REGINA -- Saskatchewan Roughriders' offensive lineman Philippe Gagnon has waited all season to make his debut in the Green and White, and now, after missing the first 13 games of the campaign, it appears it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
Which, to be quite frank, has come as an absolute surprise to many of the team’s onlookers.
The eight-year Canadian Football League veteran signed as a free agent with the Riders in February of this year and was looking forward to turning in an impressive season with his new team. That plan came to a nasty halt on Day 3 of training camp this spring, though, when a torn bicep looked like it was going to sideline him for the foreseeable future if not the entire season.
That could have been the last the Roughriders saw of Gagnon in 2025 -- but the six-foot-three, 320-pound former first-round CFL Draft pick had other ideas.
Incessant hard work and plenty of determination led to Gagnon returning to the practice field this week, sporting a brace to help protect his once-injured arm. And all that effort could be a matter of days from paying off after Gagnon was listed as available for Saturday’s match-up against the Edmonton Elks.
“It's amazing,” Gagnon said of being back on the practice field. “Things didn't go the way I wanted them to go early in camp with that injury and it was uncertain whether or not I could come back this year. But once you get that news, it’s not going to help you if you go sit in a corner and pout and be, ‘Woe is me, why is this happening to me?’ So I put my work cap back on and then went to work, made sure I did everything I could to get back out there. Now to finally get that reward is amazing.”
While many players who suffer a potential season-ending injury will opt to return home to heal and recover, Gagnon was having none of that. He has remained in Regina the whole way through, something head coach Corey Mace pointed to as a sign of his character.
“Unfortunately to have that injury at training camp was really tough for him, but he made it very clear from that day he wasn’t going back [home],” Mace said. “He’s staying with the team and wants to be with his brothers, attack rehab like crazy and he said he was going to be back. He’s a man of his word, and it’s awesome, awesome for him.”
For Gagnon, it was simply a matter of seeing through the commitment he made to the team in the beginning.
“I showed up here in camp because I was committed to seeing this through, this project we have this year of accomplishing the things we want to accomplish,” Gagnon said. “When that first hardship hits, you're not bailing and going back home and saying ‘Oh well whatever, good luck guys, I'll maybe see you later.’ I'm still a part of this, I'm not going to be able to help you as much as I would have wanted to on the field, but I'm going to do everything I can everywhere else."
“That's why I stayed, I wanted to show everybody and also show myself that this isn't over. We've got a shot at coming back this year and we're going to make it work.”
Asked what it’s like recovering from the injury and how the process works to get back on the field so quickly, Gagnon said having trust in everything involving healing and recovery is an important factor -- especially when things start improving and a light begins to shine at the end of the tunnel.
“You start moving your arm around and you're like, ‘Well, I'm good to go.’ And then they tell me, ‘No, you're absolutely not good to go,'” Gagnon explained. “Everything's so fragile, so that initial period where you’ve got to really baby it and be patient is probably the hardest for any athlete because the best thing to do is nothing sometimes. There's the big mental part at first, in the first few months where you got to make sure everything's healed properly before you can go and test it.”
Then the day comes when the green light is given and the even harder work begins.
“You got to trust that the doctor did a good job, that everything's healed right, and that you're ready to take on more and more work and test it a little bit,” Gagnon said. “Get that strength back to where it was, get that endurance back to where it was."
“The closer you get back to the field it gets more and more, but it's a challenge that unfortunately I've had to do before in my career. I've had other major injuries I had to deal with so it wasn't my first rodeo, but it was a big one for sure.”
Eventually the moment comes where it’s time to go 100 per cent and get back into full game shape -- which involves another major step and even bigger tests than before.
“There's so much you have to think about [as a professional football player] that you can't add this extra load into your brain,” Gagnon said. “So you got to use practice, you got to use the gym to verify. Can I do what I used to be able to do before? And if the answer is yes, then all right, we're good. This is in the past now.”
The key going forward will be to show not only himself but his teammates and the coaching staff that things are back to where they need to be for Gagnon to perform at the highest level.
“I've got to also show the other people around me that they can trust it, too,” he said. “I'm not going to be in for three plays, going to break again and then we're back to square one. It's not going to come out of nowhere. You got to build it in practice, in the gym, which I did with the help of our amazing physician and the therapist. You got to build that up for sure, but now I've got it and it's ready to go.”
You can catch the pre-game show with Teagan Witko, Justin Dunk and Wes Cates for all the up-to-date line-up changes beginning at 2 p.m. Dave Thomas and Luc Mullinder follow with the game call at 5 p.m. on the 620 CKRM Co-operators Rider Broadcast Network.
