By Mitchell Blair
For Riderville.com
Saskatchewan Roughriders Brendan Taman can breathe a sigh of relief when it comes to one of the team’s top free agents.
Defensive lineman Keith Shologan will avoid going to free agency after signing a new contract with the football team. The Central Florida grad agreed on a two year deal (plus an option for a third season) and as per club policy, the financial terms of the new contract are also not known. What is known is the fact Shologan is sticking around in Saskatchewan and that it wasn’t difficult to get him to stay.
“Once things started rolling, it didn’t take very long,” Shologan admitted. “They knew what I wanted and they thought it was reasonable so we went with it. I’m glad to have the opportunity to be back here and I’m excited at staying here. I think this team is on the right track and I know we will turn it around.”
There had been some thought at the end of the season that the 25-year-old from Spruce Grove, Alberta might be heavily pursued by the Edmonton Eskimos thus giving him a chance to play for his hometown team. Shologan will concede that thought did cross his mind, but in the end, he knew that his future was in Saskatchewan.
“I did think about that and being around my family would have been awesome,” Shologan said. “However, there is no better place to play football than right here in Saskatchewan so when it came down to it, I said to myself that football is more important than being closer to home right now and the Riders are that place because of the atmosphere that surrounds this club.”
While the re-signing of Shologan comes less than two weeks after the end of the season for the Riders, Taman says it wasn’t a deal that was struck in 24-48 hours and he credits Shologan’s agent for helping get things done without any snags.
“It didn’t happen as quickly as you would think,” Taman said. “Its been going on for a while. When it comes to business, you would like to get things done in a phone call or two, but we worked quite a lot to get this done over the past couple of weeks. His agent did a lot of good work for him and it took a good portion of last week to hammer out the deal.”
Taman is also very happy to know that a cornerstone of his defence is under wraps for the next few seasons.
“You don’t want a lose a top Canadian like Keith.” Taman said. “I think he’s coming into the prime of his career. He’s really come on in the past couple of seasons and he’s a solid contributor too. He is also very tough as he battled an ankle injury in the final third of the season, but he gutted it out and played the rest of the year.
Shologan is hoping that his team-mates of last season who are also free agents can take note of what has happened and do what he has done and re-sign.
“Of course it does,” Shologan -who had 26 tackles and a pair of sacks in 2011,-said.
“You always want the guys back that are part of the organization so hopefully they will get as many guys back as they can and those that are on the bubble will make the decision to come back after seeing that I have committed to this team, this organization and this province.”
