One of the CFL’s more passionate fans had his life changed forever in a senseless attack.

His name is Ritch Dowrey, but to many people on the chat sites of the Canadian Football League, he is known as 3rdDown, the passionate and provocative B.C. Lions fan.

Dowrey liked to express his thoughts and engage in conversation, which could often lead to some interesting discussion on the chat sites. It actually caused him to be banned from two of them.

Sadly, the 3rdDown comments have been silenced because of a brutal attack in March in which Dowrey was punched by another individual in a Vancouver pub. It received significant coverage in the B.C. media because it was believed to be an attack by someone who did not like Dowrey because of his sexual orientation. The attacker has been charged.

Dowrey suffered serious head trauma, which required surgery. He has been in extensive rehabilitation since, but has lost much of his memory, including the thoughts of his beloved Lions that he knew intimately since following the team from their inception.

Following the accident, the Lions gave Dowrey a team jersey with the No. 1 and his name on the back.

Tomorrow, Brian Edwards and his wife Linda, two friends of Dowrey's from Edmonton, will travel to Vancouver to visit him. They have not seen him since the accident.

"I spoke to his brother (Allan) and he said 'the family would like you to see him and maybe bring back some memories for him,'" Edwards told me on Wednesday. "He is a big Lions fan and I'm a big Eskimos fan, there was always that kind of rivalry thing going on. I'm hoping to tweak his memory a bit. I got some pictures of us from the old days that I'm going to bring him and we've got some CFL memorabilia we want to give him."

While in one newspaper story it was written that Dowrey could be confrontational and that possibly provoked the attack, it is something that has been misconstrued according to people who know him. Derek Dale, a Coquitlam resident who operates two football websites, wrote on one of them that Dowrey is indeed "confrontational or controversial" and was kicked off his sites for it, but some of his other comments were excluded and misinterpreted what he said. He said Dowrey had an online persona and that the two were friends and Dowrey understood why he had been banned.

"He is a very nice guy in person ... and is never a rowdy, bully or physical threat to anyone in person," he said. "What has happened makes no sense on so many levels. Rich is a great guy, and when CFL fans from across the country come to town for a game, 3rdDown is one of the guys they not only want to meet, he's on the 'must meet' or 'gotta see while I'm in town' list."

Edwards provided a similar take.

"He had very strong beliefs on his team," Edwards said. "He would discuss things to the end about the B.C. Lions. He was a dude who was there from the beginning. He told stories of sitting on his dad's knee in 1954 and watching them in Empire Stadium. He was not a confrontational guy. He would talk and argue football. The bottom line was he loved his Lions. He loved the league. Absolutely. We come from Edmonton and he'd always make time to come see us and talk about football. He had a mind like a steel trap about the Lions trivia and Lions knowledge. Sadly, I think that stuff's gone."

According to Edwards, the many people who knew Dowrey by his name and handle are shocked beyond belief by what happened to him and "just want him back."

"I hope Rich is doing better," Dale said in a post. "It is a senseless act and this sort of thing shouldn't happen to anyone."