Courtesy Toronto Star:

Now that he’s the Argonauts head coach, Rich Stubler has decided to make Toronto his year-round home.

So it was probably appropriate that the 58-year-old native of Glenwood Springs, Colo., should attend yesterday’s press conference to announce his appointment as the successor to Mike Clemons looking like a hockey player.

While he had shed his usual attire of grey shorts and a sweatshirt for a natty dark, pinstripe suit, Stubler looked like he’d just tangled with Leafs enforcer Wade Belak. He walked into the room sporting a fresh, two-inch, Merlot-coloured wound that was temporarily serving as his left eyebrow.

A little sheepishly, Stubler revealed that his real foe was a patch of ice outside his Mississauga residence.

“I was walking around the corner with my Crocs on – which wasn’t really smart – about six in the morning and hesitated,” he said. “I slipped and as I went down I clipped a post with my head.”

When he arrived at work later Wednesday morning, head athletic therapist Erin Brooks suggested he go to the hospital for stitches.

“I just told her to pull it together and glue it,” he said.

In his five years as defensive co-ordinator, Stubler has used his particular brand of coaching “glue” to build the Argo defence into what is generally accepted as the finest in the CFL. For the past couple of seasons they have led the league in practically every defensive statistic.

While he now will oversee both sides of the ball, Stubler said he’d maintain a significant influence on the defence.

It has been said of the Argos that they have ridden to five consecutive appearances in the East Division final and a Grey Cup victory in 2004 on the backs of their defence.

And when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers denied them a spot in this year’s Grey Cup game, some members of the defence voiced their frustrations at the failure of the offence to contribute its share.

Stubler, however, doesn’t feel a need to heal what appeared to some observes as a growing rift.

“There’s never a rift,” he said.

Stubler acknowledged that he faces a “huge” challenge in establishing the continuity on offence that he’s been able to develop on defence.

“We’ve taken a defensive group of people and kept them together for as many years as we can and we haven’t done the same thing on offence,” he said. “I believe in my heart that’s the only way that you can play good football.

“So my influence is going to be that whoever we leave training camp with is basically who we’re going to play with. We’re going to play as a team.”

New CEO Clemons said Stubler is “the guy I trust more than any other single individual that I know in the game.” He said Stubler has been “incredibly honest even when it didn’t benefit him.”

Clemons said he suggested to Stubler two years ago that it might be time he stepped aside as head coach, a move that would have elevated Stubler into that post.

“He said, `No, Michael, it’s not your time now. We still need you to do this for at least two more years. There’s still more work for us to do together.’”

Now, however, the time is right.