Was it a moral victory for Wildcats?

CORNWALL — A moral victory?

Sure, that’s a term Cornwall Wildcats head coach Wayne Blakely can live with.

The expansion team in the Ontario Varsity Football League (19 and under) battled the defending champion and top-ranked Toronto Thunder to a 7-7 draw in the first half, eventually falling 21-7 on Saturday afternoon at Joe St. Denis Field.

“I’m just super proud of the guys, and the coaches, for getting the team ready (for Saturday’s game),” Blakely said. “Our improvement between the last game and this one is probably 10 times what it was between the first and second games.”

The Wildcats are technically 1-3 thanks to a forfeit victory, but on the field they were 0-2 and both losses were by fairly wide margins.

Then they had to deal with the Thunder swaggering into town.

They dealt with it just fine — despite falling behind 7-0 very early on.

On the ensuing kickoff Cornwall got an electrifying 85-yard touchdown return from Tagwi product Jesse McPhail to quickly tie the game, and with a bit more success from the kicking game — the Wildcats got no points on two wide field goal attempts — the home team could have been ahead of Toronto at the intermission.

Which begged the question, did Blakely think it was a winnable game?

He did.

“We missed those two field goals — it could have been a different story at halftime,” the coach said.

The Thunder never really did explode against what turned out to be a stout Cornwall defence — Toronto just kind of pecked the Wildcats to death, going to a ground game and getting small chunks of yardage that ultimately produced two short-yardage touchdown runs.

It’s a Toronto team that’s now 4-0, but has had no blowouts. It’s a Toronto team that has had on-field discipline issues — it had 25 flags in last week’s game.

So while the Thunder haven’t been dominant, they did expect to have an easier time in far-eastern Ontario.

“Sure, we were overconfident, and there was overconfidence on my part, too,” said a candid Thunder head coach Frank Panos. “And then we came out and scored that early touchdown, and I think the guys were thinking, ‘no problem, we’ll score 40 points today’, but it didn’t go that way, did it?”

Panos thought his club’s defensive play was “outstanding”, but there were problems on offence, and the Wildcats had a lot to do with that.

“For a good portion of (the first half) they had us pinned in our own end,” Panos said. “(Cornwall is) a lot better than their record indicates. They’re big, they’re tough and they tackle well.”

Cornwall coach Blakely had praise for the “entire defensive line” and he singled out the outstanding play of defensive backs Michael Helmer and Brandon Picken, noting that the efforts helped force Toronto into rethinking its passing attack.

“It forced them into the running game, and that worked (for the Thunder in the second half ), we were getting a little bit gassed,” Blakely said.

The performance has the Wildcats already fired up for next week’s game at Cumberland against the Panthers; they’re thinking it’s an excellent opportunity for a first on-field win.

“We’re getting good numbers at practice, and the guys are working very, very hard,” Blakely said. “I think we’re aware now of what the competition is like in this league, we’re better aware of what it’s going to take for us to have success.”

The Thunder on Saturday scored just four minutes into the game, getting deep into Cornwall territory on a standout catch and run by Bishop’s University player Major Newman.

McPhail answered on the next kickoff, and the Cornwall defence took over after that. Helmer had an interception on the next Toronto possession, but the field goal misses proved costly.

The moral of the story
Posted By TODD HAMBLETON
Updated 20 hours ago