Despite losing to the St. Francis Browns in an exhibition game on Sept. 26, the Cochrane Cobras football team continued their dominance over the rest of the Rocky View Sports Association (RVSA) with a 49-2 victory over the George McDougall Mustangs Sept. 29 in Airdrie. "I thought the game against St. Francis actually went pretty well despite the score. We were playing the number-two ranked team in the province in Tier 1 and we're a Tier 3 school ... the population got us a little bit, especially on the size of their team in just the fact they were bigger than us," Cobras co-head coach Rob McNab said of his team's performance against the Browns. "We hung in there for three quarters of the game. We were winning after the first half and I think with two minutes left in the third quarter we were only down 29-20. Then in the fourth quarter they just wore us down with their size and tired us out." "We lost 53-26 in the Francis game but we were the first team to score on them and we had to play a complete game, meaning we had to go all 48 minutes, where as the last few years we haven't been doing that ... against George McDougall, we played pretty solid, scored some points and obviously stopped them from scoring points and we're up at the half. We put our backups in the second half so my thing on a complete game is a game where you need to play four quarters and when you get into provincials you obviously will need to play a complete game in order to win." With the pair of games, the Cobras suffered some serious injuries to important pieces of the team. Receivers Dawson Laye, Dawson Gladue and starting running back Ethan Noble are all out for the season. McNab said some younger players will have to step into the roles if the Cobras want to continue their success. "When you lose three of those kids, especially in a smaller school where the depth maybe isn't as good compared to if you're a school in Calgary or Edmonton, it's a problem. But we've done a good job in the last few years to try and create that depth," McNab said. "It just becomes the next man up. At any point when you're a backup, you're only one player away from being a starter so we try to train our kids to think with that mentality and when guys go down, you have players ready to step up. Dawson Laye is a big one for us because he's our best player and arguably one of the best players in the league so that was a big loss for sure." With the injuries, Grade 12 receiver Dylan Neis stepped into the spotlight and recorded an astounding five touchdowns in the romp over George McDougall. "I'm not sure the last time a Cobra had five touchdowns in a game to be honest, but he earned them all. He runs good routes and he's kind of been hiding in the weeds a little bit because we have other good receivers like Dawson Laye and Gladue," McNab said. "But with those injuries, he's kind of the guy sitting at the top of the tree here so to speak, so he needs to perform week in and week out and will need to be our best player every week other than the quarterback." On the other side of the ball, the Cobras defence has been outstanding through the first four games of the regular season, only allowing 25 points. McNab said both the offence and defence feeds off one another over the course of the game. "Whenever you keep your defence off the field, that's a good thing because it means you have the ball and they've been doing a good job of creating short fields and turnovers for the offence ... they've also been really good at forcing the other teams to go two and out a lot of the time which really helps us out on offence," McNab said. "To put in perspective on how good those kids have been playing, 12 of those points allowed came through us throwing an interception for a touchdown as well as a special teams touchdown so if you take a look at it from that perspective, they haven't been scored on a lot." The Cobras will now head to Los Angeles on the team's bye week for some bonding time. The trip will include a game against Webb High School, watching the No. 2 ranked high school team in the United States in St. John Bosco on the Friday night, UCLA vs. Washington on Saturday and then the Los Angeles Chargers and Oakland Raiders on Sunday. McNab said the trip is crucial for the team to continue to bond with the regular season nearing its end. "You see on these trips that the players really bond with one another because they're going to be hanging out together almost 24/7," McNab said. "We encourage them to mix groups and move around ... we're going to do and see a lot of football in the next couple of days so it should be fun. On the other side of it, they're kids who are playing football full time while also being students so they're trying to do everything right so it's a good break for them before we get rolling on an important stretch of the season." The Cobras will return to action on Oct. 13 when they travel to Airdrie to take on the W.H. Croxford Cavaliers.
