in Weston Dressler and Ryan Smith will make the receiving corps spectacularly better. A defensive line rid of underperformers and bolstered by some other free agent acquisitions, including Canadian Keith Shologan, will be better. The signing of all-star kicker Justin Medlock gives some much needed consistency to special teams. The Canadian content overall will be deeper, including a ratio changer at running back in Winnipegger Andrew Harris. And, most important, with a proven backup QB in Matt Nichols behind a proven starting QB in Drew Willy, the Bombers are deeper at quarterback this year than they’ve been in a decade. So the team around him has changed. But has O’Shea? He admits to making mistakes in his first two years as Bombers boss, but they’re mostly detail stuff rather than big-picture. And so, for instance, O’Shea takes full blame for that blocked field goal in 2014 that cost the Bombers a win against Saskatchewan — poor scheme, he says — but he doesn’t see much in his general approach that needs to change. He rejects a popular criticism that he should hold individual players more accountable — either on the sideline or before the microphone — and he says it’s simply not true he worries too much about players liking him and not enough about them fearing him. "I can’t deny I still want to be one of the guys," says O’Shea, "but that doesn’t mean I want them to be my buddies... I’d love to still be playing… "But for 16 years, I watched what works and doesn’t work with a coach. And what doesn’t work is a lack of authenticity. I’m just not that guy who’s going to publicly display some player getting in (trouble)...I’m not going to put on a show." And so while the team around him in 2016 will look different, don’t expect O’Shea to look different. And that includes the shorts he wears on the sidelines during games — which have filled both my mailbox and the Bombers mailbox with emails of complaint from fans. The shorts are comfortable, he says. And they’re practical, he says. But as we’re walking out towards the parking lot, he also admits the shorts are here to stay for another reason. "If I stopped wearing them now," he tells me, "people would think it was because they complained." You want to see stubborn? Try those shorts on for size. And then text me a picture on your Blackberry, something O’Shea also clings to. "This phone works fine," he says. "What do I need an iPhone for?" The man is who he is, in other words. And for all the worry about his family and his team and the upcoming season and what a very uncertain future holds, he says that, yes, he is willing to die on that hill. "I would just die quicker," he says, "if I pretended to be someone I’m not." paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca
  13. ....at what point was that ever in question? Next thing, you'll be telling me that bars give out free snacks so you'll buy more drinks!!!!!!!!!
  14. Why give them the attention they so desperately crave?? **** those guys. Move this to the General Forum, if you're so desperate to talk about them.
  15. Gimme a seat with a decent view of the game, and no drunken jagoffs to bother me and I'm happy. That's my be all, end all for "Game Day Experience".
  16. 17to85 and I were talking about whether BvsS was worth seeing, and decided that unless the critics reviews were over the top in favour of it, we'd take a pass, because that last Superman movie was awful and nothing about the trailers gave me any hope for this. With the reviews being decidedly in the shitter (last check was 33% on Rotten Tomatoes), they're not going to get my theatre dollar just so I can see if it's good or not. I'll wait till it's on Shaw On Demand....if then.
  17. Man oh man.....apparently I'm missing out by going to the game to watch the game.
  18. never mind that Turner was injured last year and Denmark hasn't ever had consistent QBing in his career.....
  19. Rumours going around..........yeah, in DC fanboi messageboards...
  20. It really seems to me that the organization has bent over backwards to accommodate people as much as they can in terms of the Game Day Experience. In all my years, I've never seen the WBB FC try as hard as it has under Wade, to make everyone happy.
  21. That is possible. The one thing I've read is that this movie is a better Batman movie than anything else, and Affleck's Bruce Wayne is very good. His Batman, not so much. But his Bruce Wayne is good.
  22. I have not read ONE good review yet. Entertainment Weekly and The Hollywood Reporter, two extremely trusted sources, panned it HARD. In particular, Jesse Eisenberg's performance was deemed Razzie-worthy. Sounds like this thing is going to bomb hard.
  23. If he'd have had Bo Levi Mitchell throwing to him for his career, you'd be saying differently. He's an elite level pass catcher for the CFL...no question. Speed and hands and good routes. He's never been the #1 Milt -type "star" guy, but he's at least Terrance Edwards...
  24. Not about his production....all about his $$$ paycheque.
  25. Denny is an under-utilized superstar. If he ever had a quality, healthy QB throwing him the ball....he could go 1500 yds, 10+ TDs.
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