Saskatchewan Roughriders game postponed to Saturday

After a lengthy delay, the showdown between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Calgary Stampeders ended up not taking place Friday night. It will now take place on Saturday afternoon at 2 p.m.

Tickets for Friday’s game will be honoured for the new start time.

Riders’ president and CEO Craig Reynolds spoke after the postponement. He said the team does have an in-house meteorologist who works in determining the weather for the game days.

It wasn’t until Thursday that smoke became a concern.

“When that happens, the protocol kicks in and we start joint meetings with the CFL, the visiting team, members of my team, and the CFLPA and we meet regularly,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds said the guidance they had was the smoke was going to clear but then the wind died down.

“As a result, that smoke plume just sat there,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds admitted it was one of the more challenging days he’s had since he’s taken the CEO role.

“Just knowing if we could just get our players to run out of that tunnel for warm up, this place was going to explode,” Reynolds said.

The CFL clash was supposed to get underway at 7 p.m.

According to the CFL’s weather policy, “if the Air Quality Health Index (AQHI+) reaches 8 or above (as per official metrics provided by Environment Canada) during warmups or the game, the onsite League Representative will enact the league’s air quality procedure, which includes automatically stopping the game and sending teams to their dressing rooms.”

The full weather policy can be found on the CFL website.

Wildfire smoke affected the air quality in Regina, pushing things above an eight. The team announced the kickoff was pushed to 7:45 p.m. at Mosaic Stadium.

The weather quality didn’t improve by 7:30 p.m. so kickoff was once again delayed to an undetermined time. At 10:45 p.m., it was announced the game was postponed to Saturday.

Reynolds said the first thing he thought about was the fans who travelled to the game.

“I grew up an out-of-town fan. I grew up in Foam Lake tonight and then come back tomorrow is just incredible,” Reynolds said. “We’re going to provide some tokens of appreciation for our fans regardless of if they come (Saturday) or not, but for the fans who can’t come, we will certainly take care of them in whatever form that takes whether we can get them to another game or they need a refund, we will accommodate our out of town fans and all of our fans.”

“It’s extremely challenging to do that, extremely challenging for our broadcast partner in TSN, extremely challenging for the Calgary Stampeders to stay overnight for another day and extremely challenging for our fans. That’s not lost on me and I can’t believe our fan base — I was blown away,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds said hotel availability was very limited for the Stamps, with the opposing team looking outside of Regina for hotels and the University of Regina to secure dorm rooms.

“It’s a huge inconvenience for their team because they are split up and they have to adjust that. Our team is helping their equipment team with laundry and everything they need to do to get ready for tomorrow. They were super accommodating,” Reynolds said. “They wanted to get the game played, though, there’s no doubt about that. It’s a huge inconvenience to have to scramble the way they did but they are doing it and I give them full credit for that.”

Reynolds said there are a bunch of logistical issues when it comes to postponing the game, including security and concessions.

“They plan for a single game’s worth of food and concessions and so that sort of happened tonight because our fans were here for three hours. Now at 2 p.m., we have to put on another game and have some level of concessions,” Reynolds said. “We’ve had early conversations and we think we should be OK but it is a challenge and we haven’t gotten all the way through with the conversations we need to have.”

Saskatchewan came into the game with a 4-0 record while Calgary was sporting a 3-1 record. The winner of the game would have been in first place in the CFL West Division early this season.