Ready for a bigger role

By Sean Rooney on May 19, 2018.

srooney@medicinehatnews.com @MHNRooney

He knows there’s still lots to learn about being a professional football player, but Connor McGough is ready to take on a bigger role in his second year with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats.

The 22-year-old Medicine Hat native spent the off-season in Calgary and headed back east this week for training camp. After spending most of his rookie season playing special teams and seeing the odd snap as a defensive lineman, he’s eager to do more.

“Every year I feel like as an athlete you have to be expecting a greater role,” said the 6-foot-1, 249-pound Crescent Heights grad. “For sure, I want that role, I want to be an individual they can look to to help the team out as much as possible. I would love to see that be on the defensive side of the ball.”

From the sounds of things, the feeling is mutual between McGough and Tiger-Cats head coach June Jones. Asked by News columnist Graham Kelly during a conference call last week, Jones sounded excited about how far the 2017 fourth overall draft pick has come.

“Having watched all the film over the last months, I am more impressed than ever with Connor’s progress,” said Jones. “He’s got a great motor, he can run, he did a great job on special teams all year for us. He got to play defence a little bit but not as much as he will this year. I think he has tremendous upside.”

With 18 special teams tackles and three defensive tackles, McGough’s biggest challenge was remaining positive as his new team lost its first eight games of the season, prompting a coaching change that landed Jones in the spot. Hamilton finished 6-12 to provide some optimism going forward; now the challenge is to make something of it.

“I learned how to deal with that, how to be a pro,” he said. “It would’ve been easy for people to fall apart and be negative all year but the locker room never fell apart. We had good coaches, good leadership and we became a good team, a good atmosphere.

“There’s a couple differences here and there but to me it seems… a very stable place to go back to.”

McGough’s off-season was more than being a gym rat, however. He took a full semester’s worth of courses at the University of Calgary while training alongside some notable names.

“I took a harder semester so it was a lot busier, but the training side of it was really good,” he said. “I trained at WinSport this year with Alex Singleton (Stampeders linebacker), Bo-Levi (Mitchell, Stamps quarterback), Mercer Timmis (Tiger-Cats running back) and Deron Mayo (Stamps linebacker) before he retired.

“It was really good training-wise, a different style of training; a lot smarter. Now that I’m more developed as an athlete and stronger, it’s more working on longevity for my career.”

He’s also cognizant of his off-field opportunities too. With a goal of becoming a high school teacher, McGough knows he has some unique opportunities as a CFL player.

“One thing I want to do more of is become more involved in the community,” he said. “Not many people have the opportunity to have a strong platform as a professional athlete has, and the way you can impact everyone around you.”

The CFL pre-season officially begins May 27.

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