Rob Vanstone: Roughriders’ 2013 Grey Cup victory was especially sweet after agonizing defeat
The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ championship season of ’13 was a much-needed tonic for anyone who had experienced the horror of 13.
Forgive the chilling reminder — and please keep in mind that there is a happy ending — but the Roughriders were flagged for having too many men (13) on the field in the waning seconds of the 2009 Grey Cup game.
The memorable miscue enabled the Montreal Alouettes, whose deficit had swelled to 16 points with just under 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter, to defeat Saskatchewan 28-27 at McMahon Stadium in Calgary.
Eight players who suited up for Saskatchewan in the infamous 13th-man game were also in the lineup for the Roughriders four years later when they defeated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 45-23 to win the first home-field championship in franchise history.
The eight common denominators: Rob Bagg, Chris Best, John Chick, Darian Durant, Chris Getzlaf, Neal Hughes, Mike McCullough and Keith Shologan.
To what extent, McCullough was asked, did the victory in 2013 — the 10th anniversary is being celebrated this weekend — ease the heartaches arising from 2009?
“It definitely made it digestible, but that ’09 Grey Cup never goes away,” the former Roughriders linebacker and special teams standout reflects. “It just burns in your soul.
“It bothers me, but I don’t think about it daily. I think if we hadn’t won in ’13, then ’09 plus losing at home in ’13 would have sat with me forever. I guess it helped the healing from ’09, but it never completely wiped out ’09.
“The joy in victory sometimes doesn’t seem like it’s worth the pain in defeat.”
The “joy in victory” part of the equation will be accentuated on Saturday, when the Roughriders oppose the Tiger-Cats (5 p.m., Mosaic Stadium) on Legends Night.
A few dozen members of the 2013 Grey Cup champions will be on hand to be enshrined in the SaskTel Plaza of Honour during a halftime ceremony.
As a bonus for Rider Nation, the first 5,000 spectators to enter the stadium will receive, for the reasonable cost of $0.00, a replica 2013 Grey Cup ring.
The 2013 Grey Cup game was not a replica of 2009, thank goodness.
On what should have been the final play of the game, Alouettes kicker Damon Duval lined up to attempt a 43-yard field goal with Saskatchewan leading 27-25.
Duval’s kick was wide, inciting pandemonium among many Roughriders players and fans, but flags had flown.
Too many flags.
Too many men.
Time had expired, but Duval was given a do-over — from 10 yards closer — because a game cannot end on a penalty. His second attempt, from 33 yards out, split the uprights.
Saskatchewan, which finished the 2009 season with a 10-7-1 record, was that close to defeating a 15-3-0 Montreal side and engineering one of the most miraculous comebacks in CFL history.
Undaunted, the Roughriders returned to the big game in 2010, only to lose another nailbiter. The Alouettes won 21-18 at Commonwealth Stadium.
“The 2009 and 2010 Grey Cups affected us a lot as a team,” Best remembers. “It really was something we thought of a lot.
“I remember early mornings in the off-season, lifting weights really hard. If I was running out of juice a little bit or needed motivation, I would literally yell out ‘Montreal!’ to get myself to focus on what I needed to focus on.
“We really had to use it as a team after those two losses and 2013 obviously went a long way toward getting rid of those demons.”
But first, the Roughriders had to exorcise the ghosts of 2012.
With 52 seconds remaining in the West Division semi-final, Greg Carr caught a 24-yard touchdown pass from Durant to pull the Roughriders into a 29-29 tie with Calgary. The convert, by Sandro DeAngelis, gave the visitors a one-point lead.
Just 32 seconds later, however, Drew Tate — now a Roughriders assistant coach — connected with Romby Bryant on a game-winning, 68-yard TD bomb. Rene Paredes’ convert completed the scoring as Calgary won 36-30.
It wasn’t a championship game, but the season-ending sorrow was eerily familiar for several veteran Saskatchewan players.
“Usually, once the season’s done, you take a good month off,” says Best, a Roughriders offensive lineman from 2007 to 2016. “You do some stuff, but you kind of chill out and get back into it in mid-January to late January and rev it up at that point.
“But I know after we lost in 2012 — we probably could have won that game in Calgary —Weston Dressler and I were back in the gym, going hard, within seven or nine days.
“I think it was Dec. 1 or something and him and I were back at it. We went hard for seven straight months. I just called Dressler about a week after the Calgary game and said, ‘Let’s get after it,’ and we did.
“We just felt like, after the loss in Calgary and after ’09 a few years earlier, we had to get everything together.”
Dressler, a phenomenally popular Roughriders receiver from 2008 to 2015, did not play in the 2009 Grey Cup game due to injury.
Linebacker Rey Williams — like Dressler, a member of the 2009 and 2013 Roughriders — was sidelined for the second half of the latter season.
Williams helped the 2013 Roughriders post the best nine-game record (8-1-0) in franchise history.
A four-game losing streak followed before Saskatchewan recaptured its first-half form and enjoyed a robust playoff run.
It was feared that another devastating loss would materialize when the Roughriders trailed the B.C. Lions 25-16 after the third quarter of the West semi-final, played at historic Mosaic Stadium.
Then Durant used his feet to take the game into his own hands.
He rushed for 91 of his career-best 97 yards over the final 15 minutes, during which he also connected with Dressler for their second scoring strike of the day.
Make the final: Saskatchewan 29, B.C. 25.
That was as close as it would get for the remainder of the post-season.
The Roughriders returned to McMahon Stadium, where the agonizing losses of 2009 and 2012 had taken place, and routed the Stampeders 35-13 in the West final.
Then came the 101st Grey Cup game, during which Saskatchewan led 31-6 at halftime.
Hamilton was able to close the gap to 31-15, but could not advance any closer.
A late TD toss from Durant to Dressler, followed by a Chris Milo convert, gave Saskatchewan a 45-16 lead before Hamilton scored a meaningless major with 1:56 remaining.
Once that time ticked away, the result became official and, at long last, the Roughriders could revel in their ultimate home-field victory.
The win was especially gratifying for everyone who had endured the other end of the emotional spectrum just four years earlier.
“I remember that I had a pair of really nice gloves that they gave us in that 2009 Grey Cup swag package and I couldn’t wear them because of what happened in 2009,” Best says.
“In 2013, we finally won one and I was like, ‘OK, I can finally wear these gloves. We’ve expunged the issues now.’ ”
