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What happened last night at Commonwealth Stadium to the Edmonton Eskimos was a stunning, staggering setback. A devastating, demoralizing, depressing defeat which could be be crushing to the club.
On the edge of a statement-making triumph, the Eskimos came unglued in the fourth quarter to gas a game they looked to have won.
"Couldn't finish," said head coach Richie Hall when it was over.
"Didn't finish.
"It was a great opportunity for us. And we messed up at the end," he added of blowing a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter and losing 35-34 to the Calgary Stampers.
"The guys played hard. I thought our team played a good solid football game. I thought their team played a good solid football game. But we had a two-score lead and couldn't close up."
Great against adversity, as Hall has said all season, they once again couldn't stand prosperity.
ANOTHER CLASSIC
The Eskimos allowed Henry Burris to take the Calgary Stampeders 84 yards on four plays in the final minute to win a game which was as memorable in its way as the exceptional game the two teams produced here a month ago: the classic which featured over 1,000 yards of total offence with both teams scoring touchdowns in the final minute.
That was one of the greatest regular-season games ever in the CFL from start to finish.
But this one, before 46,212 fans -- the largest crowd in the league so far this season -- while it wasn't a game to frame, was another not to forget.
And it was definitely big enough.
Four days after the defending champion Stampeders made a statement in the Labour Day Classic in Calgary, the Eskimos were in the process of making one right back at them to proceed to back-to-back games with Saskatchewan no worse than tied for first place with the Roughriders.
But instead of being the 6-4 Eskimos battling back with a gutsy game, they're the 5-5 Eskimos now battling for a playoff spot.
You should know that this is the fourth time this decade that the Labour Day doubleheader has been swept and the team which has lost both has failed to recover to make the playoffs -- Calgary in 2002 and the Eskimos in 2004 and 2007.
Will it be that devastating?
Who knows. But Hall has until next Sunday to put his Humpty Dumpties back together again after what happened here last night.
So many things were going right.
The team which had managed to go the first seven games of the season without an interception and was dead last in the league with only three in the first half of the season, withdrew three they'd saved up from the bank.
But they didn't turn them all into points when Ray threw an interception on a second and one with the Eskimos 15 yards from paydirt.
Tristan Jackson gave them a 63-yard return.
And there was the play which could lead off the end-of-year highlight film for importance and the spectacle it provided.
When Stamp's return man Titus Ryan fumbled a punt on the last play of the third quarter, T.J. Hill batted the ball to Kai Ellis who took it 40 yards to the endzone.
That's enough good stuff to win a football game.
But when you take 14 penalties for 164 yards, come up with only 185 yards passing and only 268 net yards on offence -- despite moving the ball 75 yards on seven plays for the first touchdown to open a football game this season by the Eskimos -- that's enough bad stuff to lose a football game.
MADE A MESS
"We left a lot of points out there on turnovers," said quarterback Ricky Ray.
"We had some sloppy play. It was one of those games tonight where both teams turned the ball over.
"It's the CFL and in the last three minutes anything can happen. I didn't play my best game tonight and we just weren't able to get it done. We left a lot out there. A lot of missed opportunities for us," added the quarterback who watched Burris do for Calgary in the final minute what he did to the Stampeders in the final half minute a month ago.
"It was almost like a case of deja vu to have another game come down to the end here," said Stampeders quarterback Henry Burris.
"It was nice to have a chance to make amends for the last time."
TERRY.JONES@SUNMEDIA.CA