My thoughts from Saskatoon performance.

The Riders journeyed to The City of bridges on the weekend for a sort of controlled scrimmage complete with officials for two hours at legendary Griffith Stadium which is right across the street from the main beautiful University of Saskatchewan campus and has been the home of the University of Saskatchewan Huskies since 1946 . The Stadium has gone thru many revisions over the years and with the Vanier Cup being played there last year it has been upgraded to a first class football and track stadium complete with floodlights and able to seat seventy five hundred fans.

The true blue Saskatoon residents tell us the Riders have a very loyal following amongst the Saskatoon sporting fraternity and that there are close to fifteen hundred season ticket holders residing in the Northern Metropolis and most of them were on hand for Saturdays proceedings.

The club went thru their usual warm up drills before breaking into a full scale controlled scrimmage where there was no tackling but physical contact on the line was a reality. The team went with what would appear to be the first string offense against the first string defense for a period of twenty minutes alternating the quarterbacks with Kerry Joseph,Marcus Crandell,Darian Durant and finally Drew Tate the Iowa rookie in for two or three series at a time.They ran against what would appear to be the first string defense for the first twenty minutes.and then liberal substitutions were made on both sides of the ball for the next half hour.

The eagle eyed fans were closely watching what happened at the Quarterback spot hoping that one of the four candidates would show enough for us to believe that the Riders will have a field general who can lead this team to the promised land this year .They were not disappointed as the incumbent Kerry Joseph had a big afternoon throwing the pigskin with authority and accuracy and connecting with sophomore Andy Fantuz five times and on two occasions Fantuz made spectacular circus catches leaving no doubt that he is ready to carry on from where he left off after a sensational ending to his rookie season.last year.

Two other receivers had big afternoons as well veteran Yo Murphy and free agent Canadian rookie Rob Bagg from Queens University.The calibre of receivers on this years edition are the best we have had in many a moon and without a doubt some that are released will be picked up by other teams. Kalill Hill ,Thyrone Anderson, D.J. Flick and Cory Grant four receivers who are capable of starting were watching from the sidelines with assorted injuries.which is just another indication of the kind of receiving depth this team has.

The offensive line had Jeremy O,day at center with Antonio Hall and Mike Abou-Mechrek at the guard spots and veteran Gene Makowsky at the strong side tackle spot and newcomer Marc Parenteau at the other tackle spot for the majority of the afternnon..

The defense lined up with Fred Perry and Terrell Jurineack as the starting ends with the veteran Scott Schultz at one tackle spot and holdover Marcus Adams and newcomer Andrew Browning splitting time on the other side as the team looks for a replacement for Nate Davis and rumour has it that one possibly two more defensive tackles will be arriving on the scene next week.


The linebacker corps appears to be set and should be on of the best in the league with Maurice Lloyd the star of last years Roughrider semi -final victory over Calgary set for a big year in the middle flanked by the veteran Reggie {The Reaper } Hunt and a healthy T.J. Stancil .

The much discussed secondary had their moments during the session with defensive back Rontarius Robinson making a couple of spectacular knockdowns on what looked like sure fire long completions and Airabin Justin playing the corner also coming up with a solid effort.

Generally speaking the fans enjoyed themselves and came away feeling that this club will likely score a lot of pints and be close to the league leaders in offensive yardage and what many thought would be a porous defense will in fact be good enough to make this team a solid contender