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Northmen prepare for Minto Cup
Friday August 22 2008
By MIKE RAWN Banner Staff Writer
 
And then there were four.
The Orangeville Junior A Northmen left yesterday (Thursday) for the Minto Cup tournament in Calgary.
The Northmen, who won the Ontario Lacrosse Association title on Saturday, will compete against the host Calgary Mountaineers, Alberta champion Edmonton Miners and British Columbia champion Victoria Shamrocks.
Until 2003, the Minto Cup format was a best-of-seven series that featured the Ontario champion against the British Columbia champion. The Alberta teams have struggled since entering Minto Cup play. At last year’s Minto tournament, Edmonton lost all three games by scores of 9-2, 15-3 and 17-8.
“I understand what the [Canadian Lacrosse Association] is trying to do with it, to get more provinces involved,” Northmen general manager Bob Clevely says. “But it does take away from the high calibre of the Minto Cup. Alberta teams have always struggled, and that hasn’t really improved since 2003. They have some things working against them. They don’t have better Junior A teams to play against; their schedule consists mainly of games against Senior B teams. And a lot of the best players from Alberta go to B.C. or Ontario to play with better teams in better leagues.”  
The Northmen will play round robin games against the other three teams, beginning Saturday against Edmonton. The first place team after the round robin gets a bye into the Aug. 30 final. The semifinal game takes place on Thursday.
“We don’t know anything about the teams we’ll be playing,” Northmen coach Matt Sawyer admits. “We’ll worry about ourselves and preparing ourselves the best we can, like we have all year. Hopefully that will be good enough.
“We’ve had a fun two or three days [since winning the OLA championship], and it was special to win it at home. But we know what our goal was all year and what’s at stake here. We’ll be ready.”
The odds are that Orangeville will meet Victoria in the championship game. This year, Victoria ended Burnaby’s 12-year reign as B.C. champs with a talented roster. Led by goalie Matt Flindell, team captain Cayle Ratcliff and leading scorer Cory Conway, the Shamrocks will be a formidable foe.
“I know that Victoria is laden with talent,” Clevely said. “I know they’ve got a lot of good ball players out there. They have an older team with a lot of 21 year olds.
“British Columbia teams are traditionally big teams. But we’re used to that, playing against Six Nations and Brampton. We’re a small team, so that will be nothing new for us.”
“I’ve heard different things about going out [west], starting with the refereeing,” Northmen Sean Gillies said. “But we’ve just got to stay focussed and play hard every night, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t come out on top.”
Clevely doesn’t think that the refereeing will be as big a problem as it had been when the tournament is held in British Columbia.
“There will be one referee from Ontario, one from B.C. and the rest are from Alberta. I don’t see it being a problem.
“We’re a pretty clean team anyway. We get penalties, but it comes from being aggressive. Hopefully the games will be called the way we’re used to them being called. But you never know.”
What the Northmen do know is that they’ve waited a long time to get back to this spot. Their last time at the Minto Cup tournament was 2003, when they lost to Burnaby by a goal in the semifinals.
“It’s going to be tough,” Northmen captain Glen Bryan said. “The Alberta teams will be weaker but B.C. is always going to be a good challenge. We’re not going to go in and think that we have it won already. We’re going to go out there and take every game the same; go hard at it and come out with the Minto Cup. That’s the only thing we want and we won’t take anything less.”