You Won’t Find a Better Nickname for a Kicker

“Legz” stepped in and stepped up after both kickers had to depart during the 2023 Ticats season

Marc Liegghio rescued the Hamilton Tiger-Cats from a real dilemma last season after reliable placekicker Seth Small – who’d similarly rescued them the year before—left the team after one game for personal reasons.

He made his first nine field goals as a Ticat, gave them sure points from anywhere inside 40 yards and helped be an emotional anchor, and source of continuity, when they also lost punter Bailey Flint, also for personal reasons, in early August.

Liegghio is, of course, back, and sat down with Ticats Today Friday morning on the Ticats Audio Network. We’ve condensed his interview, and our questions, for print and the full interview is available on the audio network at ticats.ca. After you read this, that podcast is worth a listen, or a viewing on our YouTube channel.

As always, the questions are in bold face.

What special teams players call ‘the unit’ — the snapper, the punter, the place kicker, and the holder — have a special bond. You get out early to work on your craft so it can tick like a metronome. As of now, that’s you, punter Kaare Vedvik, and long snapper Gordon White. I’m not sure who the holder’s going to be yet, but would you give us an inside peek at that group? How do the dynamics work, and how important are they?

“Yeah, I’d say that’s the biggest thing. I had a few coaches call it ‘the battery.’ So it’s like you can’t get the electronics to work without the right battery. You know what I mean? So we’re really a tight unit. During the season, we’re basically doing a lot of stuff together. We’re getting early reps in, we’re talking to each other non-stop. It’s usually us three in the meeting with the special teams coordinator, who is Paul Boudreau this year.

“Pre -practice, we get our little warmups in, whatever you have to do by yourself to get your body ready. And then probably like after a 10 minute warmup, we’re already with each other, getting holds in, snaps in, throws, anything that can help each other out. Because you obviously want to have everything on point and you don’t want to be missing out on anything when game day comes, right? Gordon with the long snapping, has his routine. He’ll do short snaps, long snaps. And for me, I like doing like my kicking warmup. So we’ll do no steps, one steps, full steps.

“And then once we  get our own kind of stuff done, maybe we’ll get some field balls in and then we’ll do like a whole punting session where Kaare punts and I’ll even punt them back to him too because I also have punting in my bag.

“We’re like brothers. We don’t live in the same house, but we’re always together.”

It was a bit of a tumultuous season for you last year. You were coming off the 2021 Grey Cup victory over the Ticats and in 2022, you handled all three of the kicking chores for the Blue Bombers. But during last season’s training camp, the Bombers decided to go with former Ticat Sergio Castillo for place kicking and Australian Jamieson Sheahan as a punter. Was that a shock after only a couple of years in the league?

“When stuff doesn’t play out with the way you think it’s supposed to, it’s a little bit of a shock because I thought I put up pretty strong numbers in training camp. I thought I punted pretty well and I thought I kicked fairly well. I’d  had some games where things didn’t really go my way, but I thought my punting numbers in the field position battle were pretty big with the way that I was able to put the ball where I wanted to.

“But teams head in a different direction and you just kind of play with it the way that it goes. So I took it like a learning curve. The people in Winnipeg, the coaches, the players, everybody there, was phenomenal, and I’ll always be grateful for them giving me a chance to start in the league and being drafted to Winnipeg. It’ll always be a memory deep, deep inside for me.

“I just took it day by day and obviously I was very happy to get the call from Hamilton not too long after that.”

Exactly. Placekicker Seth Small suddenly left the team for personal reasons after game one and the Tiger-Cats contacted you. Then in August punter Bailey Flint also left for personal reasons and the Cats traded for Kaare Vedvik.  So the unit was disrupted again. Can you walk us through how you guys got it back together?

“Everything’s not always going to be according to plan and you just kind of work around it. And that was a big thing that Coach O put out there. You’re always going to have things put in front of your face and you’ve just got to deal with what you’re given.  With Seth Small leaving, obviously he was phenomenal when he was playing and he did really well.

“When I stepped in, it was another opportunity for me to kind of show what I can do again. I was getting comfortable with Bailey Flint being my holder but then he had some personal reasons why he had to leave as well. So I was ready to do all three kicking jobs. Then eventually throughout the week, we finally find out that we traded for Kaare. I had to get used to him holding for me for the day or two that he was here before the game. So it was a little bit of a bumpy road. You never know what you’re gonna get thrown at you and I think we handled it pretty well with the group we had.”

You’re from Woodbridge and a lot of Ticat fans might not know that you’re  a multi -sport athlete, but that didn’t involve I gridiron football, in the early days at least. You played Double-A hockey, which in Southern Ontario is very high calibre. You went to a public sports school in Agincourt. You were on Ontario’s under 18 rugby team, and played for Canada’s U-19s. And like a lot of kickers, you started with soccer. So how did you get into football and why?

“Obviously, being an Italian guy from Woodbridge you played soccer. that’s just the way the Italian household goes. My gym teacher was a rugby coach at high school and he saw me running with the ball, kicking the ball and he said, ‘You’re going to come play rugby. And I said, ‘What’s rugby? Never heard of that in my life.’

“In grade 10 one of my best friends’ dad saw me kicking the extra points of rugby and he goes, ‘Why is this guy not playing football?’ I said I was up for the challenge, so in grade 10, I played quarterback, receiver, running back, DB, I tried everything. And then obviously I stuck with kicking along the way. I still continued with hockey, rugby and football throughout my way to grade 12, but I gave up soccer after grade nine.”

Your kicking got you onto the Western Mustangs with whom you won the 2017 Vanier Cup, right at Tim Hortons Field. You were first-team all-Canadian as both a punter and placekicker. You’re not a tall guy so, as you mentioned yourself, you don’t have a lot of natural leverage, but like Forges’ Tristan Borges, you pack a lot of punch into that kicking leg. Can you explain that?

“I think it’s that you know the mechanics of your body. Obviously, the longer guys get a little bit of a longer lever with their tall stature. But I think I just got adjusted to the way that my body moves a lot more. I like lifting a lot of weight. I don’t get super big, but I use that kind of to my advantage because kicking is about being very mobile and being able to  use quick-twitch muscles.

“I also use that working out-mentality to strengthen that and make a little bit of an equilibrium. I want it to be strong and mobile. The strength coach at Western really helped me out from going from not the strongest guy coming out of high school.

“By my fourth year, I was benching 225 for 20 reps. But also I  was training with coach Darryl Wheeler and (former Ticat)  Lirim Hajrullahu. They were  big stepping stones for how my kicking took off. I couldn’t have done everything I did at Western without them.”

You immediately won the fans over here after the disappointment of Seth leaving. You made your first nine field goals as a Ticat and your 15 points were really the difference in the first win of the year, including a 50-yarder. It was close to automatic as you can get from 40 yards and in. So what are your goals for this year?

“My big thing is just, you know, increasing my numbers every year and every time I’m on the field, just putting that three points on the board or putting the ball where I need to put the ball for the team. I’m very grateful for the Ticats bringing me in and giving me that opportunity to show what I can do again.

“The medical staff, the coaches, the players, and especially the equipment guy, Drew, everyone, knew what I needed, just made it like the most easy transition I could ever imagine. And it was almost like I’d been here forever.

“I just want to keep improving as the years go on and eventually, hopefully become one of the best there was in the league.”

Athletes tend to modify their teammates’ full names to make a nickname. Yours is perfect for a kicker. And it is….?

“I just keep it simple with Legs but instead of an S, I use a Z for a little bit of spice.

“So it’s Legz.”