Winnipeg Blue Bombers quarterback Buck Pierce sits in the dressing room after losing to the B.C. Lions in the CFL Grey Cup CFL football game Vancouver, B.C., on Sunday November 27, 2011. Despite the loss over 100 Winnipeg fans turned out at the city airport on Monday to welcome the team back home. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl DyckDarryl Dyck/The Canadian Press
There was a funereal air about the players and coaches as they returned to Winnipeg on Monday, but not among the fans who turned out in blue and gold to greet the Blue Bombers at the city airport after their Grey Cup loss in Vancouver.
About 100 fans were on hand to welcome quarterback Buck Pierce and his teammates a day after they dropped a 34-23 decision to the B.C. Lions. Defensive lineman Doug Brown — who is set to retire after a stellar career — was greeted with chants of "one more year."
The not-so-subtle pressure may not have worked, but the 11-year veteran hung around after most other players had gone, posing for photos and signing autographs.
"That's one of the hardest things about this disappointment," he said of the fact he won't be around next year to try again to win the trophy.
"I really think this group is going to have a chance to be successful. I just wish I could be a part of it in terms of them bringing the ultimate prize back here."
Winnipeg is the youngest team in the league, he noted, and that probably makes Brown feel even more out of place as one of the oldest players in the CFL at 37. The Blue Bombers last won the Grey Cup in 1990, the longest championship drought among the eight teams in the league.
Winnipeg head coach Paul LaPolice said it almost made him cry to come home winless from the Grey Cup to such a warm reception from fans.
"(I'm) just so disappointed in the fact that we couldn't finish," he said.
"Obviously, as coaches, that's what your goal is but also you care about the community, you want to win for them. . . . Right now we're not too happy with the result, but hopefully we'll teach our players that we need to set the bar this high and that being in Grey Cups is a regular thing and not a sometime thing."
There was no one play that stuck in his mind in the loss, he said.
There were two that brought groans from fans watching at home in Winnipeg: Odell Willis dropping an interception that could have altered the course of the game and an attempt at an onside kick that fizzled when it failed to travel the required 10 yards.
"I think there was a combination of plays throughout the course, each side, offence, defence, special teams didn't make their plays," said LaPolice.
"They just made more plays so we have to learn from that and build."