Patrick Doyle/CFL.ca
OTTAWA — After the seven-month wait between the Grey Cup and now, the Calgary Stampeders and Ottawa REDBLACKS will have to wait at least another week to finally settle the score.
The two clubs fought to a 31-31 stalemate in a rematch of the 104th Grey Cup on Friday night at TD Place, leaving both sides feeling a little bit empty-handed.
While the REDBLACKS let a 14-point fourth-quarter lead dissolve, the Stampeders, after an interception by Jamar Wall on the first possession of overtime, would have needed only a 37-yard field goal from Rene Paredes to strike one off in the win column. But Paredes’ kick missed and instead, last November’s Grey Cup participants will split the point, notching at least one indecisive result for the second season in a row.
“They’re a good team,” REDBLACKS head coach Rick Campbell said after the game. “We had a chance to get a win here tonight, it didn’t work out, we got a tie… we’re not happy with that other than the fact that this one point could be valuable later in the year in the standings.”
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Friday night’s Grey Cup rematch failed to produce a winning team (The Canadian Press)
On the night that Henry Burris was on hand to help unveil Ottawa’s Grey Cup Championship banner, Burris’ understudy in Trevor Harris enjoyed a productive night at the helm of the REDBLACKS’ offence. Harris threw for 300 yards and three touchdowns on 33-of-45 passing with nearly half of his completions — 16 to be exact — landing in the hands of Brad Sinopoli and Greg Ellingson.
A slow-starting contest with only three points in the opening 15 minutes, the duel between Harris and last year’s Most Outstanding Player Bo Levi Mitchell was must-see TV. Mitchell threw for 376 yards while the two teams combined for 853 yards of total offence.
At the end of the day, penalties and turnovers proved costly for the REDBLACKS — two of football’s cardinal sins.
Ottawa was penalized 14 times for 126 yards while it was Brendan Gillanders’ fumble with seven minutes left in the game that got the ball rolling on the Stampeders’ 14-point comeback.
The REDBLACKS took more penalties and turned the football over one more time than their West Division counterpart, battles they’ll need to claim on their own in next week’s rematch.
“If we can eliminate half the penalties and do a couple of more things well and make teams beat us and not beat ourselves, that’s what we’re looking for to improve,” said Campbell.
For Campbell’s squad, Saturday is a treatment and rest day before getting back to work Sunday. The REDBLACKS came out of Friday’s contest relatively unscathed by injury — injuries to William Powell and Kenny Shaw aren’t believed to be serious — and will have to shape up for a quick turnaround back to Calgary.
The positive for the REDBLACKS is they won’t have long to lament what went wrong on Friday.
“It was there for the taking,” said Campbell. “I told our guys that we have the makings to be a good football team. We’re a work in progress. Calgary’s a very good football team, there’s a reason they’ve won a lot of games but we’ll have to tee it up next game and away we go.”
” It’s a long season,” he added. “This is only one of 18 games so we need to make sure we put it behind us and get emotionally ready for the next one on Thursday.”
