Kevin Glenn’s 17-year-long stadium tour is to make a return visit to Regina on Saturday.
The veteran quarterback began his CFL career with the Roughriders in 2001, when they were based in historic Mosaic Stadium. Now, after stops at numerous stadiums with seven other CFL franchises over the past 16 seasons, Glenn will guide the Roughriders’ offence during Saturday’s grand opening of new Mosaic Stadium.
“Being around this league and being on other teams makes you appreciate this building,” Glenn said Friday, one day before the Roughriders are to entertain the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in the first-ever regular-season game at the new facility. “I’ve played in Hamilton as a visitor and everybody knows about Ivor Wynne (Stadium) and that visitors’ locker room. That’s nothing against Hamilton. It is what it is; it’s the truth. So you appreciate this a lot.
“(The Roughriders players) appreciate this locker room. They appreciate the stadium. They appreciate the fans. You can tell by what they’re doing when they’re in here, the type of commitment that they’re putting toward trying to put a good product on the field.”
The Roughriders franchise spent 80 years at its old home before closing it down last season with a splashy post-game ceremony on Oct. 29.
The organization moved into new Mosaic Stadium in February of this year, hopeful that the $278-million facility will help recruit and retain players and coaches.
The stadium has been the site of two games already — a Canada West clash between the University of Regina Rams and University of Saskatchewan Huskies on Oct. 1, as well as a CFL pre-season contest between the Roughriders and Bombers on June 10 — but Saturday’s game is to be the first-ever CFL regular-season game played there.
The Canada Day contest will be an event, with pre-game and halftime festivities. But it’s also a football game, and Chris Jones wants his charges to remember that.
“What we need to do is worry about what we can control,” said the Roughriders’ head coach and general manager. “I can’t control anything other than what we do.
“I’ve got to control the message that goes out to our guys because sometimes when you start playing for the wrong reasons, you start doing things outside the framework of the offensive or defensive or special-teams schemes. They’ve just got to play good solid football — play our ‘A’ game.”
That said, the Roughriders admit there’s still a ‘wow factor’ every time they walk into the place. It’s got all the bells and whistles that its predecessor didn’t have — and the players have to keep themselves from gawking.
“It has been exciting for us to get in the stadium every day,” said receiver Naaman Roosevelt. “We’re practising, we’re still looking up at things in the roof and seeing the lights flashing and stuff like that.
“It’s crazy for us to be in this stadium. We’re excited to try to make a big statement this week.”
“Trying to find your way around this place, sometimes it’s tough,” added centre Dan Clark. “You’re not sure what doors you’re allowed in. You just swipe your key and see what happens.
“It’s great. The guys are definitely enjoying it. We’ve got to come out and have a sense of pride when we step on this field.”
Clark admitted he’ll probably be emotional when he takes the field Saturday.
A lifelong Regina resident, Clark grew attached to the old stadium because he played minor, high school, junior and CFL football there. But unlike many of his teammates who leave the Queen City to go home in the off-season, Clark watched new Mosaic Stadium grow from the day the first shovel went into the ground to the edifice it is today.
Now he and his teammates get to play a regular-season game there for the first time.
“One thing about our meeting rooms is we have (pictures of) a bunch of (franchise) greats on our walls,” Clark said. “It’s definitely a fact that we want to be one day considered a great in this stadium, especially being in a brand-new place, being the first people to step on the field and to show what we’ve got.”
The Bombers expect the Mosaic Stadium faithful to be loud and boisterous, just as they were in the old stadium. The Roughriders, of course, are hoping to use that home-field advantage to even their record at 1-1-0.
Throughout the off-season, veteran Saskatchewan receiver Rob Bagg said he was looking forward to seeing the stadium filled with fans who would give it life. He’ll finally get that chance Saturday, with a capacity crowd of 33,000 expected.
“It’s going to be an unbelievable beginning to a new stadium,” Bagg said. “But every game is going to be like that.
“I know this one’s going to be the one where you’re going down in the record book as (having) the first-catch-first-touchdown kind of thing. Aside from that, this stadium is going to be rocking every single game and it’s going to be a fun place to play.”
Jones has tried not to get caught up in the hoopla of the event, at one point saying it didn’t matter “if we were playing (the Bombers) in the street.” The fact is, the Roughriders are facing a solid Winnipeg team and must be prepared for the Bombers no matter the site.
But while Jones wants his players to concentrate on their objective and not be distracted by their surroundings, he admitted that he too feels pride in the facility.
“You only get one opportunity to do something like (opening a new stadium),” said Jones, whom the Roughriders hired after he guided the Edmonton Eskimos to the 2015 CFL title. “To be around such a nice building, that’s why we came here.
“We left Edmonton eight days after winning a Grey Cup for this reason. We’ve got a building and people care about football enough to actually put their money behind it and build it. Football’s important here and we’re glad we’re here.”
