Monday morning will mark Andrew Harris' first on field activity as a Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back.

Harris, however, felt something special last Wednesday morning in a Mississauga, Ont., warehouse. That's where he slipped on the team's new royal blue uniform for a TSN video shoot.

“Monday's gonna be cool, but (Wednesday) for me was like, wearing the colours and even hearing the guys saying how right that looks and how sweet that looks ... it's special to me. It's important to me,” Harris said last week in Toronto.

“I see all these guys from the States, and to them, they're playing football. I'm playing for my hometown now, and I'm a winner. And there's a lot of pride that goes into that. So for me it's much more than just football.”

Harris, and slotbacks Weston Dressler and Ryan Smith, are the ones everyone will be watching during the team's three day offensive mini-camp at Investors Group Field. Those three free agent signees are likely to be quarterback Drew Willy's primary targets this season, so they will use this week to start building a bond in Paul LaPolice's offence.

“It's an opportunity to learn together, to grow together,” Harris said. “A lot of vets don't like these mini-camps, but they're great.”

Harris has received plenty of feedback from Bomber fans about his hometown team since signing in February. Some of it has been good. Some of it has been not so good.

“Now that I'm back in Winnipeg,” Harris said, “everyone's like, 'I'm gonna watch the Bombers again' or 'I don't watch the CFL' or 'The Bombers suck.' I'm like, we're not gonna suck. We're a different team. That was the past.

“And I don't know if that's in the locker-room. I don't know if guys are just expecting to lose. I don't know. But from what I've heard and seen in the city, it's not a positive outlook on the Bombers. My goal is to change that and to change that culture and get that city excited again. It's going to be a tough challenge, but we have a solid group of guys that are winners and work hard. It's attainable, for sure.”

It's clear Harris wants to be a leader. One way he hopes to help change the culture of losing in Winnipeg is by making sure the team is a tight knit group. Harris, however, said he first needs to earn his teammates' trust.

“Any successful team I've been on, whether it's high school, junior or CFL, we've had a good group of guys that are really tight, a good brotherhood and a family atmosphere,” Harris said. “That's the most important thing in success of a football team. I want to get these guys over to my house, having barbecues. I want to start bonding right away.

“It's a relatively new group ... so everyone's going to kinda be feeling everyone out, and I really want to just go full head of steam and get us together, get us doing things together as a team and really getting that trust factor built up.”

And there will be no period of adjustment, either. Harris said the winning will begin right away or they'll do whatever they have to do to figure it out.

“I'm not going to take losing lightly,” he said. “There's going to be a reason why. There's going to be people who are held accountable for it, and we gotta fix it. I'm not gonna come out of the gate 0-5 and here we go again. No. We gotta fix that from game one, and that's my mindset going in.”

kpenton@postmedia.com

twitter.com/PentonKirk

MINI-CAMP ROSTER

QUARTERBACKS

5 Drew Willy

6 Dominique Davis

15 Matt Nichols

18 Bryan Bennett

RUNNING BACKS

24 Pascal Lochard*

33 Andrew Harris*

FULLBACKS

36 Tim Cronk*

37 Chris Normand*

RECEIVERS

0 Justin Veltung

4 Darvin Adams

7 Weston Dressler

12 Ryan Smith

14 Quincy McDuffie

19 Jerrel Jernigan

70 Ricky Collins

72 Larry Pinkard

73 Solomon Patton

80 Jhomo Gordon

81 Kris Bastien*

82 Ernest Smith

83 Julian Feoli-Gudino*

84 Kevin Cone

86 Addison Richards*

87 Rory Kohlert*

88 Spencer Davis

89 Julian Talley

OFFENSIVE LINEMEN

53 Paddy Neufeld*

59 Jace Daniels

60 Travis Bond

61 Matthias Goossen*

62 Lawrence Martin

64 Jemarkus Hardrick

66 Stanley Bryant

67 Jeff Keeping*

68 Manase Foketi

69 Sukh Chungh*

* Canadian

SCHEDULE

at Investors Group Field

(public welcome)

Monday

10 a.m. to 11 a.m.

1:30 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Tuesday

10:15 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.

12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Wednesday

10 a.m. to 11 a.m.