The CFL is back to Halifax

ARCHITECTURE 49 AND ELLISDON—Schooners Sports and Entertainment stadium concept for their proposed CFL stadium build in Halifax, N.S.

The CFL will arrange a regular-season match in the Nova Scotia capital where Toronto Argonauts will play against Saskatchewan Roughriders. The event will take place at Huskies Stadium at Saint Mary’s University on the 25th of July with the Argos being the host. No regular-season matches have ever been held at Saint Mary’s before. The only event there hosted by CFL was an exhibition contest 15 years ago.

The past 4 Touchdown Atlantic games took place in Moncton, New Brunswick. A year ago, the Montreal Alouettes won the game against Toronto with a 6 point difference while over 10 000 fans were watching live from Croix-Bleue Medavie Stadium seats. By the way, the maximum number of seats in the arena can be increased up to 20 000, but probably there was no need for it in 2019.

Just like in 2019, SSE will support the game this year as well. A month ago, Halifax Regional Municipality supported the idea of giving a single donation in the amount of $20m to a suggested CFL-accommodating arena insofar as it was situated at a site other than Shannon Park. SSE had chosen a 19-acre site at Shannon Par, a surplus military site in Dartmouth, for a $100m arena.

A Shannon Park recommendation report doesn’t include any ways to get fans to and from the place and the site would require a large number of additional finances to solve the problem and make the arena easy to reach.

Randy Ambrosie has stayed optimistic about Halifax being added to the list of franchises by CFL, yet has expressed more than once it’s dependent upon a reasonable arena being constructed in the biggest city in Atlantic Canada.

2020’s Touchdown Atlantic will highlight two groups that completed at the furthest edges of the range last season.

Toronto missed the CFL end-of-the-season games for a second consecutive year. That even caused a small betting-crisis which later was compensated and balanced out with free slots Canada residents were gifted, to get back to gambling sites. Meanwhile, the Argos ended up on the third place in the East Division standings with a 5-15 score, with 3 of those successes coming against the least successful Ottawa Redblacks.

Saskatchewan ended up in first place in the West Division with a 13-5 record. QB Cody Fajardo was one of the final competitors for the CFL’s remarkable player grant after becoming the group’s passing head with more than 4000 yards.

Saskatchewan’s season, however, finished with a 7-point-difference home misfortune to the inevitable Gray Cup-champion Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

Toronto is now being coached by Ryan Dinwiddie, who in the past was a mentor for QBs with the Calgary Stampeders. Toronto got rid of their old lead coach Corey Chamblin after only one season in the activity.

Toronto will host a home game at BMO Field this season to take part in this challenge. This will be the fourth Touchdown Atlantic game for the Argos, who played in the debut challenge – a 16-16 presentation tie with Hamilton in 2005.

Toronto had the least number of fans on stadiums, with the average 10552 spectators in 6 home matches. Another hosted event was the Touchdown Atlantic battle in Moncton and they just didn’t give any information about spectators.

Saskatchewan was one of the league’s top ties. The Riders found the middle value of in excess of 30,000 onlookers at Mosaic Stadium and twice pulled in over 33,000 fans to their games.