CFC OFC Game of the week: Clash of the heavyweights

After another dominating 47-0 win in week five over the Niagara Storm, the undefeated junior varsity Hamilton Hurricanes is preparing for an extremely important week six battle against the also perfect Burlington Stampeders.

The game is one of the most anticipated regular season matchups of the season as the two squads met in last years semi-finals and were largely considered the best two teams that season.

“Even though it wasn’t the championship, it was the semi-finals, most people looked at us and Burlington as the top two teams,” said Hurricanes Head Coach Burt McCallum. “This is a bit of a rematch.”

“We are looking at this weekend as a game that for us is the biggest one of the regular season without a doubt.”

Not only this weekend matchup between the two league heavyweight creating a lot of buzz as a rematch between what are arguably the two best teams in the league, it could go a long way in determining playoff seeding.

“Beating Burlington gives us home field advantage through the playoffs,” explained McCallum.

McCallum has a good memory of last year’s playoff matchup against Stampeders and is looking forward to a great match between the two clubs, but isn’t sure that the counterparts remember it the same way.

“Last year is was a very tough game for them, I think they were a little shocked,” he said. “The problem with this year is their players are being told by their coaches or whomever, is that last year they blew us out.”

“Quite frankly, the players might be taking us lightly and how they react when they are actually in a game will be interesting to see. I can guarantee you the players will be underestimating us.”

It is hard to think that anyone could underestimate a team that made it to the semi-finals last year and has looked so dominant last year.

The Hurricanes on the other hand are well aware of how talented the Stampeders are, winners of the last five junior varsity championships and are preparing for an extremely tough and important game.

“We don’t take them lightly at all, players or coaches,” McCallum stated. “We are very confident we can beat them, but at the end of the day we know that you have to play focused and mistake free football to win the big games.”

No matter what these two rivals think of each other, one of them is going to walking away from this weekend’s matchup with their first loss of the season and both of them will walk away with a big taste of what is to come in the playoffs where the could once again meet.

While either team may not want to utilize their full playbook and save some plays for the a potential playoff matchup against each other, this weeks win is still important in terms of determining the playoff schedule so it is likely both will be doing everything they can to win.

“You do enough to win the football game,” said McCallum. “As much as coaches would like to say we are not going to do this or that, we are going to do what it takes to win the game.”

This highly anticipated match between the JV Hurricanes and Stampeders starts at 5:00pm on Saturday June 28^th.at St. Thomas More high school in Hamilton.