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Michael Rhode, The Daily News
Doug Hocking's 12-year Canadian Football League career can be surmised by one word - intense. The new defensive line boss for the Vancouver Island Raiders admits he doesn't know how to coach any other way. Hocking, who played linebacker for eight years with the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and four seasons with the B.C. Lions, winning a Grey Cup ring in 1994, has landed in Nanaimo for a new coaching stint with the Raiders. The team held its first practice session Sunday at their Cassidy training facility. Hocking, who held a similar position with the Prairie Football Conference Winnipeg Rifles last season, was front and centre, wasting little time in getting his point across to the players that practice time is work time. "I only know one way to coach because it's the way that I played," said Hocking, 36. "To be attentive and be accountable for what we're doing. To make people accountable, you have to realize what we are as an organization and what we're trying to accomplish there. "I didn't know how to come out (at the first practice), to be honest. I didn't know if I'd come out and be hard-nosed or come out and try and get along with everybody. The bottom line was to come out and be myself and do things the only way I know how. Everything else should take care of itself from there." It's that intensity that Raiders' head coach Matt 'Snoop' Blokker wanted to add to the team mix. "He's a leader. He was as a player. He's got great leadership skills and he's demanding. He (Hocking) expects these guys to play at a certain level and we're seeing that out of him already. That's contagious within the players and the rest of the coaching staff." Hocking retired after the 2002 season with the Bombers and immediately joined the Winnipeg Riles junior football coaching staff, first as a linebackers' coach then the defensive line. And he's always seemed to have the coaching 'bug'. When he was with the Lions, he'd go and help coach his old junior team. As a junior player, he coached with his former midget squad. No matter the level he's played at, Hocking has returned to lend his expertise. "When I retired, my passion wasn't to play anymore, my passion was to teach it," he said. "I think those 12 years I experienced as a player was a big thing but I believe now that those 12 years were just spent playing so I'd be a better teacher. I really believe this is where my fit is as far as being able to teach the game." How the Surrey Ram junior returned to the West Coast for a coaching stint came by word of mouth. Hocking's father, who lives in Surrey and is involved with the Surrey Minor Football Association, created a dialogue with Raiders' owner Hadi Abassi and things grew from there. Hocking was up for a job as technical director for Football Manitoba but it didn't pan out. He looked at the Raiders' opportunity but didn't jump at it without making sure it was the right move. There was always that draw to come home. Hocking grew up in Surrey, his wife Shannon was raised in nearby White Rock, but Hocking said that family wasn't going to be the sole reason to return. And Nanaimo is no stranger to Hocking. His mom, now residing in Port Alice, lived in Nanaimo for a few years. "I didn't want to come out just for the sake of family," said Hocking. "I wanted everything to be right for myself and my wife. I wanted to come out and visit and really be sold on the team," said Hocking. "They're a second-year team. They faced a lot of adversity last year and still finished with an 8-2 record. When I got out here I was accepted as part of the family within the organization. That was a really big part for myself." Cup Fever His tenure with the Blue Bombers was twice as long as it was with the Lions, but his heart will forever be with the Leos, the team that first gave him a shot at playing professionally. Oh, and there was that historic Lions' victory over the Baltimore Stallions in the 1994 Grey Cup game at B.C. Place Stadium that was pretty memorable too. At the time, the media hyped the game as an 'Us versus Them' scenario. The Lions, with a mixed of Canadian and import players against an all-American Baltimore squad, who through U.S. Labour Laws weren't required to follow the CFL's Canadian content guidelines. "It was Canada against the U.S.," Hocking said. "It was us against them. Coach (Dave) Ritchie really knows how to motivate a team and realized this was the best way. They (Baltimore) had different rules than us, they were allowed to play all American players. He knew how to motivate each player individually, as a Canadian and an American within our team to want to be 'Us against Them'. We really fed off that." Blokker, who hadn't met Hocking until recently, jumped at the chance of adding Hocking to the coaching staff. Blokker says through Hocking's playing and coaching experience, he'll bring the most out of the players. "When you have quite a few good players, he adds that depth and it was that depth we were lacking on our coaching staff by numbers," said Blokker. "He's a guy that demands respect and with respect comes control. He's a another coach in there that can fully be in control of our players. "Besides what he did as a player, for our staff, he's another one of those perfect keys that fits in, how he works with his players, and more so, how he works with all of us other coaches."
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Ravens
