Showing their stuff: historic Winnipeg hotel hosts football’s future
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Windows 20 feet high, lavish oak trim and 10 chandeliers are just a few of the features in what they call the concert hall at downtown Winnipeg’s Fort Garry Hotel.
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Featured on Thursday afternoon were 100 young men, paraded onto the stage one at a time to perform feats of strength and agility.
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No, it wasn’t the kind of circus you might have seen roll through town back when the Grand Dame first opened back in 1913.
This was the CFL combine, the annual opportunity for coaches, scouts and GMs to ogle the talent that’ll be available to them at the draft.
“You walk out on the stage and there’s all these coaches who are just eyeing you… and you’re thinking, ‘What’s everyone looking at?’” Winnipegger Abdul-Karim Gassama was saying at one point. “I just tried to look past them all.”
The spotlight Thursday afternoon was on the bench press and the vertical jump, and the U of Manitoba Bisons receiver was hoping to lift a little more and jump a little higher than he did.
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Gassama will sit down with the Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders brass on Friday, where he’ll catch their attention with his demeanour and his ability as a speaker – in English or French.
Catching footballs, though, is what he wants to do for a living.
As does D’Sean Mimbs, a name that might sound familiar to Bombers fans.
Mimbs looks familiar, too, a bit like his dad, Robert, who still holds the franchise record for rushing yards in a season, with 1,769.
Not that the son is feeling any undue pressure to fill dad’s cleats.
“Some people might say it is,” Mimbs said. “I don’t. One of my goals is to be better than my dad.”
Mimbs laughed, but not because he thinks that’s unattainable.
Neither father nor son, who live in Regina, where Mimbs also played, are short on confidence, even if dad is a little more brash about it when reflecting on his CFL career.
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“He tells me every time he’s the baddest boy out there,” Mimbs said, laughing again. “The best running back there is, pretty much. I’ve tried to watch on YouTube, but I think YouTube might be too new. He has a VHS recording of his old Grey Cup (1990) when he was on the Bombers. Honestly, we’re kind of similar, how we run the ball, at least.”
They have the same goal for young D’Sean, too: the NFL.
“Most of the advice he gives me is just believe in myself,” the University of Regina product said. “He wants me to dream big. I’d still love to play in the CFL.”
Players such as Mimbs and Gassama know they can only do so much to impress on a stage in the glitzy ballroom of an historic hotel.
Their bread and butter this week will be on the field, trying to beat defenders, one-on-one. The way Gassama sees it, there’s more to the week, even, than that.
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“The interview is probably one of the most important parts,” he said. “Everybody here is an elite athlete. Eighty percent of this interview is complete. Now they want to know who you are as a person. Are you a professional? Going into a professional locker-room, will you fit well in there?”
Gassama’s backstory is unique. He, his parents and two older brothers came to Manitoba as refugees from war-torn Sierra Leone when he was a kid.
“Where I come from, there’s not many people who get these opportunities,” he said. “So I’m going to make the most of it.”
Mimbs sees the physical part of the week as perhaps his best opportunity.
“Coming here, seeing my numbers, you can see how explosive I am,” he said. “Love jump balls.”
Mimbs will sit down with Bombers brass on Saturday and if they ask him about doing the little things, the dirty work, they’ll like what they hear, too.
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“Everyone always says football is the ultimate team sport, and it is,” he said. “Receivers blocking … whatever you’re doing on the field matters. It’s how you create success for a team.
“I want to win.”
Combine was not kind to Bombers’ Neufeld
After 14 years, we have an answer to one of the lowest moments of Pat Neufeld’s career.
The veteran Blue Bombers O-lineman was a late addition to the 2010 event and wasn’t exactly ready to show his best stuff.
The Regina product recalls being able to do just 14 reps on the bench press, give or take.
“I try to block it out of my memory,” he said.
Then came his interview with the host Toronto Argonauts, where he was “getting grilled pretty hard” about his performance.
“A thing I learned is go in there and defend yourself, something I probably didn’t do a great job of,” Neufeld said. “Jim Barker (Argos head coach) got up and walked out halfway through the interview. I was like, well, I guess I’m not going to be an Argonaut then.”
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Neufeld has never known if Barker had another meeting to attend or not.
“He might have just not liked me, I don’t know.”
Well, Barker just happens to be here this week. He didn’t recall bailing on Neufeld’s interview, but he did say there would have been a second meeting room and that’s where he was probably headed.
Neufeld not only got over it, he’s lasted longer than nearly everyone from that draft.
“I was a fifth-round pick, and there’s only two guys left from my draft class in the league,” he said. “And we were roommates at that combine.”
That would be Montreal O-lineman Kristian Matte.
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