Lucas Punkari
Any successful team or player will tell you that their achievements during a course of season comes from hard work during practice.
But when the on-field preparations don’t go well, it often can come back to bite you in a huge way—as the Muskies found out in a 44-0 loss to the Daniel McIntyre Maroons on Friday afternoon in Winnipeg.
“We had a really poor week of practice, both attendance- and execution-wise, and our fear as a staff was that it would continue onto the playing field on Friday, and it did,” said Shane Beckett, who was in charge on the sideline with head coach Chad Canfield away on work commitments.
“They [Daniel McIntyre] played a good game and we didn’t put enough effort to play with them,” he added.
Beckett felt the main problem with the black-and-gold was the fact that the squad simply didn’t execute with enough effort during the game.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s football or any other sport, it all comes down to those one-on-one battles where you have to beat the guy across from you,” Beckett stressed.
“If all of our guys aren’t doing that, not many good things will end happening for you.
“We ended up playing a lot of the game on our heels and not on our toes, and we let them come right at us,” he noted.
Leading the charge for the Maroons (3-1) was quarterback Kim Ebron, who was 10-for-18 through the air for 329 yards and four touchdowns, giving him the Currie Division’s offensive player-of-the-week honours for Week 4.
“He basically just threw the ball as high and as far as he could,” Beckett recalled.
“Our defensive backs, who don’t normally get beat, were getting beat, and that’s because we weren’t getting enough pressure on the quarterback, and those kinds of things lead to a chain reaction of events,” he added.
Although Beckett conceded it’s sometimes tough to see the good in a lopsided defeat, one thing he was pleased about was how the Muskies performed in the fourth quarter.
“We challenged the kids going into the fourth quarter to not give up out there and to work hard on the guy across from them,” Beckett explained.
“We started running straight dives right up the middle for about 12 of 15 plays, and we began to move the football thanks to the plays by [running back] Harley Mainville.
“We began to get the yards and the offensive line started to push the other guys, and it was a real positive to see that Harley was putting the team on his shoulder during the fourth quarter,” Beckett added.
The black-and-gold, who now sport a 1-3 record in the Currie Division, had a short week of practice before they return to their home field tomorrow afternoon as they welcome the front-running Elmwood Giants (4-0) to town tomorrow afternoon.
Kick-off is at 3 p.m.
“All I know from the stats is that they are tied for the lead in the standings [with the Sisler ‘A’ Spartans], and they have 108 points for to 17 points against so far this year,” noted Beckett, who will return to an assistant coaching role for the rest of season as Canfield again will take charge.
“We’re in for a lot of work, but we can play with anyone in the league and we showed that against Sisler for three-and-a-half quarters,” he reasoned.
“It’s just a matter of what team is going to show up for us on Thursday, and that will be depend on if the guys show that they want to be better in practice this week,” he stressed.
