This is a tale of two cities for Taylor Loffler.
A product of Regina, Loffler now plays for the CFL’s Winnipeg Blue Bombers. His team will face the Saskatchewan Roughriders in the first pre-season game (June 10) and the first regular-season contest (July 1) at new Mosaic Stadium.
Both of those games will be big moments for his hometown.
“It’s awesome to see (the facility),” Loffler said Tuesday during a CFL Week event at Queensbury Centre — which is located across the Evraz Place parking lot from new Mosaic Stadium.
“I’ve been back and forth (from Winnipeg) to Regina a few times so I’ve seen the process of them building the stadium. Being born here and being in Winnipeg now, coming back to open it up is cool.”
The Roughriders ended their run at historic Mosaic Stadium in 2016 and have moved their operations into new Mosaic Stadium. The $278-million facility is just down the street from its predecessor.
“I’ll miss (the old stadium) because I had a lot of great memories there,” said running back Jerome Messam, who spent the 2014 season and part of the ’15 campaign with the Roughriders before being traded to the Calgary Stampeders.
“But as far as the field goes, that thing was tough on the body and on the knees — and it had that nice little mound going across the centre of the field. It’s going to be good to have a new stadium.”
Hamilton Tiger-Cats linebacker Simoni Lawrence won’t miss the visitors’ locker room at old Mosaic Stadium; he jokingly called the cramped area “a little hockey room.” But he will long for one aspect of the old place.
“The fans out here are pretty funny,” said Lawrence, one of the CFL’s more vocal players. “I’m going to miss them being that close (to the visitors’ bench). It looks like they backed them up a little bit (in the new stadium).”
The Roughriders are the latest CFL team to move into a new or refurbished stadium, following the leads of the Bombers (Investors Group Field), Tiger-Cats (Tim Hortons Field), Toronto Argonauts (BMO Field), Ottawa Redblacks (TD Place) and B.C. Lions (BC Place).
Lawrence noted the Tiger-Cats got a boost of adrenalin when they played their first season in their new home, but playing in someone else’s new stadium is different and required some adjustment.
“When we were in Toronto the first time, you wanted to check the ground, see if there were any soft spots, run the whole field and make sure the field was stable,” Lawrence said. “It’s something you’ve got to get used to.
“If you’ve played somewhere for a long time, you can just sit in the locker room and wait until the game comes. When you come to a new place, you’ve definitely got to check out the field.”
Messam admitted with a grin that he felt a little jealous about the Roughriders’ new home, especially since he had been in Saskatchewan when the plans for the stadium were being drawn up.
That said, he’s excited for the team, the city and the province that a brand-new place has been built.
“There’s new life,” Messam said. “I feel the buzz already. Driving in, you see the big stadium coming in off the Lewvan. It’s awesome.”
Roughriders receiver Rob Bagg agrees. His eighth season with Saskatchewan will be his first in new Mosaic Stadium — and he can’t wait.
“I always enjoyed going into old Mosaic,” Bagg said. “There are a lot of great memories there for me and it was a great workplace. But when you’d go in there on rainy days, it’s a bit of a buzzkill when you’d see your locker had been rained on with some sort of brown goop all night.
“This new facility doesn’t have those issues. It has everything. There’s no reason to go home early. As great as all the amenities are, the real testament will be when we fill it with Rider fans and the stadium itself becomes alive.”
