Na, na, hey, hey, good riddance.

Charlie “5-23″ Taaffe gets the sack

I make you laugh? I'm here to f-----' amuse you? Whattya you mean funny? Funny how? ...

The Hamilton Tiger-Cats finally made the right move this week and pulled the plug on the team’s worst coach in a decade. The only problem is that they handed the reins over to Marcel “Bellefool” Bellefeuille and immediately traded Zeke Moreno, their best defensive player, for a 1st round draft choice. Well, they traded him for a draft choice after Tom Canada of Winnipeg refused to report and then caught a nasty & convenient case of ruptured spleen (don’t get me started on the farce of this trade).

The team’s promise to compete for the playoffs has as much integrity as a Bottecchia Top Sprinter BS 100… the one with stupid fake carbon black paint. Like the Bottecchia bike, only the Ti-Cat name remains to remind us of past greatness.

Are this season’s Ticats the worst CFL team ever?

Or should that “distinction”go to the 90-91 Ticats?

David Beckman: Note the quotation marks around the word Coach

For years it seemed as if the thorough destruction of a storied franchise undertaken by Dave “high school coach” Beckman was the absolute bottom in Hamilton Tiger-Cat football history. A moment of insanity (and penny-pinching) by then owner David Braley led to the dismantling of the previous year’s Grey Cup finalists and a 2-12 record by an utterly unqualified coach. Now the bad times are back with Charlie “5 – 23″ Taaffe.

After last night’s debacle at No – Wynne Stadium, getting crushed 35-12 by the BC Lions without any sign of resistance (or even a tackle), the Tabbies are well on their way to becoming the worst CFL team ever. The game isn’t on You tube yet – probably because the documentation of such a malignant performance would be classified as a virus.

By all accounts the team won’t get any better. The current ownership, who shelled out on an excessive multiyear contract to alleged pro coach Taaffe, is too cheap to pay for a new coach to come in and pick up the pieces before the end of the season. The management’s spin is that “the team needs consistency” – obviously the kind of consistency that comes from losing almost every game over a number of years…

Pfui.

Mystery Virus Memories

A tribute to intermittent 80s Leaf icon Tom Fergus

He always had time for autographs

When we think about the great Ballard teams of the mid 80s, filled with personalities like Borje Salming, Dan Daoust, Dave Semenko, and of course the legendary Bill Root, one player stands out for his place in the hearts of Toronto Maple Leaf fans: Tom Fergus. Cursed in 1987 by the unknown malady that soon became known to everyone in Canada as “the mystery virus”, Tom became firmly ensconced in the nation’s hearts just like a sick brother or decrepit grandfather.

At the end of every match the beLeafers standing outside the Gardens would wait for the hockey invalid to limp out of the stands, where he was forced to watch his more physically sound teammates, and try to encourage Tom in the best way they could. Some inquired after his health: “How the ol’ mystery virus going there, eh Tom?” Others sought to cheer him up by recalling past feats of greatness: “That was a good goal you scored last season!”

Though he would go on to recover from the virus, the pile of Fergus sicknotes continued to fill Maple Leaf Gardens as he missed much of the 1989-90 season and almost the entire 1990-91 campaign with a chronic groin injury.

Hockey is a tough business and such a sincere outpouring of emotion and faith could not last forever. Without a thought for all of his important contributions to the team, like holding the bus door open on road trips and signing autographs for young fans who confused him with Gary Leeman, the ruthlessly efficient Leaf organization ended his illustrious time in Toronto by placing him on waivers in 1991.

He went on to finish his career with Zug of Switzerland, a neutral nation known for the quality of its health care.