Staff
The young Muskie football team got a rude introduction to the Winnipeg High School Football League with a 44-0 loss to the host Kenora Broncos on Friday afternoon.
The black-and-gold looked every bit the young and inexperienced team they are.
“Some of the kids have never played the game before, so it was a learning experience,” Muskie defensive co-ordinator Bob Whitburn said.
“We weren’t prepared in some ways, basic stuff like blocking and tackling, so as the coach I’ll take the blame for that.
“We’ll work on it [this] week and we’ll get better,” Whitburn vowed. “We may get beat again, but we aren’t going to lose everything.”
Broncos’ quarterback Jeff Trudeau exposed the Muskies’ secondary with a consistent passing game.
“They passed on us, got behind us a few times,” Whitburn noted. “They’ve got a couple receivers and their quarterback has a decent arm.
“Smart kid, puts the ball right where he has to.”
If there’s a silver lining to the shutout, it surely would be the quality play of second-year pivot Dan Brunetta.
“He hit pretty much every pass, had a couple batted down on him, but we had a lot of dropped balls,” offensive co-ordinator Andrew George lamented.
“We had dropped balls deep over the middle that could’ve led to big gains, [but] the receivers just dropped the ball,” he added.
“You can coach catching the ball all you want, but it’s up to [the receivers] to have the focus to actually do it in a game,” George reasoned.
The Muskies’ annual Homecoming game kicks off Week 2 this Friday at 1 p.m. when the Vincent Massey Trojans come to town.
