The Saskatchewan Roughriders were making no apologies for crashing the B.C. Lions party Saturday night.
The Rider defence manhandled the Lions in their home-opening game in their new outdoor stadium and quarterback Darian Durant riddled the B.C. secondary as Saskatchewan rolled to a 37-18 CFL victory.
"Our goal was to come here and spoil the party," said Durant, who threw one touchdown pass and ran for another.
"The first half was kind of shaky for us. The second half we put it together and dominated, so to speak."
Durant completed 18 of 29 passes for 252 yards and shredded the Lions defence with big passes. He hit Chris Getzlaf, Andy Fantuz and Weston Dressler on long gains to set up scoring plays in the first half.
With the Lions on their heels, Wes Cates delivered the knockout blow, rushing for 93 yards on 16 carries and a touchdown. Overall, Saskatchewan had nine plays of 19 yards or more.
"Sorry they had their home-opener and everything, but we had a job to do," grinned Cates. "We came in and got it done."
The Rider defence faced a lot of questions after giving up 51 points in last week's overtime win against Montreal. Defensive end Brent Hawkins supplied some of the answers.
Hawkins knocked Casey Printers, the Lions' starting quarterback, out of the game with a sack near the end of the first half. He then scooped up a fumble in the fourth quarter and ran 47 yards for a touchdown.
"All the mistakes we made last week as a defence, we worked our asses off in practice," said Hawkins. "We wanted a big game."
The Rider defence collected four sacks and had the Lion quarterbacks running for their lives most of the night.
"That's what Saskatchewan does, they bring pressure and they like to get after the quarterback," said Travis Lulay, who replaced Printers in the second half.
"They like to vary what they do. They were giving us multiple looks."
Lulay finished the completing nine of 15 passes for 197 yards and a touchdown pass.
Printers hobbled off the field with a thigh bruise. He watched the second half, in uniform, from the sidelines.
"I could have played but you risk making it worse," said Printers, who completed 10 of 14 passes for 120 yards and a touchdown.
Durant softened up the Lions with a lot of pin-point passes.
He hit Dressler with a 29-yard pass which ended in a field goal. The strong-armed quarterback also connected on a 41-yard play with Getzlaf. That set up a 14-yard Durant touchdown run.
"We wanted to try and attack them down field a little bit," said Durant. "They got some guys in different position in the secondary. We wanted to test them out a little bit."
After taking a 20-10 early in the third quarter, the Riders turned to Cates to grind out yards along the ground.
"We just took what the defence gave us," said Cates. "We know we can hurt teams in the air or on the ground.
"We had some things going well in the air in the first half, then we wanted to chew up a little more clock. We were clicking so we just kept pounding it."
The Riders improved their record to 2-0 while the Lions are 1-1.
Durant threw a four-yard touchdown pass to Prechae Rodriguez and scored himself. Cates scampered in from two yards out.
Luca Congi hit on field goals of 31, 28 and 32 yards.
Slotback Geroy Simon scored both Lions touchdowns. He grabbed a 32-yard pass from Printers in the first quarter, then connected with Lulay on a 92-yard play late in the game.
Paul McCallum hit on a 16-yard field goal and added a 45-yard single.
A sellout crowd of 27,528 came out on a warm summer night for the first regular-season game at Empire Field. With the Riders in town, dots of green jerseys could be seen in the sea of Lions' orange in the crowd.
The temporary stadium was built on the site of the old Empire Stadium in East Vancouver for a cost of $14.4 million. The change in venue was necessary because of construction of a new $458-million retractable roof at B.C. Place Stadium in downtown Vancouver.
Wally Buono, the Lions coach and general manager, was frustrated with the mistakes his team made. B.C. was called for 16 penalties for 116 yards.
McCallum also opted to fake a punt and ran on a third-and-long. He was tackled short of the first down. The Riders took over and scored a touchdown on the next series,
"We hurt ourselves in a lot of ways," said Buono. "And they beat us in a lot of ways.
"When you add the two, usually it's not a good ending."
LIONS PAWS -- It was the first regular season CFL game played outdoors in Vancouver since Nov. 6, 1982. ...B.C.'s 15-point win over Edmonton last week was the Lions' largest margin of victory in the previous 14 games. ...Defensive end Brent Johnson extended his consecutive games played streak to 152.
