The Saskatchewan Roughriders have never repeated as Grey Cup champions and\u00a0general manager Jeremy O’Day hopes the chance to go back-to-back might help pending free agents stay with the Green and White.<\/p>\n
“Not to get too far ahead of ourselves, but\u00a0there’s already a lot of talk about being the first team to repeat.\u00a0I think that every team that wins says the same thing, but it’s never been done here before,” O’Day said. “There’s a little bit of added motivation there to our players; being the first team to do it here would be special.”<\/p>\n
The Riders won the franchise’s\u00a0fifth Grey Cup championship when Saskatchewan\u00a0defeated the Montreal Alouettes 25-17. The Roughriders captured the CFL championship in 1966, 1989, 2007 and 2013 to go along with 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“After we knocked down that last pass, I don’t want to say I blacked out, but it was chaos,\u201d O\u2019Day recalled. \u201cWe wanted to get down on the field as soon as possible because we were upstairs,\u00a0you realize that the season’s over, but you realize that you won the championship. It’s elation, it’s excitement, a little bit of relief, lots of happiness.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
O\u2019Day\u00a0explained\u00a0what happened after the Grey Cup and the balancing act of enjoying the moment and still working.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s some celebration that everyone is well aware of. I think it’s important,\u00a0these guys work so hard in what they do,\u00a0to get the opportunity to celebrate a championship that doesn’t come around very often\u201d O\u2019Day said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen you have the parade,\u00a0the next day hits, you’re having exit meetings with the players, and their contracts are up. You’re trying to give them the information that you can and\u00a0make sure they understand\u00a0we want them to be back. Now we’re a week out, and we’re already back at it, so it flips pretty quickly. The coaches need some well-deserved time off, but for us in football ops, we got to keep working.”<\/p>\n
Historically for O’Day, it was his fourth Grey Cup win after\u00a0winning\u00a0his first two as a player: in 1997 with the Toronto Argonauts and\u00a02007 with the Riders. The next one came in 2013 as an assistant general manager with Saskatchewan.<\/p>\n