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The Saskatoon Hilltops and Regina Thunder are set to face each other Sunday in the Prairie Football Conference final in Saskatoon.
It’s the third straight season in which the provincial rivals have met for conference supremacy.
The winner of the PFC title then will have the opportunity to compete for the Canadian Bowl, a trophy the Hilltops have won 15 times and the Thunder has won once.
Going into a championship game, there is always a bit of pressure. Add on the fact that you’re playing your rival and the pressure could really stack up.
Hilltops head coach Tom Sargeant said he doesn’t believe his squad is feeling any extra pressure.
“When we started the season, we expected that (Regina) would be in the big game and we wanted to make sure we would be in the big game,” said Sargeant.
The Hilltops have the league’s highest-scoring offence and a defence that has allowed the fewest points in the PFC this season. Sargeant says having that lockdown defence is the key to victory.
“We’ve got to continue to play great defence,” he said. “Our defence has been on point. The Thunder are really good at running the ball … They’ve got a lot of skilled players so defensively we’ve got to be really sharp.”
Sargeant said the best thing about playoff football is nothing from the regular season matters; what matters is what you do to win the game at hand.
“The good thing is when you’ve got the Regina Thunder coming, you can throw out all the stats, all this and that. Who cares about records?” said Sargeant. “You’ve got two real successful programs (and) highly motivated programs that want to just keep living and play another week.”
Sargeant added the coaches try to push that message across to the team every day in meetings and practices.
“It’s about the process, it’s about the grind and right now the grind is, ‘Let’s come out today and have a better practice than we did yesterday,’ ” he said. “That’s the great thing about game day: You always get your report card after 60 minutes and you know if you passed or if you failed.”
A PFC final hasn’t been held in Saskatoon since 2019 and Sargeant says he can’t wait to hear the crowd back up his team.
“In Saskatoon (the crowd) is awesome. They always make a difference,” he said. “When the offence is out there, you want (the fans) to be quiet and when the defence is out there, you want them to be noisy so that opposition offence has struggles hearing and communicating,”
Thunder head coach Scott MacAulay said he’s excited to play the Hilltops in Saskatoon.
“We love playing in Saskatoon. It’s a great stadium (and) it’s a great environment,” said MacAulay.
MacAulay added that the rivalry makes for even more excitement but it does add a little bit of pressure.
“There’s always pressure,” he said. “The whole rivalry between Regina and Saskatoon, the Hilltops and the Thunder, and Sarge and his coaching staff and my coaching staff — it’s a heated rivalry anytime they get together and it’s a lot of fun.”
MacAulay added that it’s going to be important to be on point early Sunday.
“Anytime that you can get out to a fast start, it really gets the other team to start to question themselves,” he said. “(It can) also get them away from maybe their original game plan.”
The Hilltops won both meetings in the regular season — 36-6 on Sept. 9 and 19-10 on Sept. 30 — and MacAulay said his team has to take what it learned from the first two games and apply them to this game.
“You also have to be more worried about the next game and the next play and just have that mentality that we’ll use this learning to help guide us,” he said.
The Thunder had the second-best offence and second-best defence this year in the PFC and MacAulay said it’s important for the defence to keep it up.
“The keys to success for this game for us is to be physical, come out there and be excited to be playing in such a big game and having the opportunity to represent this great city of Regina,” said MacAulay. “I think if our guys bring our physical presence right from the get-go and also understand that they need to execute at the same time, good things could happen.”
Kickoff is scheduled for 1 p.m. at SMF Field in Saskatoon.