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| Noah Picton fires a pass downfield for the Rams. |
If you want to go to the first football game at the new
Mosaic Stadium in Regina, you are going to have to act fast.
The first contest at what will be best known as the new home
of the CFL’s Saskatchewan Roughriders will be a Canadian Interuniversity Sport
football clash between the University of Regina Rams and the University of
Saskatchewan Huskies on Oct. 1 at 2 p.m. The battle between these provincial
rivals is being dubbed “the SaskTel Fall Classic,” because SaskTel jumped in as
a major sponsor.
Individual tickets went on sale July 26 and were available
through the websites and ticket offices of both the Rams and the Roughriders as
well as through Ticketmaster’s site.
On Friday, the Roughriders ticketing team sent out an email
saying 85 per cent of the tickets for this contest have been sold. As this
battle between the Rams and Huskies will be the first test event for new Mosaic
Stadium, capacity has been set at 16,500. New Mosaic Stadium will have a
standard capacity of 33,000, when it is fully operational.
Almost a month ago in this blog, I expressed doubts that
this game would sellout. Both the Rams and Huskies have had numerous promotions
in the past to get past 10,000 in attendance for a game since the Rams joined
the CIS ranks in 1999 but have come up unsuccessful.
The fact 85 per cent of the tickets have already been sold
means a huge congratulations has to be passed on to those involved. That means
just over 14,000 people have tickets for this regular season contest.
Since 1999, the biggest crowd for a university level
football game in Saskatchewan has been hosted by the Huskies, who crammed
12,567 spectators into Griffiths Stadium for the 2006 Vanier Cup. The host
Huskies fell in that national final to the Universite Laval Rouge et Or 13-8.
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| Huskies RB Tyler Chow zips past the Rams defence. |
The match between the Rams and Huskies at new Mosaic on Oct.
1 has obviously benefited from the marketing arms on a number of fronts
including the Rams, Roughriders and SaskTel. Whoever had the original idea of
having the Rams square off against the Huskies at new Mosaic has to be
considered the biggest visionary in this whole process. For the Rams, this has
to been seen as a big coup for them and the University of Regina.
The obvious draw for this game is, of course, the chance to
get the first look at the province’s new state of the art football facility.
The only question left regards how good the competitive
level of this contest will be. Fans of both teams might get a glimpse of that
fact this coming Friday in Saskatoon, as the Huskies host the Rams at 7 p.m. at
Griffiths. With that said, Friday’s clash is the regular season opener for both
sides, and opening day games are usually filled with their share of unexpected occurrences.
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| New Mosaic Stadium under construction back in April. |
The Rams finished the 2015 campaign at 0-8 with that loss.
The Huskies improved to 3-5 to claim the last playoff berth in Canada West. U
of S’s season came to a close with a 37-29 loss in a Canada West semifinal
playoff contest in Calgary against the University of Calgary Dinos.
Both the Rams and Huskies will be improved. Thanks to a
strong recruiting class, the Huskies are probably closer to returning to the
form of achieving a 6-2 regular season record.
No matter where the Rams and Huskies are in the Canada West
standings by Oct. 1, the SaskTel Fall Classic is well on its way to being an
overwhelming success.
If you have any
comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them
to stankssports@gmail.com.
