Ken captures winning game eight
Regina - Tuesday, September 3, 2013
images by: Ken Jones
by:Timothy W. Shire
Besides being a great photographer Ken Jones is a rabid Saskatchewan Rough Rider fan and was about forty rows up at the forty yard line on Sunday for the Labour Day Classic with the Blue Bombers. The pictures on this page were taken with a Canon 7D and a automatic stabilised 300mm lens which explains the close up feel of these pictures shot from the stands, not from the side lines. Since Sunday was a nice bright day, Ken shot these pictures with an ISO of 1600 and an amazing shutter speed of 1/2000 of a second. This high speed explains how it is possible to look at these pictures and see the “Wilson” logo on the football even when it is spinning in a spiral thrown in a pass.
Though the Winnipeg Blue Bombers have won only one game this year they have the most sacks in the league. Their defensive line is truly outstanding and Ken caught the equally awesome Rider offensive line creating and keeping the pocket to protect quarter back Darren Durant (4).
Football is totally a team game, no player can win or lose a game but the sports reporters like to emphasis the play of individuals as it makes a good story. But the set of pictures below shows just how good the offensive line is in giving their quarterback time to make the plays and in the upper right, of the set of images below, is one of the most outstanding individual players in football today. Weston Dressler is from North Dakota and is a modest pleasant young man, but he is also not very big, yet each year, win or lose, he is a receiver that Darren Durant can count on being where he is suppose to be in every given play.
Of course, like almost everything else, names are often not necessarily related to what we are talking about. In North America, the game that the rest of the world calls “football” is called “soccer,” simply because for some reason the North American game with its odd shaped object, which is not a ball at all, is instead called football. Below in the top picture is punter Ricky Schmitt delivery the ball in perfect form. The bottom two pictures are of place kicker Chris Milo who kicked his twenty-third field goal this season in twenty-three attempts. Milo has scored 100 points so far this season, but is in second place as Calgary’s Paredes is out in front with 106 points.
Though most Rider fans are very knowledgeable, we can’t help noticing that the sport announcers and commentators tend to emphasis the role of the starring offensive players. But we all know that games are won, not by putting points on the board, but by preventing your opponent from scoring. The two pictures below show defensive play makers. Ricky Foley is pulling down the Bomber quarter back and in the second picture John Chick is the only Rider in the play, as he flattens quarterback Justin Goltz who distinguished himself early in the game Sunday by taunting the fans after scoring a touchdown.
This is his second season with the Riders. Last year Cory Sheets was the gridiron wonder scampering around the field as though he owned it. I really thought this was just to good to be true, being a small man he is going to get injured and that will be that for this guy, but I was totally wrong and so have just about every defensive player in the CFL who think that Cory Sheets just needs to get hit hard. Up until the last two games, player number one has ran for more than one hundred yards in each and every game. So far in nine games, he has run for 1,149 yards, his closest rival is John Cornish from Calgary who has run 340 less yards than the quick and truly tricky Sheets. Awe. but there is more, in the upper left hand picture in the set below, is the reason he is so successful. Check out the size of the hole his linemen have created for him and once he gets in the open his speed and agility let him take off as you can see in the picture below left. Still, the tough guys in the league are learning the little guy wearing #1 is no push over.
Ken did a great job in catching some of the best action in the game, but he did not get us a picture of Geroy Simon who scored two touch downs in Sunday’s game and will claim the achievement of the top CFL receiver ever, before this season is over. The other two awesome receivers Ken did not catch are people Saskatchewan fans really love. Rob Bagg who was injured and has had procedures on both knees, went out of the game a week ago and everyone was really worried, but he was back on Sunday and did his job. The other receiver is Taj Smith who is in his first year with the team and is something of a miracle, having come from a pretty depressed part of the world and achieving absolute spectacular success this year catching long passes in clutch situations.
But, Ken did catch a great shot of Avonlea’s Chris Getzlaf who also scored two touchdowns in Sunday’s game. Getzlaf struggled a bit last year, but this year he has had solid games one after the other.
The second picture below is one of those things that just shouldn’t happen, that’s why there are rules to stop such behaviour. Weston Dressler had caught the pass and the defensive back grabbed ahold of his shirt to bring him down. Then with his other hand he grabbed Dressler’s face mask and smashed the receiver to the ground. Ken’s picture of what became a 15 yard penalty and is better than the one shown on television.
Below is the final score that appeared on the scoreboard before the nearly 45,000 fans at Mosaic Stadium. Next Sunday is the Banjo Bowl in Winnipeg’s new little stadium, out on the campus of the University of Manitoba.
