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“It meant a lot,” says the big man, the emotion still evident in his voice. “That was one of the hardest days of my life and knowing I had to fly to Calgary the next day for the funeral — that’s something I’ll never forget.”

There, try putting moments like on the back of a football card.

“You know there comes a time when the message you’re trying to send has to be carried by the players and you have to have a certain status in the locker-room to be able to do that,” says Reinebold.

“That status is earned and it has to be earned over time by the way you train, the way you practise and the way you play. Rolly is a guy who’s earned that status in our locker-room.”

That and a whole lot more.

Lumbala is now wrapping up his 11th season with the Lions and if you were just going by his stats line, you’d wonder how he’s made it this far.

His biggest season carrying the ball was in 2016 when he amassed, if that’s the right term, 46 yards. His biggest receiving year came two years earlier when he caught 14 passes for 125 yards.

This year, he has two carries for three yards and two catches for seven yards. In last weekend’s win over Edmonton, Lumbala caught a five-yard pass. It was his longest gain of the CFL season.

So it’s a good thing Lumbala is that player who — all together now — does things that don’t show up on the stat sheet but surfaces on special teams and the running game where he blocks like a madman.

“True respect is earned and it takes time,” says Reinebold. “You don’t win respect by giving great effort one game or one month or one season. You do it over the course of a career. The players all know who those guys are and they know Rolly.”