THE CANADIAN PRESS
1. What’s going to happen on Thursday night?
The 2016 Farewell Season for the Saskatchewan Roughriders officially kicks off with Thursday’s home-opener against the Toronto Argonauts. The Riders had a bye in Week 1 which, while unfortunate, gives the team the “element of surprise” over the Argos who fell 42-20 at home to Hamilton last Thursday.
The only bad thing is I’m not sure even the Roughriders themselves know what they’re going to bring to the field come Thursday night on a gorgeous Saskatchewan evening! This truly is the first time this Chris Jones-led group will face live bullets.
“We fully expect to win the football game,” Jones told CKRM’s SportsCage this week. “We expect to come out and be very physical and I know that we’ll give great effort. Will it be perfect? No it won’t be perfect. There will be a missed assignment or two, like there always are. If we give up a big play, then we just have to come back and make the next play. That’s the way we live.”
Man on man, the Riders could be more talented than Toronto. However the Riders have a lot of new players to pull together in a short amount of time.
2. What should we expect?
Rider fans are looking forward to this season-opening game moreso than any in recent memory and a lot of it has to do with the curiousity factor. Just what exactly have Jones and his coaching staff been cooking up over the past month or two?
Truly I’m stumped to make a prediction. Fans have really only seen this club on three occasions in a “game setting” and that includes the mock game in Saskatoon and two pre-season games. The mock game made Jones sick to his stomach while both of the pre-season games were losses.
So how high should our expectations be for the Roughriders?
At the very least, oddsmaker Bodog has installed the Riders as three-point favourites for Thursday’s game.
The suspense is agonizing!
3. You’re my boy, Blue
Around 80-85 per cent of this Roughriders roster is new and that’s a ridiculously high turnover. However when you’re coming off a 3-15 season and tasking Chris Jones with building a winner from scratch, you have to expect this sort of thing.
One of the few familiar faces left in that locker room is nine-year veteran guard Brendon LaBatte. The Weyburn, Sask. product is still playing with the exuberance of a youngster and he’s incredibly excited about the possibilities for this team. I asked him why he feels this group is special.
“I like the athletes we’ve got here,” smiled Labatte, who’s sporting a new clean-shaven haircut right down to the wood. “There’s some really good athletes that once they learn where they gotta be and the nuances for the game, I mean you’re looking at a lot of ‘bigger, stronger, faster’ here. Once you get it all harnessed and pulling in the right direction, working together, I think there’s the makings of a real special team here.”
RELATED:
» Preview: Toronto vs. Saskatchewan
» Depth Charts: TOR | SSK
» Game Notes: All you need to know for Week 2
» Buy: Argos at Riders tickets
Chris Jones will make his long-awaited Riders debut Thursday night (The Canadian Press)
That’s great but what about this Thursday? How soon is this group going to be a cohesive unit?
“The only thing we can control is our attitude and our effort,” LaBatte cautioned. “We’re coming in with the mindset of being physical because we weren’t physical enough in our last game, that pre-season game up in Edmonton. That’s the big thing we’re hoping to bring: physicality.”
That’s a good start. And consider this: if a football game is won in the box (the area between the tackles, within five yards off the line of scrimmage), which it always is, then the Roughriders are in really good shape against Toronto.
Saskatchewan is regarded as having the best offensive line in the league and the defensive line – while still a work in progress – is three quarters of what Ottawa boasted last year in Shawn Lemon, Justin Capicciotti and Jonathan Williams. The REDBLACKS rode them all the way to the Grey Cup.
I’m talking myself into thinking the Riders are indeed the favourites come Thursday night.
4. Home-opener memories
This Thursday is the last ever home-opener at the Grand Ol’ Lady, Mosaic Stadium/Taylor Field. Ugh. While I trudgingly walk those ramps to the press box each game, wondering what else could possibly go wrong in this place (like Confetti-Gate in the last home pre-season game), I still get a lump in my throat realizing that it’s all coming to an end.
Home-openers are always exciting because they signal the end of a long, cold winter here in the 306 and we always are filled with such hope for the new season. 2016 is no different.
As far as Mosaic Memories go, two home-openers that stand out the most for me start with 2005, when the Danny Barrett-led Roughriders welcomed the Jim Daley-led Winnipeg Blue Bombers on Saturday, June 25 at Mosaic Stadium (it had just been renamed that from Taylor Field).
Future Rider Hall of Famer Corey Holmes took the game’s opening kickoff 81 yards to the Bomber end zone in what ended up as a 42-15 Saskatchewan rout of their prairie rivals. I’ll never forget seeing Daley’s face as “C-Murder” jogged right past him on the way to the house. Rider quarterback Nealon Greene threw for 268 yards, two touchdowns and rushed for another on the day. What a start!
“We’re coming in with the mindset of being physical . . . That’s the big thing we’re hoping to bring: physicality.”
Brendon Labatte
And the other memory is fairly recent. Legendary Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King was on hand for the Riders’ 2014 home-opener against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on June 29. We were hoping to put on a great show for the original Monday Morning Quarterback however the most spectacular pre-game downpour I’ve ever seen completely drowned the stadium.
They barely played the game! The parking lots and roadways were underwater and the playing field was in the middle of a lake. But play they did and Rider defenders sacked Ticats quarterback Zach Collaros a whopping 10 times on the way to a 31-10 shellacking by Saskatchewan. Ricky Foley led the way with three takedowns. That 2014 season had so much promise until Darian Durant went down with injury in September. There was a realistic expectation that the Riders would repeat as Grey Cup champions.
It’s all part of Rider lore and what makes us, us.
5 . Congi retires a Rider
On Monday the Roughriders announced kicker Luca Congi signed a one day contract to retire as a Rider. What a noteworthy time in Rider history Congi represented!
The off-season of 2006 was a special one as the Riders drafted Congi along with Andy Fantuz and pulled off a trade with Hamilton which landed quarterback Kerry Joseph and the rights to a young quarterback by the name of Darian Durant. Defensive players Lance Frazier and Tad Kornegay landed in Saskatchewan in 2006 as well and they all became the building blocks for a 2007 Grey Cup championship.
Congi is the latest in a long line of players who finished their career elsewhere in the CFL, but wanted to retire while wearing green and white. Why is that?
“It’s what it means to be a Rider,” Congi explained from his home in Toronto. “There’s no better place in the CFL to play and we share a lot of great memories. We had such a great locker room, great friendships, great memories and a lot of success and off the field. Because of that, it’s just an honour to retire a Roughrider.
“Every time I talk to people about playing in the CFL, I tell them the one thing they need to do is go watch a game in Saskatchewan because it’s such an iconic place to play. I was lucky enough to be drafted by Roy Shivers and Danny Barrett in 2006, play most of my career there, and win a championship in Saskatchewan.”
Congi is also a shining example of how the saying, “You can’t lose your job due to injury” is hogwash. Congi suffered a devastating knee injury in Edmonton in 2010 and it pretty much ended his time in Saskatchewan. The club drafted Chris Milo in 2011 and he earned the job coming out of training camp while Congi recovered. By the time Luca was ready to return to the field, Milo never gave the job up.
Congi subsequently finished his career in Hamilton and his last real game action was in the loss at Saskatchewan in the 2013 Grey Cup at Mosaic Stadium, regarded by many as the biggest game in Rider history. While he was on the other side of it that day, he was just happy to be a part of it.
Happy retirement Luca! And thank you for your service with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
RP
