Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

The winless Eskimos are angry and itching to punch someone in the face. So are the fans.

There is scaffolding, bare plywood, and all kinds of temporary construction going on at the south end inside Commonwealth Stadium these days, like the opening scene of a western movie.

"They’re not gallows," said one observer, though the dual platform project would have room for about as many trap doors as there are players and management on this 0-4 Edmonton Eskimos football team.

Yes, the Eskimos have become a punch-line. Outside in their own freshly carpeted stadium and inside their own newly renovated dressing room, where seemingly everyone wants to talk about punching somebody, anybody.

"I want to punch someone in the face," declares linebacker Maurice Lloyd.

"We’ve got to be ready to put some hurt on people," said quarterback Ricky Ray, "rather than them putting it on us."

"Can we take a punch — take it? — and deliver one back?" asked head coach Richie Hall.

Punch-lines. That’s the way the 0-4 Eskimos are talking now that their situation has reached critical mass.

One of the many running jokes here is that the Eskimos should go back to their old grass. Because clearly the new stuff at Commonwealth is too strong for them.

The B.C. Lions are in Friday night. The 1-3 Lions, whose only victory this season came at Commonwealth, are — as Winnipeg was the week before — being viewed as an "if you can’t" team in Edmonton.

As in, "If you can’t beat these guys, who are you going to beat?"

It’s funny though, that Lions coach Wally Buono is in the midst of his own disastrous start, but nobody would breathe that perhaps his job should be on the line. Richie Hall’s job, meanwhile, seems absolutely dependent on an Eskimos victory.

His own team president, Rick LeLacheur, as much as guaranteed that the axe would swing if things don’t get better, when he addressed the media on Monday. The next day, GM Danny Maciocia took LeLacheur’s message to the dressing room.

"It was a call out. From one man to another man," said Lloyd, of LeLacheur’s message. "Each man has to decide how he’s going to take it. I take it as a call out.

"If another man calls me soft, I’m going to show him the next time that I’m not soft. I’ve never been called soft by the president of a football team. I’ve never been called heartless by a president. His opinion is the truth. We have been soft."

LeLacheur never actually called the Eskimos "heartless," but certainly questioned their mental and physical toughness. Coming from a suit in the front office, you have to wonder how that plays with a bunch of battle-tested football men.

"He may not have played football," Lloyd said, "but he played hockey (for the Edmonton Oil Kings in the ‘60s). That’s a physical game.

"What he’s saying is true," Lloyd continued. "I don’t know how you respond to that. Me? I want to punch someone in the face."

In a city that considers it a right, not a privilege, to have a winning CFL team, that is the overriding sentiment. Eskimo Fan wants to punch someone in the face.

The preferred target? Maciocia, to be sure.

In a recent poll question about who bears the most fault for the Eskimos failures this season, Hall received less than five percent of the blame from fans. LeLacheur had a small share as well, and Maciocia was pegged at over 80 percent.

If you fire Hall, he is both the head coach and defensive co-ordinator. But worse yet, Eskimos fans fear that his replacement would be Maciocia, a development that would might end of costing LeLacheur his job as well.

It’s a dead heat right now which entity Edmontonians want gone more quickly: Danny Maciocia or Edmonton Northlands, who seem to be putting their own needs ahead of what’s best for the city in the new arena debate. Then the study comes out that labels Rexall Place with the most violations in the NHL when it comes to food service.

One poisons you with food, the other with a football team that has declined in flavour ever since the mid-90’s, shortly after Maciocia’s arrival back in 2002.

The Eskimos have been outscored 26-10 in first quarters this season and 50-7 in the fourth.

The coach is in his second season, and Maciocia’s best before date has long since passed.

There is no more time for talk at Commonwealth Stadium.

It’s time for action, one way or another.