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Published Oct 16, 2025 • 4 minute read
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Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Brady Oliveira is tackled by the Saskatchewan Roughriders defence during the Labour Day Classic game at Mosaic Stadium on Sunday. Photo by KAYLE NEIS /Postmedia NetworkArticle content
They landed their first punch to the jaw in the Labour Day Classic and followed that up with an uppercut that knocked out Zach Collaros and left the Blue Bombers reeling in the Banjo Bowl.
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On Friday in Winnipeg, the 12-4 Saskatchewan Roughriders can put the 8-8 Bombers on the playoff ropes by completing the season sweep.
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Don’t think that wouldn’t taste sweet for Gang Green, no matter which players they’re bringing and which ones they’re leaving in Regina.
Because the Riders simply hate the Bombers.
Just ask Winnipeg receiver Jerreth Sterns, who spent the previous two seasons with Saskatchewan.
“It was close to it, if not (hate),” Sterns was saying on Thursday. “It was definitely a strong dislike of the Bombers when I was there. They were always winning, and they knocked us off a few times, beat us pretty bad a couple of times in the Banjo Bowl. So it was always just trying to get them back.”
Not just get them back, but knock them off the pedestal they’ve been perched on for five years running.
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The Blue and Gold’s fistful of consecutive Grey Cup appearances has left black-and-blue marks all over the Riders: in three of the last five West Finals, the Bombers have knocked the Riders out cold.
Sterns was there for the last one. Ask him what it was like as a Rider playing Winnipeg and he breaks into a grin.
“You always get a little more juice when you play those guys,” he said. “It’s the same way now when we play Saskatchewan.”
Friday marks Sterns’ first game against his old team, as a shoulder injury kept him out of the first two meetings.
There’s no bad blood for his old team, he says. He doesn’t need any as motivation, anyway.
But he has a pretty good idea what the Riders are thinking, and it’s not that they can coast through this one because they’ve clinched first place.
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“I don’t think they’re worried about if they have first place or not,” he said.
Even outside of Saskatchewan, there’s a desire to see the Bombers fall. Teams around the league, particularly in the West, are sick and tired of seeing them in the Grey Cup.
With this year’s championship game in the Manitoba capital, the taste of this particular topple would be even sweeter.
“You’re a rookie coming into the league, you hear about the Winnipeg way,” Bomber linebacker Tony Jones said, recalling his first two years in Edmonton. “When I came into the league, Winnipeg was the team everyone wanted to beat. That’s where the hate comes from. They don’t like the team that’s consecutively in the Grey Cup.”
For players who had their own Cup dreams yanked out of their hands on the second-last Sunday of the season, that hate is only amplified.
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“We send them home multiple years… and that’s what they want to do to us,” Jones said of Saskatchewan. “They want to try to eliminate us from getting into the post-season. This is the biggest rivalry in the CFL. We can fairly say they don’t like us, we don’t like them.
“It’s going to be a game, no matter who dresses up.”
It always is.
Shenanigans from the last two meetings hit at the pockets of a few players, most notably Saskatchewan’s C.J. Reavis (for his hit on Collaros and for a social media post) and Winnipeg’s Pat Neufeld for a unnecessary hit in the Banjo Bowl.
Player fines and the sight of Collaros prone on the turf are like bird migration when these teams meet: they seem to happen every year.
The chance to clip Winnipeg’s wings before the playoffs would be mouthwatering for any team.
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“Everybody’s aiming to knock us off,” is how cornerback Demerio Houston put it. “Somebody else is wanting to take that crown and represent the West for the Grey Cup. But we’re not going to let it happen. We still have a chance and we’re going to do whatever we need to do to stay at the top.”
Houston doesn’t mind feeling hated. Comes with the territory, he says.
“I feel like we’re hated by the whole league. Whoever our opponent is, they’re going to hate us and we’re going to hate them. It’s part of the game.”
It’s not a part Mike O’Shea thinks about, though.
“I wouldn’t spend any time thinking about that,” the head coach said. “We’re always focused on what we’re doing, and don’t pay attention to what the other team may be feeling. Because what they feel is really irrelevant.”
It may be irrelevant to him.
But how it unfolds on Friday will be right in his face.
His team, already wobbling, can’t afford to take another shot or two to the kisser.
Or it can kiss its season goodbye.
paul.friesen@kleinmedia.ca
X: @friesensunmedia
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