Bannister always struck me as the complaining type, even when things were good. He desperately wanted to dump the team on the Flames and scolded them for not picking them up over and over.
The Flames saw the same thing he did though, an unstable, part time league, that had franchises folding and moving yearly, and never going to turn a profit.
He got his 15 minutes when a Roughnecks game messed up the scheduling for a Flames playoff game and everyone wondered why the Flames game was a different night. But he again used that time to complain that he wasn't getting enough fans or support and that his calls to the Flames were falling on deaf ears.
Should've taken a page out of the classy Russ Parker's book in regards to the Cannons...he made his single plea to the city about needing a bigger stadium, knowing the answer before he went in. The business had run its course in Calgary, and the Cannons had to move on to greener pastures...but Parker wasn't running around trying to get another team to buy the Cannons or talk about the fact that x less number of peanuts were going to be sold in the city when the team left.
For Bannister to draw comparisons to the history of the Stamps and Flames, and to try and put the Roughnecks anywhere near the same relevance of those two teams is ridiculous. Too bad to see the team fail, but its a business and that's the way it goes in a niche sport, and league, such as the NLL.
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