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It starts at the top with Braley’s incessant dithering over the sale of the team. It’s in the board room where president Dennis Skulsky is here on a part-time basis. It’s in the general manager’s office where Buono is likely in his last year and goes right down to the field where Buono is also coaching in what’s likely his last year.

All that incertitude has now found its way onto the field. I mean, how do you build trust and confidence in a team’s direction when the franchise’s key positions are manned by lame ducks? How do you sell your vision to the players and the fans when everyone is aware you’ve got one foot out the door.

Photo by DARRYL DYCK / THE CANADIAN PRESS

The Lions have a number of problems, but they can’t begin to address them until they put an end to this organizational ambiguity. I have the utmost respect for Buono and he’s fully deserving of every accolade he’s earned in an incredible career. But he also knows how this works. This isn’t about his 272 career wins or the five Grey Cups as a coach or the Halls of Fame to which he belongs. This is about 2017 and this franchise’s future.

• That said, it’s interesting to monitor the reaction to the Lions’ travails this season. People are frustrated. They’re angry. They’re exasperated. But they’re not indifferent and that says something. There’s still a connection to this team in this province and while that relationship has been strained this season, it still exists. It will be hard to win those fans back. It would be almost impossible if they stopped caring.

• Wouldn’t get too excited over the Whitecaps’ loss in New Yorkover the weekend. They still have a home game with the eighth-place San Jose Earthquakes this Sunday. A win there guarantees them one of the top two spots in the West and they’ll have Yordy Reyna and Kendall Waston back in the lineup.

This should still be one of the defining moments in this franchise’s MLS history. And if it’s not asking too much, we could use some good news on the sporting front.

• Waston, it should be noted, is now a national hero in his native Costa Rica after scoring a stoppage-time equalizer against Honduras on Saturday, which pushed his team into the 2018 World Cup.