CFC#48 St. Peter’s Knights and the St. Francis Xavier Coyotes will square off in their second and final regular season match up this Friday Oct. 23 at St. Francis.
The Knights won the first matchup of year 7-0. This game took place in week one of the season and both teams have been working hard to tighten up their play since.
St. Peter’s is looking to remain undefeated and move to 4-0 for the season. St. FX is looking to build on their 12-7 victory last week over St. Mark’s and move to .500 for the first time this year.
Coyotes’ Head Coach Mark Jennings wants his team to put in four solid quarters of physical football. He more interested in his own team’s performance rather than creating a specific game plan to stop the Knights.
“We are more concerned with our own players executing to the best of their abilities. But there are certain tendencies from other teams that we rep in practice that we try to be prepared for,” said Jennings.
Jennings knows that since this is the second time the Knights and Coyotes have faced off this year that both sides will know what to expect from their opponent. He believes it will come down to which team performs better on any given snap.
“There will be more team specific game planning and wrinkles prepared for our final meeting in the City Championships game,” said Jennings.
Jennings won’t be concerned if the Knights pull out another victory on Friday. In past years the Coyotes have played the Knights in two City Championship games. In both cases the team that lost the regular match-up went on to win the final.
“Football in October is fun, but it is how well your team is playing come November that really matters,” said the Coyotes coach.
Instead of developing a precise game plan for stopping the Knights, the Coyotes are focusing on parts of the game they can control.
“Our game plan is always to limit the big play defensively and on special teams. When we do that we are usually successful. Offensively we need to find our rhythm and do a better job of 12 players executing on our base plays,” said Jennings.
The Coyotes and the Knights have the advantage of being the only two Tier 1 teams in Ottawa who declared to play in the OFSSA division. This means that they are guaranteed to be playing in the championship game.
This unique situation means that both teams will be keeping their cards closer to their chest than might normally be the case. Neither team wants to reveal too much before the championship game in a few weeks.
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