Riot ready for belated debut at new Mosaic
Regina women’s football team faces Saskatoon in first and only home game
The home stretch has finally arrived for the Regina Riot.
The Western Women’s Canadian Football League team is slated to play its home opener on Sunday (2 p.m., Mosaic Stadium) against the archrival Saskatoon Valkyries.
It’s also the final game of Regina’s regular season schedule.
The Riot was originally slated to play its home opener last weekend against the Winnipeg Wolfpack, but that game was forfeited by the Manitoba squad.
Each team in the WWCFL plays just four regular season games — two at home and two on the road — so Regina lost 50 per cent of its home schedule.
“The second home game is becoming our first and it happens to be our last game of the season as well,” said Riot head coach Olivier Eddie. “It’s tough for us because we’re on consecutive bye weeks so we haven’t played football in a while. It becomes very difficult to get back into it. We hope we won’t be too rusty come Sunday.”
Regina (3-0) can finish atop the Prairie Conference with a win over Saskatoon (2-1). Normally the first-place team would go on to meet the fourth-place club in the opening round of the playoffs, but that won’t happen this year be- cause the Wolfpack dropped out of the league.
As a result, the Riot would lose yet another home gate.
“That really hurts us (for three reasons),” said Eddie: “We want to play football … we want to play in front of our fans and … it hurts us financially as well.”
The team is hoping to make up for lost time with a big crowd against the Valkyries. It doesn’t hurt that Sunday’s contest is the latest instalment in the WWCFL’s top rivalry.
“Any time we play Saskatoon we kind of turn it up a notch,” said Eddie. “They have a great team over there and historically it has always been back and forth between the two clubs. To get a chance to play them is always a game we look forward to.”
The Riot beat the host Valkyries 28-7 on May 12 — one of the mostlopsided victories Regina has ever posted versus Saskatoon. The Valkyries won the league’s first four championships from 2011 to 2014 but Regina has turned the tables by winning two of the past three.
The head-to-head matchups have also been much closer in recent years.
“Since 2015 we’ve been able to win a regular-season game against Saskatoon and we’ve also always lost one,” noted Eddie.
“No one has been able to sweep each other the last four years. We won the first one this year so I wonder if history is going to repeat itself or if we’ll be able to sweep them. It would be a first in our history if we ever did.”
Sunday’s contest will also mark the Riot’s debut at Regina’s new stadium. The final tackle football game played at old Mosaic Stadium took place on June 4 of last year when the Riot defeated the Valkyries 34-24 in the WWCFL conference final.
The stadium was demolished a little more than four months later.
“We want to get a win the first time we play at (new) Mosaic Stadium,” said Eddie. “We had a goal at the beginning of the season to be undefeated at home. So far it has been easier because we haven’t had to play at home but now we put it to the test. We’re trying to meet that goal.”
Note: Sunday’s contest is the Riot’s annual Teal game. Proceeds from 50-50 sales — along with $3 from every ticket sold — go to the Regina branch of Ovarian Cancer Canada.