Yates Cup preview

The McMaster Marauders are spoiling us. Saturday they’ll be going after their third OUA football championship in 4 years when they host the Guelph Gryphons. These championship appearances should not be taken for granted. And the opponent, the Gryphons, are not to be taken lightly. Well, the Marauders are not taking the Gryphons lightly.

The Yates Cup is up for grabs.

And while both contending coaches were within a few feet of it on Thursday, superstition got the best of them, and neither one would touch it.

At the University of Guelph, the mere utterance of the word Yates has been banned.

Guelph Gryphons Head Coach Stu Lang: “We don’t use the ‘Y’ word around here.”

We don’t know if regular-season starting quarterback Jazz Lindsey has been abiding by the embargo or if the shoulder injury he suffered last weekend against Western will force the Gryphons to give rookie pivot James Roberts the first start of his collegiate career.

Lang: “Well, I can’t tell you that. But we’re confident in both.”

Roberts got the job done last week in a lop-sided win over the reigning Yates Cup champs from Western.

McMaster Head Coach Stefan Ptaszek: “Mr. Roberts is a talented kid. Made plays, won them and got them to a Yates Cup. Pretty impressive for a freshman.”

Mac knows who they’ll be starting, and Marshal Ferguson says he’ll have his hands full with Guelph’s defense: “They really don’t have a weak link, but there’s nothing wrong with that. When you get to this point I wouldn’t expect to see anything else. That’s not the way football works. We’ll find ways to attack it and get this thing done.”

In the first game of the 2014 season, McMaster rallied from being down 24 to 9 in the third quarter, to beat Guelph 34-27 in overtime.

They both finished the season with seven wins and a single loss, and statistically, they are also comparable. But McMaster has one major advantage. They know how to win the Yates Cup, and have done it twice in the last three years.

Lang: “This is a team we admire or want to be like, to have that consistent success. This is an opportunity to see how far we’ve come as a football program over the last couple years.”

Kick off is at 1 pm Saturday at Ron Joyce Stadium.