Last week, Mike McNamara texted his friend since childhood that he would see him on Friday, the opening night of the first Mann Cup final ever played on Six Nations land.
"Friends off," came Ryan Dilks' reply.
And McNamara understood this terse reminder of the elite athletes' code. There's a time to reap and a time to sow and a time to be friends and a time to be rivals.
Yes the two 1990-born defencemen had grown up together on Hamilton minor lacrosse teams, had played junior B together in their hometown, spent the rest of their junior careers as teammates for Six Nations Arrows and have each helped coach Hamilton Bengals minor teams in the past couple of years. And they cross paths in the National Lacrosse League every winter.
But they were about to step onto the ancient, spiritual stage that is the best-of-seven final involving the top two Canadian senior teams in The Creators Game, a stage that has featured well over a century of marquee legends with names such as Isaacs and Bionda and Powless and Grant and Tavares and Tait.
McNamara is with the Six Nations Chiefs and Dilks plays for the Victoria Shamrocks in the rematch of last year's national senior boxla final, won by the visiting Chiefs in, appropriately, six. After the Shamrocks' double-overtime win Friday — when they held the home team to one goal over a 43-minute stretch — this potentially spectacular series is locked at one each, with Game 3 set for Monday night at the Iroquois Lacrosse Arena.
So, there will be time to be friends again next week but not this one.
"We're real good buddies and have been since we met playing lacrosse in Hamilton when we were eight or so," says McNamara.
"The Chiefs were kind of hoping to get him this year, but he wanted to experience the West Coast lifestyle. Can you blame him?"
Dilks, who plays for Edmonton in the pro National Lacrosse League, calls McNamara (of the NLL Colorado Mammoth) "a real competitive guy and a helluva player. We've been playing against each other for a while. He probably won't mention that I beat him in 1-on-1 basketball.
"It's 'friends off' for the Mann Cup but I do catch his eye when we're running up the floor."
This has been a huge summer for Six Nations and the ILA, which was built specifically for lacrosse and has no ice plan. It is the home to about seven different junior, senior and pro lacrosse teams. In late August, the Junior A Arrows won the Minto Cup for their national championship and the Rebels won their fourth straight Founders Cup as national Junior B champions. The Six Nations Rivermen also made it to the National Senior B final, but were defeated in the Presidents Cup by Onondaga.
With increased playing opportunities because of the rise of the professional outdoor game, and a second winter pro indoor league, there is a lot of cross-pollination at the upper levels of the game. All of the Chiefs' players, for instance, have played in the NLL as have about half of the Shamrocks.
That, says Dilks, makes the Chiefs a worrisome offensive force so, for his team, it has to always be defence first: hence the long Six Nations goal drought in Game 2.
After last year's title, their first since they won three in a row in the mid-90s, and this year beating Peterborough in a playoff series (seven games) for the first time in 18 years, the Chiefs are facing great expectations. The community has never held the junior and senior titles in the same year, although the Arrows kick-started this quarter-century of the return of the game to its ancient roots — the Iroquois invented baggataway, which in turn became lacrosse — when they won their first Minto Cup in 1992, with some players graduating to the Chiefs for the Mann title four years later.
"The crowds have been growing all year and we're getting about 2,000 now," McNamara says. "It's not so much that there's pressure on you as that you want to play for the community.
"Just to host the Mann, and get the trophy for Six Nations. You want it for the fans, you want it for the elders. You can feel the community behind us. It's huge."
Dilks thoroughly understands that. He played junior with McNamara on the reserve "and it's been a bit weird coming back, seeing so many friends on and off the floor. It's a great arena, and it's always great to play there.
"Everyone is aware that they've won pretty much everything this year. But hopefully we can end that this week."
smilton@thespec.com
905-526-3268
