Fans are also encouraged to arrive early to the Grey Cup game to ensure they’re in their seats when the festivities kick off at 5:00pm on Sunday.
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Burris also shared the spotlight at the Club Regent Casino with Ottawa coach Rick Campbell (coach of the year) and receiver Brad Sinopoli (top Canadian).
Others were only slightly more forthcoming.
On Sunday, Burris and Co. face the Edmonton Eskimos in the Grey Cup game in Winnipeg.
While the Grey Cup is supposed to be a neutral-ground production, it appears that the Canadian Football League is as taken as everyone else with the plaid-clad lumberjacks who slice a “cookie” from a log for every Ottawa Redblacks touchdown. “We can kind of get zoned in on what we’ve got to do”. “It’s more acutely felt in a nine-team league”.
Getting Ottawa quarterback Henry Burris, this year’s CFL most outstanding player, off his rhythm is key for the Eskimos to find success. In fact, the RedBlacks as a feel-good story have been unbeatable all week.
Burris against the Eskimos defence and Jones’s machinations is the most intriguing and influential matchup heading into the Grey Cup.
“You do have to have the talent level but at the same time I think you need to surround yourself with quality people with some character”, Campbell said after a chilly morning practice Friday. “You gotta run the scheme to perfection, because he’s able to see flaws pretty quickly and make you pay for them”. “And if I was supposed to choose, that’s when you really wanted that because we had a bunch of injuries”. “So it took him a few weeks just to knock off the rust”.
But his fires are burning, too, under the surface.
Ottawa posted a 12-6 record and finished first in the East Division in 2015, following up on a maiden season in which the Redblacks won a mere two games.
But it was a bonding exercise, he said, all that losing.
“I just love football”, said Ron Boily as he displayed a “roar on the shore” pin from last year’s Grey Cup in Vancouver.
The Redblacks have proved to be a team full of characters, savouring a 12-6 season after a 2-16 campaign out of the blocks. We go out there.
“Chris, congratulations on your great year, I hope it ends badly”, Campbell said with a smile.
West played his entire CFL career with Calgary and Winnipeg, twice earning CFL all-star honours.
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The Grey Cup game will be broadcast in the USA on ESPN2, which also includes a worldwide audience in Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland, South America, the Carribean and Pacific Rim.
