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But if he wasn’t going to help the assembled scribes write that story, there is still enough intrigue lingering around Hervey’s dismissal 15 months ago to keep it alive for a couple more days.

“I don’t have to play, which is great,” he said. “We’re pushing to find out who we are as a team. This is another step.”

And maybe another step toward closure for Hervey, although that process is far from complete.

Photo by Rick MacWilliam / 00007961b

In a storied career that spanned the better part of two decades, Hervey won two Grey Cups as one of the best players in Eskimos history, before working his way up from area scout to head scout to GM, where the Esks won another Cup in 2015 under his stewardship.

Then he was gone after another season. Throw in some real hostility at the time of his ouster and a Lions roster which now features seven former Eskimos, and you’ve still got the makings of a fairly compelling yarn.

Hervey was fired two months before the start of training camp last year, which was an interesting bit of timing. But the circumstances around his discharge were equally curious.

As always, the details are murky. At the time, Eskimos president Len Rhodes said the problems with Hervey were twofold. One, they couldn’t agree to the terms of a contract extension and two, there were philosophical differences.

Those differences arose largely out of the Eskimos’ contrary media policy, which included closing the locker room to the fourth estate after practice and head coach Jason Maas refusing to wear a live game mike for TSN as part of a league-wide initiative.