By now you surely know the result of this past Friday’s tilt between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Edmonton Eskimos at Commonwealth Stadium.
Unfortunately, because I am filing this month’s column in advance of the game, this will go to print with me being totally in the dark as to what transpired -- and whether or not coach Corey Chamblin and/or general manager Brendan Taman were fired after the game.
But does it really matter whether the record is 1-5 or 0-6? Either way, the record still stinks like a skunk.
It really has been one disaster after another, one injury after another. Losing quarterback Darian Durant for the season to an Achilles injury, no less, was a major blow. And then his insurance-policy replacement Kevin Glenn got injured!
It is the way this team has lost that has really shaken the fans’ confidence. The defence has been porous, to say the least. And the losses have been heartbreaking, with two of them in overtime. No defeat was worse than the game in B.C. in which a massive lead disappeared in the final couple of minutes, and we lost in overtime to the Lions.
Back in the olden days (a year or so ago), the Riders would have found a way to win these sorts of games. It used to be the Riders who would always be on the winning end of hair-raising finishes against the B.C Lions. It used to be the Riders that would stomp all over the pathetic Blue Bombers and the hapless Tiger-Cats.
Not this year. It’s as if the football gods have decided it’s payback time for all the good fortune the Riders had in recent years.
Beyond that, the entire CFL product has been lousy.
There has been talk of Rider fans “hitting the panic button.” I think this is a stupid thing to do. Based on what I’ve seen from these nine teams, I’ve concluded the one sport that isn’t worth panicking over is the Canadian Football League, home of the flag-waving referee.
I am refusing to let the Riders impact my blood pressure. I am saving all my energy up for the Battlefords North Stars season, and how sad is it to be looking forward to hockey already?
This start by the Riders has put a punctuation point on what is rapidly turning into one of the worst years this province has seen in a long, long time, though I’m told the Dirty Thirties were worse.
In recent years the performance of the Riders have been sort of a barometer for the province. Back in 2007 when the Roughriders were hoisting the Grey Cup, times were seldom better. A new government was being sworn in, the economy was booming and there was plenty of optimism.
There was all this talk about “Saskaboom” — people coming home to produce the items that the world wanted and the world needed. All the talk was about how the booming Chinese market was needing what Saskatchewan was selling.
Today, the Chinese stock market is in the tank, and so are we.
Any rundown of the misfortune that has befallen Saskatchewan in 2015 can start and end with the oil slump.
The low gas prices were good for consumers for a while. I even wrote a piece about how great it was. Now the novelty has worn off, prices are creeping up again, and too many people are being hurt with job losses.
The impact was felt locally with GLM Industries LP first announcing a temporary closedown of their Battleford plant, followed shortly after by news they had gone right into receivership.
Then there has been the less-than-stellar crop situation due to the weather we have had. For the longest time we had dry conditions that were really bad for the crops. When the rain finally came, not only was it too late for some of them, but we ended up with monsoon conditions and even baseball-sized hail in places like Kerrobert.
The rain could have come sooner for the people displaced from countless northern communities, including La Ronge, due to the forest fires that ravaged the North during the worst of the dry spell.
I was on the daily media conference calls where we were briefed on the massive response by social services, the firefighters and the Armed Forces to the situation.
Those calls were interesting, to say the least. Particularly interesting were those days when reporters would be in a snarky mood and ask “why is the government incompetent” types of questions.
These included “how much is it costing to fight all the fires?” followed by the “how much did you cut from the firefighting budget?”
Anyway, it was good to keep the officials on their toes. It prevented them from doing too much bragging about how well things were going.
Certainly the evacuees bore the brunt of the situation. But everyone living here, at one point or another, experienced the thick smoke and haze that blanketed the province.
For people with breathing issues, such as myself, it was a rough time coughing and wheezing through those bad air days.
One could point out that a lot of these things that happened are really beyond our province’s control. It’s not Saskatchewan’s fault that the weather has been unco-operative, or that international crude oil has been in such a slump, and so on.
Anyway, it will turn around eventually. Besides, government folks are insisting things aren’t that bad, really, and that there are still plenty of jobs.
Still, all this has left Saskatchewan people feeling more weary than usual about life in their home province.
Of course, nothing is new about that. Life in this province is usually tough, yet people still manage to persevere in spite of it.
The reason we put up with it is the knowledge that in spite of our harsh winters, natural disasters and other troubles, we always have CFL season and the Saskatchewan Roughriders to look forward to.
So much for that idea.
Of all the years in which Saskatchewan residents could have used a winning season from the Riders, this was definitely the one. We need wins, guys.
