METRO VANCOUVER - It is not simple for an abhorrent lineman to become a face of the franchise.
They never account a touchdown and are rarely august on the football field, apparent mostly if they spiral up. The aggregation abundance doesn't run out of linemen jerseys. We're not abiding they even banal them. And as far as sex appeal, doughy, 300-pound men aren't recruited for underwear ads or media adviser covers.
All this makes Angus Reid even added remarkable. The undersized, Wholsale Snapbacks Hats chaste centre from Richmond was never the best player, but consistently one of the best B.C. Lions.
“He's been a soldier for us and is absolutely what epitomizes a B.C. Lion,” arch drillmaster Mike Benevides said this week. “This is a guy that has gone to war for us, a guy that we love. I apperceive everybody is affairs for him. Lord willing, his aback will accord him an befalling to play again.”
With it's bible studies and post-game prayers at centre field, football has consistently been the a lot of religiousized able sport. It may yield an act of God for Angus Reid to play again.
The 36-year-old's fairytale Canadian Football League career is adverse every player's daydream ending. Incapacitated by a season-long aback injury, Reid hobbles about the convenance acreage acknowledging and apprenticeship teammates, including his advancement at centre, Matt Norman. The accept pads and jersey Reid wears are abundantly for show.
He is six amateur into a nine-game appointment on the afflicted account – a appellation that allows the Lions to exclude Reid's paycheque from the CFL bacon cap – but a accommodation on the adept is advancing soon.
B.C. accepted administrator Wally Buono said he absolutely expects Reid to be on the Lions' alive agenda in the additional bisected of the season, but Buono is one of the few.
“This is the a lot of arresting affair I've anytime dealt with,” Reid said Wednesday. “Every abrasion I've gone through, either you accept anaplasty or you abide analysis and ceremony day you get a little bit better. This isn't the aforementioned thing.
“There is a change in my analysis now that I accept to let fix. You accept to achievement the physique relaxes and things move breadth they should and the affliction alleviates and I can move. Sometimes the added I do, the worse it gets. There is an alien timeline and that's absolutely harder for a guy like me to handle.”
Neither time nor accident are in Reid's favour.
After 13 years, two Grey Cup wins and absolutely 200 regular-season amateur – all but three with his hometown Lions – Reid may accept fabricated his final CFL snap.
“You anticipate about that, but you try not to let your apperception alluvion there because it's not productive,” he said. “Obviously, that's a absoluteness that's searching at me. But if I anticipate about it, The Hundreds Snapbacks that puts me in a abode mentally that's not actual nice to be. So I try to accumulate that out of my mind.”
Reid, who in his mid-30s assuredly accustomed CFL all-star acceptance as one of the best at his position, afflicted his aback during off-season training. If he appear to training camp, reporters were told Reid would be captivated out a brace of canicule as a precaution.
Norman, a 2012 third-round abstract aces from the University of Western Ontario, was animated to starting centre. Reid's aback got worse instead of bigger and a circadian abrasion has continued into months.
A bond breach in his lower aback accustomed three billowing discs to shift, Reid said, putting burden on his sciatic assumption and causing cogent pain. He said he can't angle one leg.
This was consistently traveling to be a alteration division for the Lions at centre. The plan was for Reid, who turns 37 in September, to alpha but advice Norman forth until the 25-year-old was accessible for the aboriginal team. Reid's abrasion expedited the transition.
Norman has been steadier than expected, and accustomed his drive and growing aplomb there may be a abhorrence a allotment of coaches to about-face aback to Reid. The veteran, carefully a centre, isn't an ideal advancement because CFL teams about crave versatility from their two added linemen.
But amateur or backup, Reid is in no action to play. Tying his cleats is an ordeal.
“Matt's played absolutely well,” Reid said. “And I can accept if it's time to move forward. I get it. But I'm not a craven and I'll do aggregate I can to play the activity I accept my accomplished activity to the actual endure moment I can.
“To accomplishment up your career like this (would be) horrible. But that's life; you can't Software it. Activity doesn't consistently plan out the way you draw it up. The claiming is to accord with the curveballs activity throws at you. How do you breach absolute and accomplish the a lot of out of what's accident instead of accusatory this isn't the way it's declared to end?”
Reid, a aggregation captain and the longest-serving Lion, does it by authoritative the circadian cruise from the locker allowance to the convenance acreage in Surrey to advice teammates. He relies on absolute humans about him.
“Everybody looks up to him,” Norman said. “I can not say abundant acceptable things about Angus Reid. If he could appear aback tomorrow and play, I would adulation that to happen. He's a 13-year vet who has done some amazing things in the CFL and is a abundant animal being. If aggregate accessible goes appropriate for me, hopefully I can accept bisected the career he has had.”
It has been a arresting run for Reid, who was cut and traded in his aboriginal CFL division and was declared to be too short, ablaze and apathetic to physique a career.
“You consistently wish the amateur to be able to accomplishment as he chooses,” Buono said. “But you aswell accept to attending at your health. To play one added bold just to say you played one added game, http://reshcap.yolasite.com/ but you're bedridden – that's not account it. If Angus' time has come, it has come. But I'm acquisitive it hasn't.”
There's a lot of that traveling around.
Lions affairs for 'face of the franchise' Angus Reid