Riderville.com
Welcome Home!
Rider Nation will turn the key and take possession of the home of the future for the Saskatchewan Roughriders on Saturday night.
Yes, there have been test events and a pre-season game already played at the new home but this one will be different. The full show will be on display and not only to those in the park but for the first time Saskatchewan gets to show off the new mecca of football to nation on TSN.
Old Mosaic or ‘historic’ Mosaic Stadium, as it’s being referred to, was a place many said you had to go watch a game. It wasn’t for its comfort or its state of the art features, it was the character of the place that drew people in. The multi-coloured seats that turned green on game day and staked claim to the CFL’s greatest fans.
Game day was a party unlike any other across Canada.
Now, it’s just down the street and you’ll be a lot more comfortable enjoying it.
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A look inside the Riders’ new facility, which hosts its first regular season game Saturday (Riderville.com)
But this new home of Rider Pride has been a long time coming for the fans. The idea has been floating around for over a decade as the team started to climb out of financial trouble and the province was starting to grow.
Could we do it?
There were the naysayers, who said there is no way Saskatchewan would build a state of the art facility. That’s just not what we do. The blue collar province was used to just putting another coat of paint on and putting a bucket under a leak until the rain stopped.
A new stadium seemed like too big a dream for some.
The City of Regina, the Roughriders and province weren’t going to stand around and wait.
They held a news conference with a model stadium with a retractable roof that blew Rider fans away. All of sudden, this far fetched idea had a vision for Saskatchewan to look at.
The price tag was massive but more concepts started popping up from different groups, pledging that they wanted to be on it.
Then the stadium discussion started to turn from not IF Saskatchewan could do it, but when?
Eventually, the design and location, the price dropped, and the ideas on how to finance everything to make this once-day-dream a reality started.
The final decision, this will be a stadium for the fans, paid for, in part, by the fans.
$100 million of the final $278 million dollars would be paid off through a stadium levy on tickets. A user fee, in simple terms.
So when Rider Nation calls this ‘home’, they mean it because they’re helping pay for it.
Right now, the new stadium is like that brand new house.
You just left a place that had memories. You just said goodbye and locked the door and handed over the keys and fans can still walk by the ‘historic’ stadium for now and remember the blackout game or the labour day classics or that little yellow football you caught as a kid.
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While the new stadium opens Saturday, memories of the old Mosaic will never die (Arthur Ward/CFL.ca)
Fans are leaving behind the place they sat for years or decades to watch the best and the worst of what Rider football had to offer for generations and there were those who handed down tickets from generation to generation.
But it was time. Time for something new.
And when Rider nation walks in, they’ll have no memories there. But the excitement supersedes the lack of memories.
There will be curiosity on what could happen in this new place. What new memories can be made? Who the next legend of Roughrider football is going to make a name for themselves?
Kids will start to tell those stories that their first game was at the new stadium and there will be more generations to fall in love with the Green and White and Canadian football.
Games will be won on last-second field goals, dramatic losses and more Labour Day Classics will be held.
Saturday will be when those new memories will start to be made and this new place will start to feel like home.
