O’Day working on getting players to town, cutting roster to 100

The wheels are in motion to get players into training camp with the Saskatchewan Roughriders.

General manager Jeremy O’Day said Wednesday he and the football operations staff have been busy making travel plans for their players since it was announced Monday the CFL would begin play on Aug. 5.

Training camps are set to begin on July 10.

“We’re super-excited and elated that we’re going to get back on the field and play football,” O’Day said. “I’m happy for the players first of all who have gone through a lot of challenging times without playing, and certainly our staff and our fans. We’re happy to be back and do what we do.”

But while O’Day is working on that, he also has some decisions to make ahead of camp.

Only 100 players are allowed to participate due to COVID-19 guidelines. According to the Roughriders’ roster page on their website, they have 114 players signed.

“We’re definitely going to have to make some adjustments to our roster prior to camp so that’s what we’ve been doing over the past number of days,” O’Day said.

“It is a little bit tricky because things are happening all at once here where we’re booking travel for our players and making sure that our players are committed to playing.”

He expects some players may decide to not play this season — something similar to previous years.

“With what’s gone on this past year and a half, we definitely expect that to be the case. We will have some players that choose to move on from football here before training camp, but all you can do is just be kind of prepared for that,” O’Day said.

O’Day said the Roughriders have been encouraging all of their players to get vaccinated, but it is ultimately their choice to do so.

“We’ve supplied them with education plans (and) we’ve had education sessions on the vaccination where we’ve actually had our doctors on the education sessions,” O’Day said.

He said the team wants to do everything it can to mitigate the risk of COVID possibly making its way into the locker room.

“Usually in a normal year, we’re worried about injuries and normal stuff that have to do with football, but we’re going to have to be very precautionary and very safe and follow all the protocols that are put in front of us so that we can make sure it doesn’t get in the building and make sure our guys are staying safe,” O’Day said.

“The answer is the more guys that are vaccinated, the better chance we have of being successful of that.”

With no pre-season, the Roughriders are exploring the opportunity to have a controlled scrimmage with another team.

“I don’t think it’s hard to figure out which team it will be,” said O’Day, likely referring to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers — Saskatchewan’s nearest geographical rival. “It’d be great from an evaluation standpoint to see our guys compete against another team.”

And while it has been more than 560 days since the players last played a CFL game, expectations still remain high for when training camp starts.

“They’re competing against players that were in the same exact position. We don’t have any excuses for why we won’t play well because everyone’s in the same boat,” said O’Day, whose team opens the season Aug. 6 against the visiting B.C. Lions.

“We’re hoping our guys did the best they could to keep themselves in shape … We won’t have any excuses when we hit the field and in Week 1 we will be ready to go.”