Vanier Cup glory

QUEBEC CITY – The No. 2 Calgary Dinos and the No. 4 Queen’s Gaels meet in Saturday’s Desjardins Vanier Cup – a match-up few would have predicted just a week ago, let alone in the pre-season.

Kickoff is at noon local, 10 a.m. MT at Université Laval’s PEPS Stadium

 in Quebec City, live on TSN and Radio-Canada (French).

THE MATCH-UP
It is the first meeting between Calgary and Queen’s since the 1983 Vanier Cup at Varsity Stadium in Toronto, where the Dinos won their first of four national championships with a 31-21 victory. The quarterback in ’83 was Hec Crighton winner Greg Vavra, who is the offensive coordinator with the Dinos in 2009 and mentors another Hec-nominated pivot, Erik Glavic. The 1983 national championship game is the only previous meeting between the two storied CIS football programs.

BACK TO THE DANCE
Calgary makes its first appearance in the Vanier Cup since 1995, a 54-24 defeat of Western Ontario. Other appearances came in 1975 (loss to Ottawa), 1983 (defeated Queen’s), 1985 (defeated

 Western Ontario), 1988 (defeated Saint Mary’s), and 1993 (lost to Toronto). Saturday will mark the first game against an Ontario-based team for the Dinos since that 1995 Vanier Cup title.

Until the 2008 season, the ’95 Vanier Cup was the last playoff game the Calgary program had won. The Dinos defeated Simon Fraser for the Canada West title last season before falling 59-10 to eventual champion Laval in the Uteck Bowl at PEPS Stadium in Quebec City – so the 2009 national championship game will mark the second straight year the Dinos have played on the turf at Université Laval.

The Dinos are winners of 10 straight games, with their only loss of the season coming by one point in overtime Sept. 4 in Saskatchewan when a two-point convert attempt was unsuccessful. In compiling just the third 7-1 season in school history and a trip to the national title game, Calgary has averaged 39.8 points per game, outscored its opponents 438-240, and broke or tied four team offensive records: total offence, first downs, completion percentage, and touchdowns (39, tied with 1995).

 ROAD WARRIORS
The Dinos are in the midst of a record-breaking road trip, brought about because of the CIS Bowl schedule and complications surrounding Sunday’s Grey Cup game at their home field, McMahon Stadium in Calgary. The team departed Calgary after practice last Tuesday, Nov. 17, flying overnight to Halifax to prepare for last week’s Uteck Bowl against Saint Mary’s. Following their semi-final triumph, the Dinos loaded onto buses and headed west for Quebec City, arriving at the host hotel

 late Sunday night. After Saturday’s game, the team will bus to Montreal on Sunday from where they will fly home Monday morning after spending 13 nights on the road.

Travel is certainly something the Dinos are used to, this being the team’s third straight game and fourth in five weeks on the road. Road trips in conference play this season included two eight-hour bus trips to Saskatchewan to face the Huskies in Saskatoon and the Rams in Regina, a flight to Vancouver to visit UBC, and a relatively short three-hour trip north to face Alberta in Edmonton. All told, when the team returns to Calgary on Monday they will have travelled more than 13,400 km in 2009 and have played in every time zone in the nation, save Newfoundland. Including the Vanier Cup, the Dinos’ last four games of the year will be played in four different time zones.

THE COACHES
While the Dinos have been strangers of late to the Vanier Cup, head coach Blake Nil certainly is not. Nill, the 2009 Canada West coach of the year, took over the Calgary program in 2006 and in just four seasons has made three playoff appearances, won two conference titles, appeared in two Bowl games, and qualified for the Vanier Cup. He has two national championships to his credit in 2001

 and 2002 with Saint Mary’s University and makes his fifth appearance on the sidelines in a Vanier Cup game. He last competed for the title in a 2003.

Nill and his Queen’s counterpart, Pat Sheahan, are the first two coaches in CIS history to lead two different programs to Vanier Cup appearances. Sheahan led the Concordia Stingers to a Vanier Cup appearance in 1998 before taking over at Queen’s in 2000. Sheahan was last season’s CIS coach of the year.