Courtesy Winnipeg Sun:

Kevin Glenn stood in front of his locker yesterday with his left arm in a sling and the upper arm in a cast.

Although the Winnipeg quarterback has come to grips with the fact that he will not be leading the Blue Bombers on to the Toronto field in this Sunday’s Grey Cup game, there were those who were still urging him to suit up.

“(Defensive tackle) Doug Brown wants me to play,” the right-handed Glenn said with a smile. “He keeps saying, ‘What arm do ya throw with?’

“I would like to. You think about it but there’s certain situations where you know you can’t do it. I would rather a healthy (Ryan) Dinwiddie go in and play than hinder the team with something like this. It isn’t a situation where I could wrap it up, tape it up and play.”

Glenn, 28, suffered a broken humerus while diving for a loose ball after a poor exchange with tailback Charles Roberts during the fourth quarter of Sunday’s victory over the Argos in the East Final. But it will not require surgery.

“Your first reaction when you’re playing this game when something like that happens is to dive after the ball,” Glenn said. “You can’t look back and say, ‘I shouldn’t have dove after it.’ That’s the nature of the game. In the heat of battle, you try to get the ball back and that’s what happened.”

The bone snapped when Argos linebacker Kevin Eiben landed on his arm while recovering the fumble.

Dinwiddie, the little-used backup, will replace Glenn — the Eastern nominee for Most Outstanding Player — in the CFL’s championship match.

“My initial reaction was kind of shock and when I found out what it was, the first thing that pops into your mind is, ‘Why?’” he admitted. “But everything happens for a reason and the good thing is that we’re still in this Grey Cup and this is a team sport so one guy doesn’t stop the show. I’ve got a lot of confidence in Dinwiddie and the team does, too. The way our defence is playing right now, we should be OK.

“When it happens, you have to roll with the punches and get over it. This is just a minor setback. It could have been worse. It could have been a situation where it was career-ending but I’ve got a lot of football left in me … You go through a season and you work so hard to get to this point and you get to the game and you’re not able to play in it, it’s tough. But it’s a team sport. I have much confidence in my team that they’re still going to go out and get this ring for me, or get the ring for us.”

Glenn, who had declined interviews after Sunday’s game, was surprisingly upbeat.

“I had my time of grieving when it all happened and everything,” said Glenn, who spent some time with family after the match. “But you can’t keep grieving … I want to make sure everyone sees me upbeat because, when the guys in the locker room see me upbeat, they’ll say, ‘Man, this guy’s just had an injury where he can’t play in the Grey Cup.’ They’ll look at it as motivation.”

And the players were certainly supportive of their fallen leader.

“They were telling me, ‘Keep a smile on your face, we’re going to go get this Grey Cup ring for you because you did a lot for us this year,’ ” Glenn said. “And one thing I really took to heart was when Dinwiddie … came and hugged me and said, ‘We’re going to go get it for you.’ That really touched me.”