Home Sweet Dome !
Tom Szczerbowski
Oct 30, 2002
Having
played some of their best football indoors at the Lansdowne Coliseum in 2001,
IP Stack has earned the reputation as a fearless turf team known to impose
its unrelenting offensive attack with deadly consequences for the opposition.
In 2002, beginning with Week 4 of the season, the Stack squared off against
the struggling BGP on the friendly Field Turf of the Kanata Thunderdome.
The dome boys hit the ground running and jumped out in Week 4 to a quick
2-0 lead on touchdowns by the surehanded Tom Szczerbowski
and Kirk Ireland, a rookie making a big name for himself. BGP, fielding
a roster with three rookies, Rob Hutchinson, Brian, and Greg, have less seasoning
than the far more experienced Stack, with so many Super Bowl championships
that they have desensitized Stack QB Paul McRae
to the thrill of victory, who once lamented, “What am I s’posed to do with
all these rings – I only have so many fingers ?!!”
BGP’s Greg, however, answered with his first ever TD to narrow the
lead to 2-1. Then, Szczerbowski extended the lead to 3-1 on a double-clutch
catch on 4th down. Although Brian also scored his first ever TD, Szczerbowski
and Ireland put the game out of reach with TDs of their own to make it 5-2
in the late going. In the closing moments, BGP got a meaningless score
when Greg hauled one in just as the clock expired to end Week 4’s contest
in a convincing 5-3 victory for the Stack who, in the process, upped their
record to 3-1. The loss was disappointing for the BGP crew, who may have
spent too much time peering at the runway instead of focusing on the game,
hoping and praying that their standout player Derek Manning from Week 3 would
make a belated entrance and rescue Frank and his gang. To their consternation,
no such stroke of serendipity took place.
Facing criticism that the Stack’s playbook is devoid of imagination,
McRae admitted as much by saying that he brings to the game a mostly unvaried
offensive arsenal: “I just throw ‘em and watch my guys catch ‘em. That’s
all there is to it. It’s that simple”, he unabashedly quipped.
After a forgettable Week 4, BGP regrouped for Week 5 by first
deciding that they were not going to let league rules governing trades stand
in their way. This time they pulled off a last-minute deal to reacquire
Dave Smith
less than a week after trading him to the Stack. Circumventing the league’s
approval cast a dark cloud over BGP’s handling of its player acquisitions.
This was not the first time that Pablo Frank,
who is perhaps trying too hard to win a Super Bowl, has played fast-‘n’-loose
with league rules. His questionable tactics can best be understood given
his insatiable lust to hold football’s most illustrious prize. So far,
the closest Frank has ever gotten to football’s Holy Grail was when he once
tried to sneak in as the Super Bowl mascot – an unsuccessful attempt that
cost him a night in jail.
In Week 5, BGP QB Mike Ciancibello was determined to reestablish
himself among the preeminent quarterbacks of the league and did nearly that
by playing a whale of a game only to fall a step short of McRae’s sudden-death
heroics, as the Stack nipped BGP 5-4. This was a close and rancorous contest,
fraught with rough play and questionable calls. Frank was irate after the
game and threatened to protest the outcome, but, of course, in failing to
adhere to league rules, staged no such protest during the game when it was
required. The league immediately dismissed Pablo’s pablum as just another
one in a long series of misplaced and tiresome rants that he directs at the
commissioner’s office whenever things do not go his way.
McRae, in spite of occasional missteps, was sharp when he had
to be throwing the ball to Paul Bertels and Ireland for TDs at key stages
in the game. Then, trailing 4-3, he hit Szczerbowski for his second TD
of the game to tie up this seesaw affair. Szczerbowski turned on the afterburners
when his fast-moving, NIKE-indoor-shoe-clad feet propelled him past Hutchinson
and McRae connected with him on a strike of a pass in the end zone. Greg
was an unsung hero for BGP, scoring two more TDs on this day and was the
subject of many running plays. Frank and Hutchinson tallied with BGP’s
other scores. On the last drive of the game, McRae put it away when he
incredibly found Ireland for his second TD on a well timed play that landed
him in the end zone. 5-4 Stack ! It is hardly news that they won again,
but this time they had to do it in the face of hardship.
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