Johany Jutras/CFL.ca
Forty-six years in, Dwayne Mandrusiak has mastered the post-game routine when his team is on the road.
The long (long, long)-time Edmonton Eskimos’ equipment manager slides between players in various states of undress, carting loads of discarded uniforms from their temporary home back to a delivery truck, destined for the airport. At five-foot-five, he works quietly and inconspicuously, for the most part, unless his race against the clock to empty out said room tightens up. And if you know him well enough, he’ll take a quick break to say hello, call you friend and extend a hand.
Last Friday in Hamilton, with the Eskimos soaking in their last-minute win over the Tiger-Cats, Mandrusiak was working quickly through a very happy locker room. The handshake was replaced by a fist bump, which showed off one of his eleven Grey Cup rings.
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Mandrusiak during a game with CFL Commissioner Randy Ambrosie (Esks.com)
In these 46 seasons, Mandrusiak has seen it all, from the highs of a five-in-a-row dynasty to the lows of a four-win season. He’s seen players become family and watched that family sometimes come to blows through long campaigns. He’s made tweaks to cleats in cold games, and tutored players from the deep southern US on the art of playing in a -25C day in November, all while somehow wearing shorts to work, even on those freezing cold days.
This week at home against the BC Lions, Mandrusiak will work his 1,000th game. He’s honoured, he says, but a little squirmish about the attention it’s bringing. There are many ways that Mandrusiak has come to embody what the Eskimos strive to be about, but his humility tops the list. He’ll be feted in Edmonton on Friday with a video tribute and there will no doubt be stories written and TV channels clamouring to put the spotlight on him. That night in Hamilton, he was appreciative of the recognition, but asked if he could not be interviewed.
“He once said that he started at the bottom and he liked it so much that he decided to stay there. It’s a great quote,” former Esks QB Matt Dunigan says of Mandrusiak. “A real human and a real pro you identify with in a hurry; Dwayne’s that guy.”
Mandrusiak came to the Eskimos in 1971 when he was 14, working as an assistant for free for his first two years with the team. Since then, he’s become so much more than the guy that has the locker room pristinely perfect on game days. He’s a confidant, a golf partner, a co-conspirator to and victim of practical jokes. To some players he’s a father figure and to everyone else he crosses paths with he’s the gatekeeper of the franchise and the personification of the sign that hangs above a door outside the locker room: Once an Eskimo, always an Eskimo.
He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 2012, but you’d never know it if you saw him working away week after week, season after season.
“He’s family,” Mike Reilly says, as Mandrusiak zips past him, popping in and out of the room.
“Him and his wife came out to Hawaii for Emily and mine’s wedding (in 2015). That’s the type of relationship I’ve had with him. He’s gone through some trials and tribulations. He’s battled through them and over the course of five years, life happens, man.
“There’ve been some challenging things that have come up in my personal life, just with health of family members and things like that and he’s the guy I go disclose it to. He’s there, he obviously does his job as the equipment guy extremely well but more than that he’s part of the fabric of the Edmonton Eskimos. Everything he does, he does for the good of the team, for the good of the players. He takes great care of us.”
“You think of once an Eskimo, always an Eskimo, look no further than that man.”
Mike Reilly on Dwayne Mandrusiak
Mandrusiak fixes a players helmet on the sidelines at Commonwealth Stadium (Esks.com)
A football team is such a big mix of wide-ranging personalities. They all come out in the locker room and that’s where Mandrusiak is king.
“They let you know right off the bat: This guy has been here longer than anybody else. You respect anybody, you respect Pops because that’s where it starts, explains Esks fullback Calvin McCarty, who, in his 11th season is the team’s longest-tenured player. Like many other players on the team, he simply calls Mandrusiak Pops, or Dad.
“Everything starts in the locker room, ends in the locker room,” he says. “The game starts in the locker room, ends in the locker room. Practice starts in the locker room, ends in the locker room,” he says. “We respect the locker room. It’s our house. But at the end of the day it’s Dad’s house. Keep it clean, respect each other.”
Second-year Esks head coach Jason Maas, who spent nine seasons in Edmonton as a player, winning two Grey Cups, lays down one simple rule for his players on the first team meeting of training camp.
“You don’t mess with Dwayne. That’s perfectly clear,” he says. “The one guy you don’t mess with in Edmonton or in our locker room is Dwayne Mandrusiak. You respect him like no other. If you take that and treat everyone else like Dwayne, we’ll never have a problem. That’s how much he means to us.”
“He’s an icon in that organization,’’ adds Argos QB Ricky Ray, who spent the first nine years of his CFL career with the Eskimos. “He’s been around for so many years and been a part of so many different teams and championships. You’ve got guys that are superstars that have played there and Dwayne is no different than those guys. He’s been a part of all those championships.
“When (Commonwealth) used to be a grass field we felt like we had the advantage of Dwayne’s knowledge. When we went on the road, when it was a cold game, you knew he was going to have the right equipment for you. You just had a lot of trust that with his experience he’d kind of seen everything and tried everything. It felt like he was always very well prepared.”
When his work with TSN takes him to Edmonton, Dunigan thinks back to his rookie year with the Eskimos in 1983 and how Mandrusiak lorded over fresh socks and only gave them to players that he said did things the right way. It was a small lesson in his career and for many others after him about being the right kind of pro player. Today, he looks at the Eskimos’ wall of honour and sees a name missing.
“The glue that’s kept the B.O.N.E. (Brotherhood Of Nasty Eskimos) together for the last 46 years. The common denominator has been Dwayne Mandrusiak. That’s saying a lot, because the wall of honour there at Commonwealth is pretty overwhelming,” he says. The team currently only chooses former players for the wall.
“I bet you to a man — and I played with 19 of those guys, or have been associated with 19 of those guys on that wall — I bet not one of them would be out of sorts if Dwayne’s name was up next to them. And he should be, as far as I’m concerned. He should be on that wall of honour. I think it’s a silly requirement because this guy arguably was more important than any one of those players to the organization over the last 46 years.”
Mandrusiak poses with one of his 11 Grey Cup victories in 2003 (Esks.com)
When the Eskimos were punted out of Commonwealth Stadium for their training camp in 2015 due to Edmonton hosting FIFA Women’s World Cup games, the team relocated to Spruce Grove, Alberta for the month of June. Whether he was unhappy with the temporary washing machines in Spruce Grove or just a creature of habit, Mandrusiak would take his players’ dirty practice uniforms all the way back to Commonwealth overnight, clean them, dry them and have them back for the players when they got on the field the next morning. It was an hour of driving done when everyone else was sleeping, but he wanted the best for his players.
“He’s thoughtful, caring, (an incredible) attention to detail and you have to be conscientious and understanding of what the players are going through,” Dunigan says.
“The guy’s seen and done it all. Then to associate it with 11 Grey Cups, if you’re not tapping into that source, if you’re not understanding what he’s all about and you’re in that green and gold uniform, then you don’t deserve to be an Edmonton Eskimo. You don’t get it.
“If you get Dwayne and you get the Edmonton Eskimo football club, you get what being a professional is all about.”
“I was watching the 1987 Grey Cup, where Edmonton played Toronto in Vancouver, it was on TV a couple weeks ago,” Reilly recalls. “And Dwayne was on the sidelines wearing short-shorts back then and he’s on the sidelines wearing short-shorts now.
“He’s gone through so many generations of Edmonton Eskimo teams. I’m astounded when anyone does something for a long period of time in general but with professional football players, there are 60-plus different personalities in our locker room. To be doing that for 1,000-plus games, I can’t even imagine that. It’s an incredible level of commitment. You think of once an Eskimo, always an Eskimo, look no further than that man.”
