Ski glasses on the head. Bottle of champagne in hand. Coats on the body… or not. But above all, the Gray Cup, at arm’s length.
This is how the Montreal Alouettes appeared before the media on Monday morning, leaving their chartered plane on the tarmac of Mirabel airport. The 2023 Canadian Football League champions didn’t seem to have much sleep in their bodies the day after their 28-24 victory against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
“ [On a dormi] a little bit on the plane, explained Byron Archambault, special teams coordinator for the Alouettes. We took a little well-deserved rest. We feel good, the emotions were a little intense after the game. But now we realize what we have done. It’s’fun to experience this together. »
Marc-Antoine Dequoy says he is “on cloud nine” at the moment.
“I wish anyone could read [mon émotion], he emphasizes, his voice exhausted and his eyes hidden under his sunglasses. It’s as if my bottle of happiness was full. I have excess happiness, and I want to give it to everyone. »
Dequoy persists and signs
We could read the “emotion” of the defensive half quite clearly on Sunday evening. His post-match interview with Matthieu Proulx, on RDS, became an instant classic.
“They never believed in us!” he shouted on the pitch. You look everywhere, it’s written in English! You put on the TSN guide, it said Toronto versus Winnipeg! You come here and it just speaks in English! […] Well you know what man, keep your English! Because we’re going to take this cup, and we’re going to bring it back to Montreal! We’re going to bring her back to Quebec, then we’re going to bring her home! »
In a calm and composed tone, Dequoy took the time to express himself more gently on Monday. Without, however, going back on his words.
“You have to understand where I come from,” he said. I’m someone who watched the Alouettes growing up. It’s a childhood dream. After this victory, the emotion that takes over you is so enormous. But the reality is that the CFL is a bilingual league. Canada is a bilingual country. I find that there was a bit of disrespect towards the French language during the week. »
In Toronto last week in the Eastern final, “the national anthem was only in English,” adds Dequoy. “It’s nothing against the English-speaking community. Conversely, I speak in English every day of my life, football is English speaking. I’m being corrected because I say a lot of anglicisms. Anyone who knows me knows very well that there was no malice, nothing bad, it was really the emotion that took hold of me. »
His general manager Danny Maciocia had a smile on his face when asked about his player’s tirade.
“We have been the underdogs since the very beginning of the year,” he recalls, with his vocal cords also frayed. You have to understand that Marc-Antoine is 29 years old, and I am 56. So our approach is a little different. If that’s what you need to motivate yourself, […] you do it. »
“The thing I’m most proud of is that we’re bringing the Cup back to Montreal. We dressed 45 players, including 21 Canadians. Ten of the 21 Canadians are Quebecers. We look at the coaching staff, we have a few Quebecers. In management, we have several Quebecers. This shows that football is not only healthy here, but that we have people capable of managing an organization in football operations. »
“A match of exceptional beauty”
At halftime, after the quarter’s two failed sneak attempts and trailing by 10 points, the Alouettes had to recover, both morally and on the scoreboard.
What was said in the locker room while Green Day sang Boulevard of Broken Dreams in Hamilton?
Quickly, after a minute or two of conclave with his staff, head coach Jason Maas “already had the first three plays he wanted to call in the second half,” revealed offensive coordinator Luc Brodeur-Jourdain on Monday morning.
Maas then told his players to “erase what happened during the last offensive sequences” and to “start the second half thinking that each of the plays could be your last,” explains Brodeur-Jourdain.
“It gave us an exceptionally beautiful match,” he said. We must be proud, as a league, of this type of meeting. »
Maas felt he had “made Montreal and Quebec proud”.
“We said to ourselves how important it was to represent them to the best of our abilities. We worked every day with this goal in mind. »
None of the participants in this championship interviewed on Monday morning had yet taken the measure of the feat achieved the day before.
“I have six months ahead of me to appreciate it,” said quarterback Cody Fajardo, recipient of the Gray Cup Most Valuable Player title.
As for him, Danny Maciocia is looking forward to “thinking about it a little and talking with supporters, friends” between now and Wednesday’s parade. It is at this moment that he will understand the magnitude of the “exploit [que son équipe] just realized. »
“It’s quite a story that we wrote,” he emphasizes. There was another chapter left to write, and we made a good job writing it as it should with last night’s match. »