A win‘s a win.
Pete McCall didn‘t like a lot of what he saw on Saturday night, but the end result was still a favourable one as his Okanagan Sun opened the BCFC season with a 24-10 road victory over the Kamloops Broncos.
"It didn‘t feel like a win, but we‘re happy all the same," said McCall, in his sophomore season as Okanagan‘s coach. "It was a great learning experience. . . . First game of the year and we‘ve got a lot of inexperienced guys at important positions. We hadn‘t played anybody and hadn‘t been tightly officiated, so all of those little things come out and need correcting."
When the dust settled, though, the BCFC standings still showed Okanagan in a three-way tie for top spot, alongside the two-time defending national champion Vancouver Island Raiders and the Victoria Rebels.
But McCall, always an optimist, knows his club must be significantly better to stay unbeaten in this Saturday‘s home opener against the Surrey Rams (0-1), who fell 37-13 to the Raiders in Nanaimo on the weekend. Kickoff against Surrey is 7 p.m. at the Apple Bowl.
"We were fortunate to be strong enough to still beat a much improved Kamloops team, but there‘s a lot of things on offence that need to improve this week," McCall said. "It‘s fixable stuff. We‘ve addressed the discipline problems out there and talked about execution.
"We‘ll hopefully put on a cleaner, tighter performance this weekend."
Among the issues on offence was timing between the receivers and new quarterbacks, Bobby Davis and Taylor Potkins. It was also Marcus Petkau‘s first start at centre, which complicated matters in terms of snap counts. Plus, the Broncos boast a veteran defence that, as McCall put it, "blitzed the hell out of us," causing confusion and chaos for the offensive line.
Of equal concern was the amount of penalties Okanagan took on both sides of the ball - 20 for 180 yards on offence and 15 for 125 yards on defence, including several personal fouls - totalling 305 yards.
Two of the offensive infractions negated first-half touchdowns by Dan Turek and Tore Tarcon, who also each scored majors that counted. Daniel Xavier accounted for Okanagan‘s other TD, and Steve Shott kicked one field goal plus three converts to round out the Sun scoring. Shott also had a field goal attempt blocked in the first half.
Kamloops countered with a second-quarter field goal to trail 10-3 at halftime, then recovered a fumble in Okanagan‘s end zone for its only major late in the fourth quarter.
With the win, the Sun improved to 5-0 against the Broncos since Kamloops returned to the BCFC in 2008, including outscoring Kamloops 104-24 in two meetings last season.
So what to make of this outcome - was Kamloops that good or Okanagan that bad?
"Definitely a combination," McCall said. "A lot of credit goes to Kamloops, they‘ve worked really hard. But it wasn‘t our best night. I hate to be negative, that‘s not my style, but you gotta also draw attention to these things.
"The guys got the message, I think. We watched film (on Sunday) and analyzed it and gave everybody crap for it, and now we‘re ready to move on and get it together for this weekend."

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