Here's the transcript of Rider coach Ken Miller's media scrum following Sunday's workout at Mosaic Stadium..

 

LEADER POST: Safey Scott Gordon wasn't out here today??

 

MILLER: He's still nursing that knee that he hurt in the Calgary game. It's a lot better than it has been, but I don't know if it's going to be good enough for him to go (this week at Edmonton).

 

LEADER POST: You had Sebastian Clovis playing safety.

 Where's Tristan Clovis?

 

MILLER: Tristan is away on personal business at the moment. He should be here tomorrow. Sebastian would fill in in that situation in a fail-safe opportunity.

 

LEADER POST: John Chick was working out a bit. Should we get excited about that?

 

MILLER: The short answer is no. I think he's 3 weeks or 4 weeks away yet.

 

CJME: D.J. Flick is out here as well .. what's the prognosis?

 

MILLER: I was just talking with (trainer) Ivan Gutfriend today and D.J. has worked so hard to rehabilitate himself.

 We expect that he should be able to practice in the next couple of weeks. You saw him running a little bit, but he's not at practice speed yet. In two weeks or so he'll be able to.

 

CJME: Talk about this team coming back after a loss and there's been no finger-pointing which happens on other teams...

 

MILLER: That is just so important and today I complimented them on how they worked today. We had guys in the weight-room early, we had guys in the film room early and we had guys working on their pass-rush in between drills on

their own.   We have players coaching each other and we

have great communication. They're working hard to get better.

 

CJME: Is the hunger as strong as last year to get to the top of the mountain?

 

MILLER: Absolutely. They have a hunger that food isn't gonna take care of.

 

CJME: There are a lot of teams that let details slide when they win a championship. How nice is it that that isn't happening here?

 

MILLER: It's really nice but from the very first day we said that winning the Grey Cup last year was more of a liability than an asset. Because a lot of teams feel when they win it that they've arrived and have reached a level of success. For us, we are not going to take that approach. We said we're going back to square one with the basics and the players have bought into that.

 

CJME: Do you have goals for the 'thirds' of the season?

 

MILLER: Really it's game by game but in the big picture I do look at the season in thirds and we do want to be

successful in each third.   We put ourselves behind a bit

in this middle third but we have a chance on Thursday at Edmonton to recoup that. The second third is really a slugfest. Everyone gets into a situation with injuries and it's a test of toughness in this middle third.