ROB VANSTONE: Fun, family and football featured in 2025 Riders’ final walk-through
WINNIPEG — The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ final on-field session before the 112th Grey Cup Game included some super bowls.
During a Saturday walk-through, some players used footballs as bowling balls with the intent of getting as close as possible to a targeted yard line at Princess Auto Stadium — where the Roughriders are to face the Montreal Alouettes in Sunday’s CFL championship game.
“At these Grey Cup walk-throughs, boy, there’s a lot of cameras around and a lot of things going on,” Roughriders Head Coach Corey Mace observed. “I think it’s really cool for us to get out there as a team and have some fun with that.
“Everything is so dialed and mental-focused throughout the week. It’s the end of the year, man. There’s not too many moments left for this group, so you want to take all that stuff in — having the guys out there with their kids. It was just a cool experience, but we’ve still got work to do when we get back to the hotel.”
The family-focused nature of Saturday’s walk-through was such that Tom and Suzanne Harris — Trevor’s parents — proudly watched from the sideline.
“Let’s have some fun,” quarterback Trevor Harris told the media afterwards. “Let’s play football — not that it’s all play and all fun and games.
“We take it very seriously, but sometimes you kind of cross that line and take it too seriously and not understand that we do ‘play’ this game.
“It’s the same game that we played when we were nine years old, 10 years old, and fell in love with at some point.
“We get to go out and do this. Shawn Bane Jr. says all the time, ‘We get to. You don’t got to.’ It’s a constant reminder that this is a privilege and an honour to be able to play on this stage in this beautiful, amazing country.
“It’s awesome, man. We get to.”
Bane Jr., a third-year Roughriders receiver, moonlighted as a quarterback toward the end of the team’s final tune-up for Sunday.
A perfectly thrown Bane Jr. pass found Jordan Greenly (Director, Football Operations) for a touchdown despite the expert coverage provided by Gordon Gilroy (Equipment Manager).
“Coach told me, ‘We need you to go one-on-one with Gordie,’ ” Greenly said in a much-sought-after exclusive interview with Riderville.com.
“We have competed lots of times over the years and he’s won a lot of them. That’s one of my best friends on the staff. We’ve worked together since I started here in 2018.
“Gordie is a great guy, but Coach put me in to make a play so I made a play. I’m sure it won’t be the last time we go head-to-head and I look forward to it.
“It really shows how cool of an inclusive environment we’ve built here and how tight-knit of a group we are, from the staff led by J.O. (Vice-President of Football Operations and General Manager Jeremy O’Day) to the players to the coaches.
“We really are family when you spend as much together as we all have.”
Following the walk-through, Mace was asked if Greenly’s touchdown was THE highlight of the 45 minutes spent on-field.
“I mean … yes,” the Roughriders’ chief strategist said. “Yes!
“Jordan versus Gordie has been a competition between these guys far before I even came to the organization. I’m going to obviously put some gas on that. It was excellent.”
There will come a time, of course, to get down to the business of football. That will be especially true in the final few minutes before the team emerges from the tunnel on Sunday.
“I think that anything we go through tomorrow during that three-, three-and-a-half-hour game is not going to be more difficult than stuff that we’ve done to get to this point,” Harris said.
“We don’t need to go out there and be Superman or do anything crazy. You just go out there and be yourself.
“At the end of the day, it’s going to be a football game. The intensity’s high. There’s a lot of media and a lot of eyeballs on the game.
“It’s easy in times like this where, if you don’t know better, you can let the moment get too big for you, but we don’t have a group that’s wired like that.
“We just have to be ourselves. Just go out there and execute and have some fun and don’t put any undue pressure on yourself.
“We play football and we take it very seriously and we work very, very hard but, at the end of the day, it’s a game and we get to go out and have fun.
“It’s going be a lot of fun.”
