By Joel Gasson

Riders’ kicking competition heating up

Feb 3, 2015 | 4:00 PM

The Riders plan on bringing plenty of legs to Saskatoon for training camp in June.

After days of speculation and waiting, the Green and White officially signed former Lions and Eskimos kicker Hugh O’Neill on Tuesday.

There was delay in signing O’Neill as it’s believed he was on a mountain in Thailand as part of a vacation.

“We followed Hugh back when he came out of the draft. There was a couple of different times we tried to get him and we weren’t able to,” said vice-president and general manager Brendan Taman.

What the Riders like about O’Neill is his ability to kick field goals, kick-offs and punt. Last season, the team was fairly limited in their kicking options with Josh Bartel who was only capable of punting for the team.

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Now, with O’Neill and Chris Milo both under contract, along with American Quinn Sharp, they have at least three kickers who will be at training camp who are capable to various degrees of doing all three kicking duties.

“When you go back to the Edmonton game near in the year when Chris got nicked, we literally did not have a field goal kicker on the roster. If that game meant a lot, we were in hugh trouble. We weren’t going to go down that road again,” said Taman.

Sharp does appear to be in for a tough fight to land a starting job with Taman suggesting they plan on going Canadian with their kickers.

Neither Milo nor O’Neill had spectacular years in 2014 as both of them converted on fewer than 80 per cent of their field goal attempts.

“Everybody is paid to do their jobs and when we get to camp they’ll have competition like everybody else and we expect them to be on top of their game,” said Taman.

Like the rest of the team, Taman feels that the kicking definitely struggled at times in 2014. Most notably, kick-offs and punts not being where they were supposed to be didn’t do the cover units any favours.

It does appear that Bartel won’t be back with the team in 2015 as he’s informed them that he wouldn’t be able to commit until May due to some other things going on. Once Bartel told the team that, the decision was made to go in another direction.

Another player the Riders could be bringing to camp is University of Calgary Dino’s kicker Johnny Mark. The Riders drafted Mark last season and he was eventually released and returned to the CIS. Taman is working on bringing Mark to camp as the team does hold his rights until Feb. 10.

News and Notes

The Riders also signed defensive back Woodny Turenne to a contract extension on Tuesday. Taman feels that Turenne is someone who could come to camp and compete for a starting job. Turenne will be entering his fifth season with the Riders.

Recently Taman suggested he would be busy when free agency opens next week. Now, with the number of bigger names signing in the last few days that might not be the case. There are still a few players the team is keeping their eye on.

The team continues to work with the rest of their remaining pending free agents. Taman hopes to have maybe a couple more signatures on paper before then. However, he believes if that doesn’t happen by weeks end those players will test free agency.

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