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National Post

Roughriders' president Reynolds speaks after game postponement due to smoke

Due to poor air quality from wildfire smoke in Regina, the Saskatchewan Roughriders were forced to postpone Friday night's CFL game against the Calgary Stampeders to Saturday. Article content Originally scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday, the two teams will now meet at Mosaic Stadium on Saturday at 2 p.m. in Week 6 of the CFL season. Under the CFL's weather protocol, games cannot be played when the air quality index is higher than eight, which was the case on Friday night. Models are forecasting lower levels on Saturday, which would allow the teams to play. Article content Article content Article content On Friday night, thousands of fans made their way into Mosaic Stadium ahead of the 7 p.m. start only to learn at 5:30 p.m. the game was going to be delayed by 45 minutes. After that deadline passed, another announcement was issued at 7:30 p.m. saying that the delay was being extended with no timeline attached to it. At 10 p.m., the club then said it was going to wait until 10:45 p.m. to make the official call to play at 11:15 p.m. on Friday night or move the game to Saturday at 2 p.m., which was ultimately the decision that was made. Article content Following the announcement, Roughriders president Craig Reynolds met with the media to share his thoughts on how the day played out from the team's perspective, while offering a message to the fans who stuck it out on Friday night and those who can't make it back on Saturday. Article content 'We have a meteorologist that works with us, and we start getting reports on the weather early on in the week, and early on the week, it was looking like a beautiful summer, summer night. Article content Article content 'And it was really kind of (Thursday) where we started getting alert that there was potential for smoke concerns. So when that happens, the protocol kicks in and we start meetings; joint meetings with the CFL, the visiting team, obviously members of my team and the (CFL Players' Association). And we meet regularly, starting really in the early afternoon, when we get a good sense of the models. Article content 'We have an excellent meteorologist team that actually guides us on that and looks at the models of the weather. We dealt with this in the pre-season game (and) their models are really accurate, very accurate. So much so in the pre-season game, we knew exactly when the smoke was going to clear. We set a start time at 8 p.m., we were able to start the game on time at 8 p.m. and it turned to be a beautiful evening.