A New Classic: Touchdown Pacific gets OK Tire Labour Day Weekend started

Well, here we are once again, football fans. But in a place that we’ve never been before.

As OK Tire Labour Day Weekend comes into view, the familiar time-worn and well-honoured battles between the Blue Bombers and Roughriders, the Argos and Ticats, and the Elks and Stampeders are just about at hand.

There will be plenty written and a lot said about those sacred clashes and deservedly so.

But spare some attention for another game this coming weekend – fourth on the Labour Day depth chart of historical significance but first in order of play – as Touchdown Pacific brings us the Ottawa REDBLACKS vs. the BC Lions at Royal Athletic Park in beautiful Victoria, B.C.

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It might not have history on its side but you know what it does have? Lots of intrigue and at least a wee bit of bad blood, thanks to familiarity breeding some contempt.

In a pretty great move by CFL schedule-makers, the Lions and the REDBLACKS met just this past week in Ottawa, providing us with Labour Day opponents who might not have the traditional, mutual distaste the other match-ups offer, but who do have recently sharpened disdain for one another.

We know how the back end of home and homers can really bring out the intensity between opponents and that’s what we’ll have here, one week after Ottawa’s 34-27 victory over the struggling Lions. Four objectionable conduct penalties – two apiece – during that game suggest that they did get under each other’s skin a tad.

But before we get to this weekend’s game, a little history. And there is some here.

Ottawa and BC have played twelve Labour Day Weekend games previously, with BC holding a 10-2 advantage, beating the Rough Riders nine times and the Renegades once.

The Riders won the first clash, back in 1981, 17-7. They won again in 1983 – no small feat as the Lions were a powerhouse that season and had won six straight heading in – by a score of 49-19.

The rest of the series, though, with the Rough Riders and Lions squaring off through the 80’s and 90’s and then again in 2002 when the Renegades were the side repping The Capital, went the way of British Columbia.

As with all the other Labour Day Classics there were some close ones, like the 1993 game won by BC, 25-24. And, again, like all the other LDCs there were blowouts, like that 1983 game. You never know. BC pummelled the Rough Riders in both 1986 and 1988, by scores of 40-10 and 55-16, and then blasted the Renegades in what had up until now been the final Labour Day Weekend meeting between Ottawa and BC, 28-4, with BC quarterback Damon Allen throwing two touchdown passes and rushing for another major.

The Lions won nine in a row to close that chapter of BC/Ottawa holiday weekend meetings.

Now, 22 years later, that paused streak is in great jeopardy, with the REDBLACKS coming into this Saturday’s matchup, clearly, as the favourites against the sliding Lions, losers of five straight games after sprinting out to a 5-1 start.

This is a desperate time for BC, letting slip a chance to get a firm grip on the West division during their slide. They must feel eager to prove that they are not, in fact, merely a middling team in a tightly-clustered group, but rather a serious contender ready to power their way to the finish. Urgency should be easy to find for these Lions.

“It’s exciting,” veteran defensive back T.J. Lee said after the loss in Ottawa, looking ahead. “We get a nice, little revenge game over in our territory.”

The REDBLACKS will want to guard against being satisfied after emerging this season as – right now – the CFL’s second best team after four seasons of competitive drudgery, finishing last in the East each and every one of those four years.

With a record 7-2-1, Ottawa finds itself in second place in the East, five points back of the Montreal Alouettes. With two remaining games against the Als on their schedule, it’s crucial for the REDBLACKS to use this game in hand (Montreal has a bye this week) to get inside four points so they can potentially make those head-to-heads as meaningful as possible.

Just behind Ottawa, the third-place Toronto Argonauts are lurking, three points in arrears with two games against the REDBLACKS coming up in the second half of the season.

In a fight like the one we’re in for in the East, a team would be loath to squander a game they should win and the REDBLACKS – undefeated in six games, now – are likely looking at this one as just that.

“These guys have an extremely strong mindset,” said Ottawa head coach Bob Dyce of his team after their Week 12 win. Touchdown Pacific will serve as a measure of that.

For the Lions, there’s the matter of getting things right ASAP and that includes pressure mounting on their returning prodigal son, quarterback Nathan Rourke.

This will be one of the biggest games, so far, in Rourke’s young career. The 26-year-old native of Victoria has struggled in two starts since returning to the Lions earlier this month, fighting to locate that special sauce that made us all go gaga over him as he went on to win the CFL’s Most Outstanding Canadian Award in 2022.

That’s if he does, in fact, start.

If you’re looking for suspense, you can find it in this game and in the days leading up to it, in BC’s quarterback question.

Is Vernon Adams Jr., out the last three weeks with a knee injury, healthy enough to suit up? If so, will head coach Rick Campbell turn to him instead of Rourke? If Rourke starts and Adams is in uniform, how much time does Campbell give Rourke before feeling compelled to make a switch?

With a cornered Lions team starving for a win and a supremely confident REDBLACKS side determined to stay on track for even bigger things, and with these two having met just a week ago, this Labour Day Weekend matchup has the potential to be a very, very good one.

If it is, and if heroes as well as villains (especially villains) emerge, who knows?

This game might provide us with the same kind of feeling we’ve gotten so often from it’s three established cousins.