CB Tad Kornegay was released by the Riders on Wednesday. (photo couresty of riderville.com)

(Written by Marc Smith)

The Saskatchewan Roughriders were back on the practice field on Wednesday afternoon, five days after being embarrassed by the Hamilton Tiger-Cats for their third straight loss to start the 2011 season.  

 

None of the talk however focused on the Green & White’s 0-3 start, instead everyone’s attention was on news that broke late Tuesday night on Twitter that cornerback Tad Kornegay had been placed on waivers.

 

“You’ve got to make decisions like this sometimes and it’s not fun, but it’s the way we’ve got to get things turned around and hopefully it will work,” said general manager Brendan Taman during his meeting with the media to explain the move.

 

Kornegay was officially released later on Wednesday afternoon after no trade offers materialized.  He’s now free to sign with any team in the league.

 

Taman says this wasn’t about sending a message to the team that has been struggling -- to say the least -- through the first three games, “I don’t believe in doing that, this is just a situation where he was hurt in camp and didn’t really get settled into our system and never sensed that he fit in and I think he’d say the same thing and we reached a point where it wasn’t going to work going forward.

 

“This was a combination of a business and football decision.  It’s a situation athletically where we wanted to make a change in the secondary a little bit and he wasn’t the cheapest player we had.”

 

If it wasn’t meant to be a message to the players, some certainly took it that way.  Defensive end Luc Mullinder gave a passionate speech to the team before the start of practice.

 

He explains his message to the team, “Business and emotions can’t mix in this game,” said Mullinder.  “We have to realize that this is a business and we’re here to beat Montreal in Week Four, we’re not here to sulk and complain because no one else is going to do it for us.”

 

Kornegay was a popular player with the fans and in the locker room as well as a vocal leader and Mullinder says it’s now on the team to step up with him gone, “The rest of the guys got to find it in us to come around and collectively do what Tad did for us.”

 

There has been plenty of hostility in Rider Nation following the slow start to the season, Mullinder says it hasn’t fallen of deaf ears, “I’m tired of it.  I’m tired of you guys (media) asking us questions that are negative, I’m tired of the fans saying negative things, and the good thing about it is we’re tired of it, do something about it.  I’m not the only one that feels tired of it, I’m tired of losing and we’ve got to do something about it because no one is going to feel sorry for us.” 

 

Mullinder added that that they know this is a make or break game for them, “Right now we’re on the fence and we can fall off into one side or the other side and if we fall off on to this left side here, we’re going to get left by the rest of the league and it’s now or never.

 

“We’ve got to come together, that’s all it’s about.  We’ve got to realize that the guys in the middle of that field today at the start of practice, it’s us and when it comes down to it, it’s just and we’ve got to realize that and we’ve got to play with each other.”

 

The Riders will continue to work on improving when they hit the practice field again on Thursday.  They head to Montreal for their second and final meeting of the season with the Grey Cup champions on Sunday.  Kickoff is at 5pm.