By Mitchell Blair
For Riderville.com
The Saskatchewan Roughriders are in a place they haven’t been to since 1995 and a place they were hoping they would never have to return to. Despite a furious rally in the 4th quarter, the Riders fell to a record of 1-7 as they were beaten 24-18 by the Toronto Argonauts on Thursday night.
The first three quarters were nothing but misery for the football team as they could not do anything right, but they got it together in the 4th quarter only to see the comeback effort fall short when Darian Durant on 3rd down from the Toronto 22 yard line threw an incompletion in the Toronto end-zone with 20 seconds left thus adding to the misery of what has been a nightmarish 2011 season.
Riders Head Coach Greg Marshall knows they had a chance at the end to win the game, but that the mistakes they sustained in the first three quarters is what killed them.
“We had our opportunities at the end, but it was more a case of we kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” a disenchanted Marshall said. “We had chances to put points on the board, but we missed a couple of field goals, we missed a 3rd down, we had an interception taken away because of penalty, we had a big punt return taken away because of penalty. It was things like that that we just can’t have.”
One penalty that particularly got under the skin of Marshall was a pass interference call against Nick Graham in the first quarter in the end-zone.
“That call really irked me because we had a chance to sack Cleo,” Marshall said. “He spins out and throws up a prayer, two guys fight for the ball and we can get called for pass interference so they put it at the one and they score. His prayer was answered.”
Middle linebacker Barrin Simpson didn’t think the effort defensively was bad, but they did allow some things to happen that shouldn’t have.
“We did a pretty darn good job of beating ourselves tonight,” Simpson said. “It’s not so much what everyone else is doing to win the game, it’s what we are doing to lose and that’s what we have to focus on. We are making mistakes; the offence is making mistakes that we shouldn’t make. It’s not the football we are supposed to play. We played the football we are supposed to play in the 4th quarter, but we just didn’t have enough to pull it out. We have to figure out how to give that effort in the 4th quarter in the first three quarters.
Chris Getzlaf got the comeback going when he took a pass from Darian Durant and took it to the endzone from 70 yards out. He also had a chance to win the game at the end, but he couldn’t hold on to the football on what would have been a tough catch as he landed in the endzone in the final minute. He was just as disconsolate as every other Rider in the room, but he was happy with the 4th quarter effort.
“It was too little, too late, “Getzlaf told 620 CKRM’s Carm Carteri. “We got going in the 4th and started playing the type of football we know we can. It might have been a different story if we could have done some of that in the first three quarters.”
With the loss, the Riders are now the worst team in the CFL. There is plenty of talk swirling around about the future of some players and some coaches as the team heads into its bye week with its next game being the annual Labour Day Classic against the Winnipeg Blue Bombers on September 4. Marshall, like many others does not know what the future holds, but he says despite the woeful season the team has had so far, he still believes in them.
“I think you will see this group come back after the bye week in a determined state. They will know that they can get this thing turned around, “Marshall insisted. “There’s no quit in the water here.”
