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“It dawned on me then I was being evaluated and this isn’t a done deal by any means. I’ve got to show them I can play.”

A couple weeks later he got a call from the Lions’ vice-president of player personnel, Neil McEvoy, inviting him to the team’s main camp. Turns out the kid could play.

Lulay thought of that moment Thursday as he announced his retirement; thought about that moment and so many more.

In 10 years with the Leos, he had experienced dizzying highs and paralyzing lows; winning a Grey Cup in his adopted home, while coming back from injuries no sane man would endure. And now it’s over. Just like that.

The game has given him equal measures of joy and pain over the years but also left him with so much. Now this singular man turns to a less complicated life with wife Kim and his three beautiful daughters, pondering the next chapter while deeply appreciative of everything that came before.

“I feel extremely blessed to have landed in Vancouver,” he said.

Right back at you.

“You talk about a warrior in sports, Travis is the definition of that in my mind,” the retired Buono said from his home in the Phoenix area. “It’s how he reacted to the injuries, the setbacks and the disappointments. He always overcame it. Time after time after time he got up and fought again.”

And now?

“The nice thing is he called it,” Buono said. “No one called it for him.”

Photo by NICK PROCAYLO / PNG

And that is Lulay’s legacy. His story isn’t always happy and if you saw him at his peak in 2011 you understand injuries robbed this market of a transcendent talent.