Riders head coach Craig Dickenson answers questions before the team heads out to Hamilton for the 2019 season opener. (June 11/19)
Like every CFL fan, Saskatchewan Roughriders Coach Craig Dickenson, is pumped about the upcoming 14 game season that gets underway August 5th.
Dickenson also knows with no pre-season games to be played, that training camp, which opens July 11th, will be a whole new animal from seasons before.
“We’re going to have a Green and White game which is not anything new, but we are going to try and make camp a little more competitive and a little more game like in terms of the transition of going back and forth,” he said. “We’ve looked at a couple of different scenarios of how we can get guys ready and simulate games as best as we can with no pre-season, it’ll be a challenge,” Dickenson said.
While it will be a new challenge for the Riders, Dickenson also said he’s happy to know that training camp will stretch a little longer than normal.
The Riders first game will be Friday, August 6th when they host B.C. on 620 CKRM.
It’s the first of four straight at home to begin the season, with a bye-week sprinkled in as well.
Picking up right where we left off 😤 #CFLSchedule pic.twitter.com/H9PFHKaoHL
— Saskatchewan Roughriders (@sskroughriders) June 15, 2021
Dickenson said with a large amount of home games to start the year, it goes with out saying a quick start will be vital.
“We want to certainly be as good as we can and focus on ourselves during training camp, but there will be two or three days there where we’ll sit down and spend dome time looking at the B.C. Lions, looking at Hamilton, and looking at Ottawa and trying to at least get a sense for what they’re going to do going into those first three games, because you’re not going to have any tape to watch on anybody,” Dickenson said.
That’s the coaching side of Dickenson, but as a fan, he’s just as excited as the rest of us to see the CFL return.
“I miss the atmosphere of the ball park on game day,” he said. “It’s a really special thing, many people know that I like to ride my bike into work, and there’s always been something special about coming in on game day, even if you’re playing at 7:00 p.m. I usually come in around 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. and already there’s just a buzz in the stadium that you can feel, it’ unlike anything else.”
Listen below to Coach Craig Dickenson’s entire conversation on the SportsCage, Tuesday afternoon:
