Harrah Says Rams Are Now Standing Together
The Rams, presumed to be a leaky board on the union ship, emerged from an emotional meeting of players Tuesday and dispelled rumors that the team was ready to return to today’s practice en masse.
“What we do we’ll do as a unit,” Rams guard Dennis Harrah said. “There will be no more players trickling in. The trickling is over.”
Harrah was referring to 11 Ram players who have already crossed picket lines and returned to the team.
By league mandate, all players who want to get paid for next week’s game must report to practice today by 10 a.m. (PDT).
Tuesday’s meeting in Anaheim, which lasted nearly three hours, was arranged by team representative Carl Ekern and attended by 32 out of 46 available players.
“We will remain solid, for whatever the duration,” Ekern said.
Also present were union Vice President Brian Holloway and George Martin, player representative for the New York Giants.
Holloway and Martin were asked to help clarify the issues for some of the union’s so-called shaky teams, the Rams included. Holloway also addressed the Raiders on Tuesday and will speak with the San Diego Chargers today.
“I don’t call any of these teams crisis teams,” Holloway said. “We consider them teams that can be helped the most by getting them as much information, as much exposure. . . . Those are the teams that are going to be visited first.”
The 14 players who missed the meeting included such stars as Eric Dickerson and Henry Ellard, but Ekern said many of the players were out of town and will be apprised of Tuesday’s events by phone.
Ekern and Harrah are convinced there will be no more defections.
“We’ve had a little bit of dissension, and one thing we have done was pull together real tight here,” said Harrah, a team captain and 12-year veteran. “This meeting brought us very close together. We have not been before. I feel as close now as I’ve ever been in this strike situation.”
Where the Rams really a team on the edge of coming in?
“We were on the edge of uncertainty,” he said. “But this meeting here really fired some people up, some people expressed themselves very vividly. I feel real good about the L.A. Rams right now, I hate to say that I didn’t before. When a person raised his hand, we said he had to mean it. There’s no lying to anyone here anymore. Nobody’s going to say one thing and do another. We were a little shaky here in certain areas, and I don’t feel we are now.”
Harrah said he accepts some of the blame for not keeping the team together.
“I’ve been silent too long I think,” he said. “We are a unit, and I want to keep this team as a unit.”
Ekern, weary-eyed after returning from an all-night meeting of player representatives in Chicago, said the session with his team was imperative.
“It was absolutely necessary that I got together and talked to the team,” Ekern said.
Ekern couldn’t say how much longer the strike would last but said the fact that the two sides are negotiating is encouraging.
He said the players won’t return until a new collective bargaining agreement has been signed, but he added that it could be done a lot quicker than some people might think.
“It might take long in terms of hours and days,” Ekern said. “But they could hammer out an agreement and get it resolved.”
Could it happen this week?
“It’s not beyond the realm of possibility,” he said.
Ram Notes
The Rams on Tuesday waived the following non-union players: quarterback Bob Frasco, guard James Leible, wide receiver Ricky Martin and punter John Misko. The team signed linebacker Kyle Borland and wide receiver Phillip Smith. . . . A steady trickle of Ram ticket-holders returned to Anaheim Stadium Tuesday for refunds. The club estimated that 2,500 ticket-holders hurried to beat Tuesday’s 5 p.m. reimbursement deadline, many of them requesting refunds rather than credit toward next season’s purchases.
