The Hamilton Tiger-Cats added eight Canadian players to their roster today, including two CFL Draft selections and three local junior football standouts.
2011 second-round pick Maurice Forbes and 2010 fourth-round pick Chris Rwabukamba will take part in rookie camp at McMaster’s Ron Joyce Stadium this week.
Local junior football players Danny Brown, Jamal George and Rob Varallo will also suit up with the Black and Gold.
The Ticats also reinforced their Canadian contingent with the additions of defensive tackle George Kourtesiotis, linebacker Joseph Malabuyoc and receiver Brenden Owens.
Rwabukamba is finally officially a Ticat! He has the talent to crack the roster so it will be interesting to see the camp videos on ticats.ca this year. This is one player I really have my eye on and am very excited about. Gotta love talented Canadian DB's!
Don’t forget about Barker at safety. That would be three Canadians starting in the secondary when some teams don’t even have one Canadian starter in their secondary.
But I think the plan this year will be to have Chris R. backing up Hinds and then potentially have them both starting in a year from now.
However if Chris outplays the competition and proves he is the best guy available regardless of his passport, then you would have no choice but to start him on the corner opposite of Hinds.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Every starting N/I needs a N/I backup otherwise Lumsden issues arise. Having one N/I DB combo of Hind/R-Man is a good thing. Splitting them up requires two more competent N/I DBs.
we do still have Beswick lets not forget, im sure he could play corner, although i think hes mainly a halfback, and even if we could start Rwabukamba at half, im sure it could work out if we realllllly wanted it too, but your right, just to have a N/I backup for Hinds for this season is good
I agree with you and I think the one combo is good for now, but having them both start wouldn’t necessarily ruin things.
Like I said, what if he proved to be the best available option regardless of his passport? (Yea I know, likely won’t happen)
Then starting the two of them would likely mean you’re starting 9 NI’s. Which means if one of them goes down it doesn’t have to screw you up ratio-wise, but instead would just mean a drop in production (As the case for any injury).
Again, I would like to stress that i’m aware this likely won’t happen. But we can all dream, right?
Chris Rwabukamba is a ball hawking, cover corner who can tackle real well.. His time at Duke against a very good conference in the ACC, puts him in a category with all the american rookies.. Although he is Canadian he has played at the NCAA D-1A level his whole college career and held his own..
I'm very hopeful R-back will become a force in the Secondary. Right now, the TiCats having a N/I DB starter/backup will be a 'ratio buster'. Let's not get greedy. If next year we have two combos then hells bells we will rock the CFL.
In a pinch, couldn’t you just have one NI DB backing up the two of them, and take a chance that they both go down in the same game? [knock wood] The backup would need to be able to adjust to either side, but hopefully only for the one game.
or you could, call me crazy here, start over 7 N/I, then if one of the gets injured, we can plug in an American and still be good to go
Barker, Kirk (Steele or Forbes), Rottier, Hage, Dyakowski, Hinds, Stala, Smith
^ theres 8 N/I starters, now if you wanted to if Rwabukamba is the best corner available course, you could put him in and go with 9 N/I starters
then you have breathing room, we do still have Beswick who i think is very talented, and all the other guys have N/I backups
its just a thought
p.s i know Kirk is injured and if hes not good to go come July 1st, im hoping Steele or Forbes can step up and fill in his starting role