A CHANGE OF SEASONS

Canadian game is in a good place on marquee weekend. Now challenge gets tougher.

- DAMIEN COX

Jonathan Jones, left, and the Argonauts will renew hostilities with Trevor Hoyte and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats at Tim Hortons Field on Monday.

Labour Day weekend always marks the unofficial halfway point of the Canadian Football League season. Back in the good old days, that would have meant one or more clubs airlifting National Football League players to augment their roster, but it doesn,t quite work like that anymore.

The Canadian league pretty much has to thrive on the basis of rosters built prior to the season commencing in July. For the most part this season, that has been a blessing for the nine-team outfit.

The product, folks, has been very good to excellent, reversing a trend in which the CFL struggled to be consistently entertaining week-to-week. A steadily decreasing fan base was partly the result of that.

In 2024, however, with fanciful notions of a team in Atlantic Canada and a greater international presence seemingly pushed to the side for now, the CFL has produced a lot of good games and more balanced competition. Other than the defending Grey Cup champion Montreal Alouettes, riding an 18-1 streak spanning two seasons, the league is tightly bunched and ferociously competitive.

The second half promises more of the same, or even better.