Wray Morrison's Blog

Riders quarterback Darian Durant said something that caught my attention on Wednesday. He said the majority of people who were critical of the football team after last Saturday's loss to Edmonton "have never played a down of football in their lives." He's right. However, their opinion is still valuable and still matters. Those fans, and for that matter the media that covers the team, have the right to try assess why a team that won just one game defeated a 5 and 2 Rider football club last Saturday.  

Fan behaviour in this province intrigues me. Roughrider supporters find the sting of losing to the Calgary Stampeders too much to bare. The healthy rivalry between the 2007 Grey Cup champions and the '08 champs is a great thing. Only in Saskatchewan would fans be still be ticked about a loss to Calgary that happened five days earlier. However, that's the reality. The passion for the Green and White from the fans is unlike anywhere else.

Riders coach Ken Miller displayed a change in culture within the Saskatchewan Roughriders organization on Tuesday. When discussing the play of defensive ends Luc Mullinder and Brent Hawkins from Canada Day against Montreal, Miller said: "They are going to mature in to the roles they have now, so I expect more". Wow! You'll notice the coach doesn't defend players for marginal play like some previous coaches have, but called it like he saw it. That level of accountability has led to two Grey Cup appearances in three seasons, home playoff dates and division titles.

Congratulations to Glen Suitor and Jamie Nye for the first edition of The Green Zone on News Talk Radio. Darian Durant and George Reed were among the guests on Saturday's first show. This will be a terrific addition to the weekend lineup on News Talk CJME and CKOM.

My Canadiens (by mine, I mean the team I cheer for) suffered a beat down at the hands of the Flyers in game one of the eastern conference final Sunday night (6-0). I must say one of the highlights of the game for me was that Flyer crowd singing the "Na Na, Hey Hey, Good Bye" song to the Canadiens with about 10 mintues to go in the third period. That made me laugh. That Philly crowd is great. They gave Habs fans a dose of their own medicine.