Rider Pride Report

Not often, but occasionally, a big game like the Labour Day Classic actually lives up to the hype that has been created around it.

In the two week period preceding this year’s clash, the Saskatchewan Roughriders didn’t sit still. A trade that was a bit of a surprise sent Jason Armstead to Hamilton in exchange for fan icon Corey Holmes and Regina product Chris Getzlaf. Rider GM Eric Tillman again pulled the strings needed to ignite his team’s fans and is certainly on a roll in that department.

The game was sold out well in advance, and the allure of the match-up of two somewhat surprisingly contending teams led even to ticket sales on EBay. It was a seating demand not seen in the Prairie Province for football since, well, since the last time the Riders were 6 – 2.

I’ve been to Regina for Labour Day every year since 2000. The weekend is possibly my favourite of the entire year, let alone the football season. Many friends I seldom see are in town, I’m much entertained by the Rider Fan Day, and, most importantly, Regina is jumping. My friend Chris Melin and I also usually track down for dinner our friend Chris Cvetkovic, former Rider, current Bomber, and one of the CFL’s nicest guys.

But lots of things were different this year. Cvetkovic was injured and the Minnesota boys did not make the trip. I’d known for quite a while that I would be absent, since one of my sons was starting college that weekend. The fan in me was feeling a bit bad (OK, a lot bad) about not making the trip, but the dad in me was feeling great about my son’s significant milestone.

My son’s school was able to turn that first day into several events lasting until late afternoon. Many of you were either at the game or watching, so you know what a classic, see-saw battle it was. Former Riders Kevin Glenn and Derick Armstrong were thorns in the sides of their former team, with Armstrong grabbing two of Kevin’s three TD tosses. Although you knew that the Bombers led 18 – 10 at the half, I was sitting listening to college speeches and was more clueless than usual.

However, the college day was eventually done, and we gave our son a hug and headed home. Without satellite or a CFL cable broadcast, I was to rely for the first time on a gadget called Slingbox, with a feed from my buddy Marty in extreme rural Alberta. I’d had trouble getting it to work in prior testing, but finally thought it was ready to go. With no idea of the score of the game, I watched as a surprisingly clear picture jumped onto my monitor.

I just love the power of coincidence, and it came up big right then. The Bombers were running, per the official CFL stats, played #107 exactly then. You can look it up – a 7 yard completion to Derick Armstrong, a forced fumble caused by James Johnson and then a Rider recovery by Jermaine Chatman. As Luca Congi followed shortly afterward with a 50 yard FG to put the Riders down only by one at 25 – 24, I just had to chuckle to think of my good fortune in jumping on the moving train at just the right moment.

The game was certainly far from over, but there were good vibes all over here in Minnesota. The Riders in the past few years were lots of things, but in my mind they were not a team adept at coming back, taking a lead, and holding on to it. Actually, at least in my memory, they came back so few times that they seldom got any practice in holding that regained lead!

But the 2007 Riders aren’t the Riders of the past few years, and as a fan, it’s really obvious emotionally this year that things are different. As I watched the fourth quarter unfold, I consciously noticed that I didn’t have that nagging feeling that a Bomber pin would burst my Rider balloon. A Winnipeg single clearly didn’t mean much, extending the lead to a mere two, but I did have just a very small tug of concern when Congi missed a 38-yarder into the wind.

It was an interesting play, since he missed by so much that Glen Suitor thought it had been a purposeful miss. If so, certainly a strange bit of Rider strategy, but at any rate, Saskatchewan held the Bombers and forced a punt. I’ve seen games in the recent past where the opponents rolled down the field and scored at a time like this, but Sunday saw the Riders lining up on their own 19 for what would become a legendary final drive.   

Completed passes on the next four consecutive plays? Except for the magic of this day, I would not have believed it. As I watched Congi warming up for a likely last-play field goal, I had the comfort to realize that nobody could miss two in a row by that much!

Like yourselves, the fans present at Mosaic Stadium, legions watching on TV, and, most significantly, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, I had no idea what was coming next. Kerry Joseph’s 27-yard scamper won it in a very exciting fashion, but  I also had no doubt on this day in this old Minnesota mind that they would have done so on the next play regardless. It was just that kind of a fine Saskatchewan day, and the best of two different worlds, family and fandom, for me. .