Danny Maciocia, Jason Maas and the entire staff of the Montreal Alouettes do not expect to be surprised during the Canadian Football League’s national and international tryout sessions. But the general manager and the Montreal head coach will be looking for confirmation.
Some 85 football players, including nearly fifteen from Quebec universities, will participate in these trials in Winnipeg, Thursday and Sunday. This is the last opportunity to show off physically for these various Canadian prospects ahead of the draft, which will take place on April 30.
“As you know, half of our roster is made up of Canadians: 21 out of 45 in each game,” Maciocia noted by videoconference on Tuesday. Canadian content is therefore very important. This is linked to our successes last year: the contribution of our Canadians was major. »
“Will this change the order [des joueurs] on our list? I don’t think so, but it will possibly confirm certain things, he added. I’m more interested in the interviews and I want to see their body language on the pitch. How they handle information, how they will react if they lose a one-on-one situation. We have almost four years of film on these players and we will have more interviews after this session. We will be ready for the draft on April 30. »
Maas agrees: it is especially the interviews with these young hopefuls that interest him.
“I want to see how they can communicate and how they express their passion for football, which is important to them. It’s difficult in 15 minutes, but we want to see how they react to unusual situations,” he explained.
These trials are all the more important, since the current Canadian player ratio rules mean that players who will be drafted at the end of next month can no longer be long-term projects. Teams that want to be successful in the Ambrosie circuit must count on quality Canadian players, who are ready to perform now.
Maciocia and Maas are also convinced that the Alouettes’ Canadiens are responsible for a large part of the club’s success last year, when it won the eighth Gray Cup in its history.
“Canadians are important from the moment they arrive on the circuit. You are mentionning [Tyson] Philpot, but we can talk about [Lwal] Uguak, from [David] Rating [Pier-Olivier] Ballast, [Marc-Antoine] Why: there are so many. This session is as important as all the hopeful matches I saw in January in the United States, underlined the general manager. We are deploying several resources for this session. We’re going to make sure we do our homework on these kids. […] We want to see if they can be a good addition to what we have built as an organization. »
“Back home, we will have further interviews with these candidates to make sure we add those who will best fit into what we are doing here,” he continued.
Maciocia, however, doubts that the players will shake up the Alouettes’ list of prospects over the weekend, either positively or negatively.
“I don’t put too much emphasis on these sessions. If we look [David] Dallaire, he didn’t have his best week last year in Edmonton. If we had only looked at this week’s workout, it would have moved down on our lists. But we have to look at the previous three, four years. We would have deprived ourselves of a good acquisition. You have to watch how the player reacts, how he interacts with his teammates. I don’t think what we see this week is going to change our perception of a player. »