The Saskatchewan Roughriders will conduct their last full practice on Thursday, before the Banjo Bowl in Winnipeg Saturday afternoon.
A lot of question marks seem to be surrounding the team after suffering their first loss of the season Sunday, in the Labour Day Classic.
Including the status of Micah Johnson, Ed Gainey and Loucheiz Purifoy.
Head Coach Craig Dickenson told the team this week that if need be, they’ll execute the next man up mentality.
“Yeah, we’re concerned about them,” Dickenson said on Wednesday. “We didn’t do hardly anything on Tuesday, so we didn’t really know what they were capable of doing, today (Wednesday) we turned it up a little bit and they weren’t able to finish, so we’ll see how it goes.” “I told the guys in our meeting that’s football, and it’s next man up mentality, it always has been and it always will be,” Dickenson added.
Johnson suffered an ankle injury against Ottawa in week three, both Gainey and Purifoy were banged up this past Sunday.
Meanwhile the front seven know that stopping Bombers running back Andrew Harris, will again be key, Harris ran for 95 yards in Sunday’s Labour Day Classic.
Riders defensive lineman Jonathan Woodard, said to be successful the defense will need to be more organized on Saturday.
“I think we really just need to be more in sync as a unit,” Woodard said. “There were plays where one aspect of the defense was in a good position, but other aspects were there, like not fitting in the right gap, or just missing an assignment or something like that,” he added.
On the offensive side of the ball, Riders RB William Powell, hopes the team is able to push through Winnipeg’s strong defensive game.
“They’re a great team and they have a great defense, we’ve got to be executing on all cylinders, we wasn’t executing like we usually are, we got to step that up if we want to win this week,” Powell said.
The Riders face the Blue Bombers in the Banjo Bowl Saturday afternoon at 2:00 p.m. on 620 CKRM, pre-game coverage will begin at 11:00 a.m..
