The bye week was enjoyable. We spent some good time with the family — we took the girls to Kelowna for a couple of days and then we went to Hope, B.C., to go visit family, so it was good.
The break comes at a good time because the football season but actually, I feel pretty good physically and I know all the guys feel pretty good. They’ve done a good job keeping us up with our conditioning and our workouts, so I feel good.
Now it’s back to the season and continuing to build on what we’ve done so far. On offence, we have so many good receivers. We’ve got some stars with Ken-Yon and Nik and Romby and the other team just can’t cover everybody. If teams are going to devise plans to stop one guy, then it’s just going to open up room for the other guys to step up and make plays.
Arjei’s done a great job and Nik’s been amazing and since Ken-Yon has been back, he’s added that extra dimension with the speed along with Romby. It’s just exciting to see and it’s exciting to see the potential.
We’re going back to Vancouver this week for our second game at Empire Field. It’s funny because when you’re pulling up, it looks like a makeshift stadium but once you get in there and you experience the atmosphere and the fans start stomping their feet, it gets pretty loud.
You know what? I liked it. I thought the atmosphere was great. We could have done without the rain but hey, we dealt with the rain almost every day in training camp so it wasn’t that big of a deal. It’s too bad that stadium is only going to be temporary.
BC Place can be stuffy and with 60,000 seats there, they could have a crowd of 30,000 and it’s still half-empty. There’s just a different atmosphere at Empire Field. It’s funny, I played for BC for six years and I don’t remember the fans heckling like they did in the game earlier this month. They were on us the whole game and you could definitely hear it, but it made for a fun game.
We’re taking this game as a real test. I was out in BC during the bye and so I got to read a few things in the paper and listen to the radio and it’s obvious they’re just wiping the slate clean. That’s all you can really do. You can’t do anything about the 1-6, all you can do is move forward and I know that’s what they’re doing.
I actually spent a couple of days with Geroy Simon and I know he’s fired up and I know the whole team is going to be fired up when we play them.
Ryan Thelwell, #3
>> Thelwell bio