Saskatchewan Roughriders


The Saskatchewan Roughriders are a professional Canadian football team based in Regina, Saskatchewan. The Roughriders compete in the Canadian Football League as a member club of the league's West Division. The Roughriders were founded in 1910 as the Regina Rugby Club. Although Saskatchewan was not the first team to play football in Western Canada, the club has maintained an unbroken organizational continuity since their founding. The Roughriders are the fourth-oldest professional gridiron football team in existence today. The Roughriders are both the oldest professional sports team still in existence that continuously has been based in Western Canada and the oldest in North America to continuously have been based west of St. Louis, Missouri. The team changed their name to the Regina Roughriders in 1924, and to the current moniker in 1946. The Roughriders played their home games at historic Taylor Field from 1936 to 2016; in 2017, the team moved to the newly constructed Mosaic Stadium at Evraz Place.
The team draws fans from across Saskatchewan and Canada who are affectionately known as the Rider Nation. The Roughriders play in the smallest market in the CFL, and the second-smallest major-league market in North America. They have finished first in what is now the West Division nine times and have won the Western championship a record 29 times. They have played for the Grey Cup 20 times, winning five.
The team has had 20 players inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. The Riders' biggest rival is the Winnipeg Blue Bombers; games between the two are often sold out before the beginning of the season. The Roughriders Football Club and the city of Regina have hosted the Grey Cup four times, and will host a fifth in 2027.

Team facts

  • Formerly known as: Regina Rugby Club 1910–1923, Regina Roughriders 1924–1947
  • Past uniform colours: Old gold and purple, blue and white, red and black
  • Fight Song: "Green Is The Colour", "On Roughriders" and "Rider Pride"
  • Main rivals: Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Calgary Stampeders
  • Western Division 1st Place: 9—1951, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1976, 2009, 2019, 2025
  • Western Division Championships: 29—1912, 1913, 1914, 1915, 1919, 1920, 1923, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1934, 1936, 1951, 1966, 1967, 1969, 1972, 1976, 1989, 1997, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2025
  • Grey Cup Championships: 5—1966, 1989, 2007, 2013, 2025

    Community ownership

Ownership

The Saskatchewan Roughrider Football Club Inc. was established in 1910 and incorporated in 1940. The organization is registered under the Non-Profit Corporations Act of Saskatchewan. The Roughriders are one of two CFL teams with non-profit ownership, the other one being the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, and are among a select group in North American sports. Prior to 2004, the club operated as a corporation without share capital, an ownership structure the Blue Bombers have used continuously.

Membership shares

Since 2004, the Roughriders have offered two classes of permanent Membership Interests similar to the NFL's Green Bay Packers. Class A shares have voting rights and Class B shares have no voting rights. As of March 2019, the Roughriders had issued 11,639 Class A shares and 435 Class B shares, though the total number of individual owners is not publicly disclosed.
It is not possible to resell these shares, no dividend payment is possible and no person may hold more than 20 voting shares, though they may hold an unlimited number of non-voting shares. The initial public offering of Rider Shares commenced in 2004 at an offering price of $250 per share In 2006 the Ottawa Sun reported that the Roughriders had sold around 3,000 at $250 each. The Series 1 offering closed in 2008 after all 6,000 shares were sold. A second public offering, Series II, was launched in 2010 in honour of the team's 100th anniversary. As of 2016, the Roughriders had released and subsequently sold out 1,989 shares of Series III at $250 each. this Series "commemorates the 1989 Grey Cup championship victory" and "features the likenesses of Kent Austin, Bobby Jurasin and Don Narcisse with an illustration of the championship winning kick in the background." Series IV shares began sale in 2017, with the price remaining consistent at $250.
When shares are purchased, the funds are placed in the team's Stabilization Fund.

Saskatchewan Roughrider Foundation

The Saskatchewan Roughrider Foundation was created in 2019. It raises and distributes funds, focusing on community pillars of education, health, and amateur football. The Foundation aims to teach youth skills such as leadership, resilience, and responsibility.

History

Club origins, Regina Rugby Club (1910–1923)

The team was founded as the Regina Rugby Club on Tuesday, September 13, 1910, adopting the colours of old gold and purple. The team was also a founding member of the Saskatchewan Rugby Football Union as it was organized on September 22 of that year. Regina played their first game against the Moose Jaw Tigers on October 1, 1910, at the Moose Jaw Baseball Grounds where they were defeated 16–6. After going winless in their inaugural season, Regina quickly became the strongest team in the province. For the 1911 season, the team changed their colours to blue and white to match the Regina Amateur Athletic Association.
Regina went 3-1 in their second season and captured their first SRFU championship by winning a one game tiebreaker playoff against Moose Jaw. Meanwhile, the Western Canada Rugby Football Union had been formed within the three prairie provinces with the intent of creating a playoff format to determine a Western champion. Much to the displeasure of the SRFU, the Albertan and Manitoban unions had agreed to a format in which the MRFU champion would host the Western semi-final and the ARFU champion would host the Western final. Regina balked at the prospect of playing up to two road games, and refused to participate in the inaugural WCRFU playoffs.
The Regina Rugby Club changed their colours again in 1912 to red and black. Meanwhile, the WCRFU agreed to change the playoff format so that the SRFU champion was given a bye to the Western final in exchange for the Saskatchewan champion agreeing to play the championship game on the road. Regina began an era of western football dominance. From 1912 through 1920, Regina not only won six consecutive WCRFU titles, but went undefeated in competitive play during that span. Due to World War I, no Western playoffs were held in 1916 and in 1917 and 1918 league play was halted altogether.
In 1921, the Western champion was invited to compete for the Grey Cup national championship for the first time. Regina again went undefeated in the regular season, but were required to play the Saskatoon Quakers for the provincial championship as travel difficulties had prevented Saskatoon from playing the other southern teams. Regina defeated Saskatoon, but the result was overturned after a successful protest concerning an early touchdown which had provided the decisive points. The Quakers won the rematch to mark the only time other than their inaugural season that the Regina Rugby Club did not win the SRFU championship while it was their primary competition. Ultimately, the Edmonton Eskimos travelled east to play in the 9th Grey Cup.
The team's rise to early prominence came even as it led a somewhat nomadic existence. It originally played at Dominion Park, but after the war was forced to move to the city exhibition grounds after the city sold Dominion Park. In 1921, it moved to Park Hughes on 10th Avenue in the North Central section of Regina, a rugby and soccer field built in 1910. It was the first season at an address that remained associated with the club for parts of the next nine decades.
In 1923, Regina returned to power as they won their eighth western championship over the Winnipeg Victorias and earned the right to compete in the national playoffs. The club was given a bye and advanced straight to the Grey Cup finals for the first time, but were severely outmatched, losing 54–0 to Queen's University at Varsity Stadium in Toronto. This was, and still is, the most lopsided defeat in Grey Cup history as the defending champion Queen's won their third straight national championship at the expense of the Regina Rugby Club.

Regina Roughriders (1924–1945)

Following their first Grey Cup loss, the club changed their name to the Regina Roughriders in 1924 while retaining the colours of red and black. Ottawa also had a team called the Ottawa Rough Riders, but the spelling was different and the two clubs played in different leagues then. The origin of the name has multiple theories, the most credible of which describes how the North-West Mounted Police were called Roughriders because they broke the wild horse broncos that were used by the force and the moniker was adopted from them. Giving credence to this theory is that during this time, the team occasionally played at the RNWMP/RCMP barracks when the then-rudimentary facilities at Park Hughes were rendered unsuitable for play by inclement weather. For a long time, the playing surface at Park Hughes was little more than dirt, and heavy rain often turned the field to a muddy bog.
An alternative, discredited story states that the name was adopted from Theodore Roosevelt's cavalry contingent that was known as the Rough Riders, who fought in the Spanish–American War. It was believed that there were Canadian troops in the contingent who returned to Canada following the war. However, this story is more often associated with the Ottawa club. While it has been suggested that some of the troops may have eventually moved out west, the Roughriders did not adopt their name until 1924, by which time the Spanish–American War was barely a historical footnote compared to the then-much more recent First World War. Following World War I, any attempt to deliberately name a Canadian sports team in honour of a unit that participated in an earlier American war would have been extremely unpopular.
During the first two years after their name change, the Roughriders failed to reclaim their western championship title, losing both times to clubs from Winnipeg. The 1926 season marked the beginning of their next reign of dominance as the club matched their own WCRFU record with seven consecutive western championships from 1926 to 1932. With dominant players such as Canadian Football Hall of Famer Eddie James, the Roughriders were a perennial contender from the West, reaching the Grey Cup finals five consecutive years from 1928 to 1932, the second-longest streak in the championship's history. Unfortunately, Regina remained winless in the national championship, being outscored 102–15 in those five Grey Cup games. The Roughriders won their last WCRFU title in 1934, representing the west for the seventh time in the 22nd Grey Cup, but lost to the Sarnia Imperials in that club's first Grey Cup win.
In 1928, Park Hughes was combined with Park de Young, a neighbouring baseball field, to create a much larger football venue. However, from 1929 to 1935, the Roughriders played most of their games at the larger exhibition grounds.