Coast To Coast

Well, as I'd feared Canada did wind up coming up short against the Yanks. They just made too many mistakes. I agree with others that the drop goal attempt at the end was rather ill-advised. Next year should be exciting, as in the Journal today they implied that the next invitation side will be South Africa. As well, the year after that they're talking about expanding it to 6 teams. Definitely something to look forward to.

On the football front, while it's still early in the week this week looks fairly easy to call:

Edmonton and Winnipeg:
Edmonton beat the Bombers quite convincingly in the second preseason game, and after what Saskatchewan did to them last week there should be more of the same. I've got a little bit of concern with Keith Stokes' impact on special teams, but the Eskimos should score enough points so it shouldn't matter. The offensive line should also be pressured, particularly with Lefsrud's injury and the Winnipeg front, but I'm still not seeing anything other than an Edmonton win.

Montreal and Ottawa:
Poor Ottawa. They had to open against Edmonton, and now they get Montreal. The only question in this game is whether Montreal can beat the total of 7 sacks that Edmonton hung on them last week. Montreal should win this one by a lot.

Toronto and Calgary:
Last year, Calgary had a solid defence. The addition of Jeremaine Copeland should also help. While everyone has talked about what a big addition Henry Burris was, I'm still not entirely sold on Hank. At any rate, Toronto's defence still looks to be quite good, and they should have the edge in special teams. As far as the offence goes, the Argo receivers need to hang onto the ball better this week than they did last week. Toronto was unlucky to lose to B.C. last week, the same thing won't happen this week. Toronto should win, but it may be close.

Saskatchewan and Hamilton:
Pretty much everything seemed to be going right for the Roughriders last week, from the opening kickoff on. I don't expect the same sort of a romp this week, but Saskatchewan is just a better team than Hamilton at this stage. Saskatchewan should win.

Wide World Of Sports

I think I shall utilise this space to post football picks for the season. Obviously, I missed this week, so it will start next week. For the purpose of record calculation, I would have picked Montreal, Edmonton, Toronto and Saskatchewan.

On a related sporting note, good to see that the All Blacks kicked the Lions the other night.

Saw some classmates the past two nights. It was nice catching up with people, seeing how everyone's summer is going and what-not.

Churchill Cup Finals tommorrow. Should be fun times.

On another note, not having seen it yet, I strongly suspect that this will make me very, very angry. I shall wait until I have actually seen it before venting my spleen, but I will note in passing that just because something is intended as historical fiction doesn't give it an excuse to be bad. Additionally, sometimes people have difficulty getting the whole fiction part.

Churchill Week 1

Caught some Churchill Cup action today. I was surprised by how well the Americans did against Argentina. Not sure I like Canada's chances against them next weekend. I'm expecting a few changes in the Canadian line-up before then as well. I noticed in particular that they seemed to have a lot of trouble finding touch on penalties. It would have been nice to have a bit higher turnout as well, given the nice weather. At the same time, 7,000 is still decent particularly when all the media had talked about for the past week was how these two games would be blowouts (and when the Journal preview from that morning had the wrong times for the matches). Hopefully it's a bit bigger crowd for the finals. It was rather interesting that pretty much all 7,000 people sat on the same side of the stadium (so it at least probably looked like a decent turnout on tv). I also enjoyed the Mascot 7's they had between the games.

What does have me rather choked is that the games weren't on Sportsnet this year. While I appreciate the 7's coverage they've had, the complete lack of 15 a side coverage this year is rather distressing. Particularly given that the Lion's Tour is going on, and I'm having to content myself with Planet Rugby and TVNZ's live text updates.

On the Eskimos front, I'm a little disappointed though not terribly surprised at Khari Jones' release. He didn't really impress in the game that I saw him in, and it sounded like the game in Winnipeg wasn't much better. While it was sort of an unfortunate situation that he had to play Winnipeg in both pre-season games, I can see how the Eskimos went a different direction. Quarterback is actually one of the positions that I'm not at all worried about (runningback on the other hand...). As well, I'm hoping that letting Danny Wimprine get away without getting a look at how he performed in preseason action doesn't come back to bite us, but I suppose time will tell.