One week after a scintillating win to sneak into the Canada West playoffs, the University of Regina start the postseason journey in Winnipeg on Saturday afternoon.
As the fourth seed in the Canada West conference, the 3-5 Rams visit the top seeded University of Manitoba who are 7-1 and have yet to lose at home.
It’s a David vs. Goliath match-up with an opportunity for the Rams to shakeup the Canadian university football world. A Regina win would end longtime Bisons head coach, Brian Dobie's career as he's retiring following a 29-year-run with the program. Rams head coach Mark McConkey told the Sportscage it would be an incredible achievement for his team to be the one to send Dobie out on his last ride.
“I’ve got a lot of respect for Brian. They’re a talented team but we can hang with them. We hung with them [last time]. It was 7-6 at the half and we got stuffed on the goal-line. If we can get up on them and keep playing, we’ll be fine," McConkey said. “We had an awful third quarter. It was really only one quarter and we kept going two-and-out and they scored on two straight drives. That was the game right there.”
The Rams lost 22-13 on a warm night where cramping and other injuries started to pile up on the Rams defence late but Regina still managed to limit Manitoba to its lowest scoring output this season.
The powerful Rams defence matches up well with an exciting Bisons offence and need to deliver a final punch on Saturday for the U of R to have any hopes for advancing to the Hardy Cup.
“It’s going to be a 10-round boxing match and who can deliver the most blows is going to come out,” McConkey said. “We’re more confident now than we were in Week 5.”
A Rams win would set up a road trip to either UBC or the University of Saskatchewan, depending on how the other postseason game plays out.
You can hear Saturday’s Rams playoff game on the CKRM 2 live stream at CKRM.com. The pregame show starts at 12:45 p.m. Saskatchewan time with kickoff to follow at 1 p.m.
