Bombers’ kicker Castillo kicks off ball controversy

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Blue Bombers kicker Sergio Castillo motioned reporters to his locker after Thursday’s embarrassing loss to Montreal.

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He clearly had something to say, most likely taking responsibility for his bad night at the office. Or so we thought.

“I’m trying to not get fined here,” Castillo began.

Then he dropped a bombshell.

“It’s very frustrating when you put in the work … and we’re not given the proper equipment to do well,” he said. “What I mean by that is we have these chips in the footballs. Over camp, if I went 60 percent (in field goals) that was a great day. And when we went with normal balls, 90-plus percent. The whole camp.”

Castillo was referring to the computer chips in footballs the CFL began experimenting with last season and has made mandatory this year.

It seems they affect the ball’s trajectory coming off a kicker’s foot.

“You saw what they did out there,” he said, referring to his two misses on relatively short field goals and another on a convert. “I don’t know where to aim. Every time I’m out there, I’m literally praying the Rosary. Every single guy is opposed to this. We’re all against it.

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“No. 1, it affects the team. It’s a momentum killer. And two, we could lose our jobs over this.”

As if on cue, other kickers across the league chimed in before the night was through.

“No other pro league uses chipped footballs in the kicking game and every CFL kicker voted against these footballs,” Ottawa placekicker Lewis Ward posted on X. “This has a negative impact on the integrity of the game and is a very sad for the league to disregard this issue.”

Ward’s teammate, punter Richie Leone, also weighed in.

As did Brett Lauther of Saskatchewan, the vice president of the CFL Players Association.

Lauther, also on social media, said multiple players have complained about balls not flying straight, even about bruising on their feet from kicking the chipped balls.

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“The CFLPA has exhausted all efforts to try and get these balls taken out,” Lauther posted. “And still the league waited until the night before game one of the regular season to decide to use these footballs that will eventually cost jobs and livelihoods.”

The balls are chipped to provide fancy stats like the speed of passes.

Lauther says the USFL experimented with the chips but rejected them because of all the wonky field-goal tries. CFL kickers, he says, voted 10-1 against using them.

The CFL experimented with them last season, but Castillo says the Bombers union reps nixed a plan to use them late in the year.

“Thank god,” he said. “We said no, because it was the same issue. I literally don’t know where to aim.”

Castillo says the chips don’t seem to affect spiral punts or throws. But anything that goes end-over-end, like a field-goal try or even an Aussie sidewinder punt from his teammate, Jamieson Sheahan, “gets a whole other life.”

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Every time Castillo missed, he says he looked at head coach Mike O’Shea and just threw up his hands.

“I’m like, ‘I hit them clean.’ You go through my practice film, I hit them clean. That is the very frustrating part.”

O’Shea was well aware of the concerns of kickers around the league.

“He’s a 90 per cent kicker,” the coach said of Castillo. “Sergio has kicked 20,000 footballs. If he says he hits it clean, he hits it clean. If it doesn’t do what he thinks it should do, there’s something there.”

The league claims the balls were tested, but Castillo says they weren’t tested by actual kickers.

Winnipeg vs Montreal, a Grey Cup rematch, was the league’s opening game and marquee matchup of Week 1

Castillo missed field goals from 38 and 40 yards, plus a 32-yard convert, as the Bombers lost, 27-12.

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Alouettes kicker David Cote made both his field goals, but the longest was just 22 yards. He also missed a convert.

Up next is Hamilton at Calgary on Friday.

That the league has allowed this issue to blow up has put a dark cloud over the start of the new season for the second year in a row.

Call this Chapter 2 of the Genius Sports debacle.

Last year the CFL’s entire statistical platform was in a shambles, a problem that hasn’t been fully rectified to this day.

The geniuses who didn’t properly test that new toy apparently didn’t learn a thing from it, trotting this one out despite flaws affecting the very games we watch.

Let’s see how they kick their way out of this.

pfriesen@postmedia.com
X: @friesensunmedia

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