Af2 players always wary of roster blitz

Arena football is fast moving. We know this because of an apparent contractual stipulation that the words “arena football” and “fast moving” must always appear together in the same sentence in all descriptions and accounts of the game.

But it’s true. It’s a pinwheel in a hurricane.

And that’s just the roster churn. We’re told the game moves at a pretty good clip, too.

Spokane gets its indoctrination Thursday night into the world of Mac and Jack, rebound nets and two-way players when the Spokane Shock makes its af2 debut at the Arena against the Stockton Lightning. You may want to get there early so as not to miss the first ball in the stands or the first touchdown.

Or the first transaction.

We kid. Surely there doesn’t figure to be a roster move until, oh, Friday.

Kidding again. Maybe.

This is not to say that the paying customers – let’s call them the Shock Wave, shall we? – won’t get a chance to develop affections for a favorite, whether it’s a big-play type like Antwone Savage or a local like Raul Vijil. They will. Lineups won’t be subject to wholesale change on a whim.

But it’s also true that one subtext for af2 players is to stay prepared – or stay packed.

“This is about the sixth place I’ve lived in three years,” reported Shock defensive specialist Rob Keefe. “You’re on your toes every week.”

Take one week – heck, one day – last season when Keefe learned he’d been traded from Macon to South Georgia, where current Shock head coach Chris Siegfried was in charge.

“Two hours later I was in a car driving (to Albany),” he recalled, “and that afternoon I was practicing with them. They were struggling and I beat a man out for a spot.”

A few weeks later, his car was pointed toward Manchester, N.H. – he had hooked on with the af2 team there after he and three other players had quit South Georgia when it fired Siegfried 10 games into the season.

Sometimes your best option is a full tank of gas.

This is an interesting bud in our bouquet of mostly professional sports here. Like the baseball and hockey teams in town, the Shock plays in what Siegfried acknowledges is a “developmental league.” But the Indians’ roster is managed by a major league parent club that prefers not to fiddle with rosters. The Chiefs can make trades, but often as not it’s swapping a bantam draft pick for a third-liner, or surrendering a veteran to bet on a youngster’s promise.

But af2 teams have an ever-changing talent pool of players who might become available upon getting cut from NFL minicamps or CFL teams or the original Arena league, to say nothing of good af2 players who may just need a better fit.

And teams aren’t reluctant to make changes because, “We owe it to our ownership and our fans to put the best product on the field we can,” Siegfried said.

“Ideally, we don’t want to make any roster moves. If a guy is performing, he’s going to stay in the thick of things – but the worst thing a guy can have is complacency. A lot of guys get the misunderstanding that they’re trying to beat out the guy on the team with them, when in reality they’re beating out anybody we have access to.”

Thus, the league’s maze of lists to monitor the come and go – re-assignment, long- and short-term injured reserve, recallable re-assignment, other league exempt, refused to report, league suspension. And then there’s the “two-day waiver” – when free agents can come in for a run at a roster spot, which is something of a weekly audition.

“And if it’s a guy who just got cut from an NFL camp and he can definitely help, it’s a handshake and a smile and you can be gone,” Keefe said.

Of course, winning tends to stanch that flow. And no one has a better grip on that than Siegfried himself.

In his first three years as an af2 coach, he steered teams to the playoffs. But injuries, a schedule front-loaded with top teams and some bizarre issues within the South Georgia organization – he was doing the team’s laundry at one point, and practicing outdoors on an unmowed field – doomed him to that midseason pink slip.

“I’m not bitter about it,” he insisted. “The one fortunate thing is it led me to Spokane and a great situation here. I didn’t really want to move 3,000 miles, but I’m really glad I did.

“But it can be tough, the constant moving, and it’s not as hard on me as it is on my wife and kids. That’s why I’m going to work as hard as I can to make it work here. I need it to work. I don’t have a backup plan.”

And the season starts Thursday, so he has to move fast.