It took a little prodding, but Joe Mack finally relented to an interview on Saturday night.

Earlier Saturday, the Bomber GM said through the team’s communications department that he wasn’t going to be available to talk until Monday, Aug. 13, when he got back from scouting NFL camps.

He had a change of heart, which is good. He put the team together and shouldn’t go into hiding for nine days with the team floundering.

I had already finished my stories for Sunday’s paper, so the full story on Mack’s thoughts, which are basically what you’d expect, will appear in Monday’s paper.

If you see Joe Mack, tell him to give me a call.

The team he has put together is 1-5, but he’s not talking. Officially, I was told on Saturday that Mack is “out of town doing NFL camps and back on the 13th.” He apparently can’t spare five minutes over the next nine days to talk about the mess he’s made in Winnipeg.

It’s not surprising, because two years ago on the first day of the bye week, when the Bombers were 2-4 going into the bye week, he was unavailable to talk. Paul Friesen took him to task, and rightly so. Mack somehow found the time to do an interview a couple days later.

I even tried to plan ahead, knowing the CFL’s most inaccessible GM would likely pull this stunt. So I asked the team’s communications staff on Friday if I could set something up for Saturday. They said it could “probably” happen. Yeah, right.

Apparently Joe Mack is so busy finding players that he can’t find five minutes to tell the fans — through me, because that’s my job — what he’s going to do to fix the Bombers. They are 1-5 and planted firmly in the CFL basement. One of his players, linebacker Marcellus Bowman, told me there are “deep” problems with the Bombers organizationally. I’d love to ask Mack what he’s going to do to fix those problems. Nope.

So Bomber fans, who have filled Canad Inns Stadium the last two games, are left to wait and wonder for at least nine more days what their trusted leader is going to do next.