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Canwest News Service
CALGARY – They seemed, at the time, to be teetering on the cusp of invincibility. The 1993 Calgary Stampeders were, by any possible gauge, absolutely spoiled for Canadian Football League riches. A chart-topping 15-3 record. The league's most outstanding player, Doug Flutie, pulling strings like a cheeky puppeteer. The Canadian player of the year, slotback Dave Sapunjis, latching on to every ball thrown anywhere near him.
Coach Wally Buono won the Annis Stuckus Trophy as the league's top coach for the second time that year. Flutie, Sapunjis, offensive lineman Bruce (The Big Tuna) Covernton, defensive linemen Will Johnson and Harold Hasselbach along with defensive back Karl Anthony were selected all-Canadian. The offence pigged out on a franchise-record 646 points.
And, as a capper, the 81st Grey Cup Game was set for Calgary's McMahon Stadium. The inevitability of the Stamps' involvement didn't seem so much a contest as a coronation.
Then, on Nov. 19, with the city ready to rock and roll out the red Grey Cup carpet for the first back-to-back championship parades, the unthinkable came to pass.
The Stamps were beaten, 29-15, by quarterback Damon Allen and the Ron Lancaster-coached Edmonton Eskimos in a West final ice bowl.
"I vividly remember looking through my face mask that day," reminisces Sapunjis 16 years later, "and what I saw was almost surreal. The breath I was exhaling had frozen and was caked on my mask. It had to be minus-30.
"The weather, when it's crazy bad like that, is a great equalizer. Doug will tell you, I'm sure, that it affected his game. We'd had such a great year. Not only did we have a lot of talent, we worked exceptionally hard. We'd won the Grey Cup the year before. We were heavy favourites. The championship game was being played in our house. People here were anticipating watching us the next weekend. And then to see it all pulled out from underneath us like that, to have to see your archrival take your dressing room for the biggest game of the year. . . .
"I'd have to say that was the most disappointing loss of my career, for sure."
None of the participants can ever forget the bone-chilling conditions that day. "My second year in the league," recalls Eskimo kicker Sean Fleming. "Coldest game I ever played in. Just bitter. Almost cruel. I remember the heaters on the sidelines not working and a lot of guys wound up with frostbite. "
Allen, too, had never experienced anything like it.
"You come out of the hotel, get on the bus and go to the stadium and the cold doesn't really hit you. It's when you come out of the locker-room and start warming up on the field that you begin to realize how really bad it is.
"After a while, I couldn't feel my hands. They just went numb. I couldn't feel the ball. I think I only threw eight passes that day, and four were for touchdowns.
"Calgary had a great team that year but we beat them in the Labour Day rematch at Commonwealth Stadium and that gave us confidence heading into the West final."
A week later, by Grey Cup Sunday, those familiar warm winds had started to roll across the Rocky Mountains and the temperature hovered around a balmy 6 C for the Eskimos vs. Winnipeg Blue Bombers matchup in front of 50,035 fans.
"It was a crazy turnaround," laughs Allen. "Guys were bundled up like polar bears one week and wearing jerseys with short sleeves the next. That's when I started to understand what exactly a Calgary chinook really is."
The Big Blue were in tough right from the opening kickoff, given that their nerve centre, quarterback Matt Dunigan, was unable to play due to an Achilles tendon injury, forcing coach Cal Murphy's son-in-law Sammy Garza to start at the controls.
"What people tend to forget now is that Winnipeg beat us twice pretty handily that year," reminds Allen. "They scored 110 points on us, if I'm not mistaken. So even without Dunigan, I'm sure they were favoured before kickoff."
By the 10-minute mark, though, the underdog Eskimos had taken advantage of two Bomber turnovers and in the process built a 21-0 lead. Winnipeg made a second-half push, and cut the lead at one point to four, 24-20. But the Esks ran out 33-23 winners.
The game turned into a display of the power and precision of Fleming's right leg. Only 23, he booted a record-tying six field goals – equalling Don Sweet's Alouette tally from 1977 and later to be tied by Paul Osbaldiston of the Hamilton Tiger-Cats in 1986 – two converts and added a single to account for 21 of Edmonton's 33 points.
"I really didn't think about how many field goals I was kicking at the time, " says Fleming.
"You just go out and do your job when called upon. Afterwards it sunk in what had happened to me, how special that day actually was.
"The only time that the magnitude of it right hit me was when I came out on the field" – the culmination of a 12-play drive orchestrated by Allen – "to kick a short field (27 yards) goal that put the game on ice for us."
Edmonton touchdowns were scored by running back Lucius Floyd on a two-yard dive and a two-yard Allen toss to slotback Jim Sandusky.
"Sandusky was a very important part of our offence," recalls Allen. "That's why we called him MacGyver. You remember the TV show, how MacGyver would build something or discover something, always finding a way to get things done? That was the Sand Man. He always found a way."
At game's end, Allen was named the game's MVP, while Fleming received recognition as Most Valuable Canadian. The second Grey Cup ever to be held in Calgary is also remembered for an officiating injury, referee Dave Yule suffering a ruptured calf muscle in the second quarter, forcing the alternate, Ken Lazaruk, into action.
For Fleming, 16 years and two additional championship rings later, that temperate afternoon in 1993 remains a touchstone moment.
"I remember lifting the Grey Cup for the first time that day. All I could think of was: `How light this thing is!'
"I was a young guy at that time, and I just figured that I'd be in the big game every year. You find out quickly that it doesn't work that way.
"But it's a day I'll never forget. The six field goals. My first Grey Cup. And winning it in Alberta.
"Pretty special."
Calgary Herald
gjohnson@theherald.canwest.com
