Lions’ Joe McGrath gets last laugh on Eskimos

VANCOUVER — So when exactly did the B.C. Lions find the Midas touch this CFL season?

It’s difficult to pinpoint, but maybe it was when they acquired right tackle Joe McGrath.

The Lions were 1-7 without McGrath. They went 7-3 after he became a starter.

McGrath, signed by the Lions on Aug. 19 after being released by the Edmonton Eskimos, said he was struck by the Lions’ sense of determination and desire, even when there was a void in discipline, execution and results.

“The true character of a person, the true character of a football team, doesn’t come out when you’re winning, it comes out when you’re losing,” McGrath said. “When I came here, I didn’t see a team that was bitter, fighting among themselves, or giving up.”

McGrath cited the situation with the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys, who on Monday fired Wade Phillips as coach after a 1-7 start.

“Some of the Cowboys on the sportscast (Monday) were saying their season was over, it wasn’t going to happen,” McGrath said. “This is a team that’s supposed to be the cream of crop in the NFL. I didn’t see that here. We could have folded our tent when people wrote us off. We could have bought into that, if we’d believed it.”

McGrath was cut loose by the Eskimos for supposedly being “too soft,” so perhaps no Lion drew greater satisfaction in watching the emotionally fragile Esks melt down against the Saskatchewan Roughriders last Saturday, hours after the Lions had beaten the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 23-21. The Lions needed to beat Hamilton and hope for an Eskimos loss in order to make the post-season.

The Eskimos blew a 16-5 lead in losing 31-23 to the Roughriders, handing third place in the West Division to the Lions.

“When I watched that game, I could see a team that lacked confidence,” McGrath said of his former club. “Our team may have lacked execution at times, but it didn’t lack confidence. The first day I got here, I knew this was a totally different team, totally different teammates.

“What this team is capable of doing was not always evident. But over the last 10 games, we could have been 9-1, maybe 10-0, if we hadn’t given a couple of games away. We still finished strong, and the hottest team going into the playoffs usually prevails.”



(montrealgazette.com)