North Vancouver football player turns pleasure into profit HAVING JUST celebrated his 28th birthday, the pursuits of Sean Millington are those of your average teenager — playing football and video games. By Andrew McCredie Sports Editor But this long-time North Vancouver resi- dent has logged more grown-up experiences than some men twice his age. Check out his current scene: The B.C. Lion running back is rehabbing a season-ending knee injury. In addition, he is four-months into running Gen 2000, a video game sales and rental store on Marine Drive in North Vancouver. The year 1995 was a difficult one for the Carson Graham graduate. A year that started with the promise of great things proved to hold many changes. After helping the Lions to a nerve-racking Grey Cup victory at B.C. Place in November of 1994, Millington was invited to attend the . Super Bowl champion San Francisco Forty- Niners camp last spring. It was his second chance at the holy grail, a shot at the NFL. “One of the things I stressed with them (the Forty-Niners) is I love being a special teams player and I would like to have the opportuni- ty to play,” Millington reflects of the San Fran experience. “I was told that I’d have a chance to play since they had five pre-season games. Then three days into it I got cut. You know, I had the pads on one day, maybe made three hits the whole time.” He figures something political amongst the coaching ranks conspired against him since a number of ‘other high profile backs were also barely give: a look. But experiences from his past served him well, as the 6'2”, 220-pound running-back put . the California camp behind him and looked forward to the 1995 season with the defending Grey Cup champs. As he tells it, he’s always had to prove himself, or perhaps more accurately, prove others wrong. Take his early gridiron days with Carson Graham head coach Earl Henderson. “4 was an offensive guard at one point, and begged and pleaded with Earl to let me play running back all year long,” Millington says, clearly enjoying the story. “‘Nope, nope, nope.’ That’s all he kept saying.” Then in Millington’s senior year — the AS YOUR agent grudgingly admits to another birthday NEWS photo Miike Wakefield previous year's running back having graduat- ed — Henderson gave the nimble lineman a shot. “I know he was thinking ‘Let's put him in, he'll suck, it'll shut him up and he'll go back to lineman,” Millington says with a grin, adding the punchline with stand-up comedic timing. “I had a ‘good’ game, 100-plus yards.” Henderson kept him in the backfield. From there it was on to a stellar collegiate football career and a degree in economics at Simon Fraser University. Upon graduation from SFU six years ago, Millington’s record-setting ways caught the attention of the New York Giants. He lasted three weeks at their 1990 training camp before heading to the Edmonton Eskimos, where he languished on their practice roster for almost two seasons. “T thought ‘Well, I can be at home and be on the practice roster’, so I came back here and tried out for Obie (former Lions coach Bod O'Billovich) and managed to crack the squad,” Millington says of his return home. “(Former Lions’ special teams coach) Jeff Reinebold gave me a shot and | worked my way up from there. Things started to come together in 1993 and 1994 was a reaily solid year. It established that I was no fluke, the real deal so to speak.” And now the real deal has to prove himself again, “This upcoming month is the critical one,” life with the Royal Bank of Canada, managing branches both on the " Gigeiremaies Millington says of his rehab train- ing, adding that his right knee is about at 68% of his healthy left one. His current regime include three days a week at the Lions Surrey training facility, in addition to work he does himself. And while he remains philo- sophical about playing football again, the Lions are closely watch- ing his progress — and keeping their fingers crossed. “Were just taking it as a day-by- day type thing,” says Lions offen- sive back coach Tony Paopao (brother of head coach Joe). “As soon as he does come back, if he comes back, he'll be the number one guy.” Indeed, when Millington went down in the seventh game of the season last year, he was on course to bettering his 1994 stats, a year in which he gained 634 all-purpose yards and scored 11 majors during the regular season. But while his physiology lics in question, his mental state remains rock solid. “To me its a faith thing. I believe in God and I thinx that there’s a plan for me,” Millington says matter-of-factly. “My job is just to ride with it. Whatever’s going to hap- pen was meant to happen.” Another “happening” in the life of Sean Millington last year was the sale of his Vancouver nightclub, Level 5, a business deci- cookouts on Bloor Street. chuckwagons and open air pancake WHO TO CALL: } Sports Editor Andrew McCredie 985-2131 (147) REARS RS CREA La TALE CATER RO WEST SRE ARREST PO AT WORK (left):. Sean Millington gets up close and psrsonal with a_ collage of posters that cover the calling of Gen 2000, the video garia sales and rental store the North Vancouver resident opened late last year. AT PLAY (below): Millington takes: a- handoff frem B.C. Lions’ pivot Danny - MeManus (#14) during the championship sea- son of 1994, a year ‘Millington was named” acre All-Star. os sion that was < footed i ina per nal_one “It wasn’t suiting what I wanted my life anymore, there. was‘a dime for it; you know, but I'm_ living «a’ Christian lifestyle . now,” he says, sipping on an orange juice and soda water. “I had to make'a: something had to go. And I ended up choosing to sell and try and change my career path.” Make that career paths. in addition to oper: ating Gen'2000, Millington has interest in‘an | hotel guest directory. company’ and has ‘ started to get: himself somie” actit including a small part on Fox TV? Luck series. Whatever it is Sean Millington, is. 5 doing | now and in the future, ° sont assured. it it won't be® all work. . Story, on the joyous, bibulous train ride home, the players discovered today, he increasingly comes to grips with his own mortali- ty. Especially against the background of recently lost friends on that playground — known as sports. Earlier this month it was Bill Good Sr., for so many years Canada’s radio voice of curling and golf. A week after Bill left us, he was joined by Hugh Watson, ‘Vancouver's all-time sportswriting prankster. "And now, ‘just, last week, George. . -Siborne and Fritz Hanson joined - them. Sibome, who died while vica- tioning in Hawaii, and your agent were casual friends. Hanson was a Canadian football legend. yet his passing — in Calgary, al age 83 —~ received no more than two or three Spectator ‘Lines in the local dailies, George’s sport was basketball, ‘where he built his reputation, not as a player, but as a referee. Over three decades he refereed more than 15 national finals, The best Siborne story concerns not basketball, but his livelihood, He spent all his working mainland and Vancouver [sland. His final appointment was to open the Royal's Chinatown branch, the first venture into this community by any of the big Canadian banks. One of George’s first customers was a young and penniless immi- grant from Hong Kong, whose appli- cation for a loan had been turned down by several uptown banks. George okayed the loan and the young man used it as his springboard to considerable fame and fortune. Millionaire real estate developer and longtime B.C. Lieutenant- Governor David Lam has reason to count George Sibome as one of his best friends. In most phices it’s fashionable to believe that Grey Cup mania in this country started in 1948, when the Catgary Stampeders took Toronto by storm with cowboys on horses, But not in Winnipeg. Grey Cup mania started there in 1935 when the West, for the first time in It attempts, starting in 192i, finally won the $48 mug donated by Governor-General Earl Grey in 1909 for the amateur rugby football championship of Canada. A team from Winnipeg named the ‘Pegs —— later on re-christened the Blue Bombers — did the job. beating Hamilton Tigers, 18-12. in the rain and the mud at the Hamilton AAA Grounds. . Only 6,500 turned out for what ** was supposed to be yet another lop- ~ sided Eastern win. But what they saw was a 150-pound blond ghost, tecntited out of North Dakota State - College eartier that year, dance the Tigers into submission. As the tale is told by Jack Sullivan in his book, The Grev Cup there was another Fritz aboard, the’ legendary violinist, Fritz Kreisler. They decided the two should meet. So they hammered on his corpart- ment door and, as Sullivan tells the - story, he poked his head out and said: “Sorry, but I'm too tired to play.” “Well, then,” Fritz the football . star was said to have replied, “you don’t have to play a real number. Just twang up the fiddle and practice a lit- tle.” Retorted Kreisler: “i don't prac- tice.” “You don’ t practice!” ¢ exclaimed .. Hanson, “Mr. Kreisler; how the bell. do you expect to amount to anys thing?” ’ Hanson, who played several more * seasons in Winnipeg and became a Canadian citizen, never,confirmed the story — on the other hand, nei- _ ther did he deny it. decision’ — ;