HALIFAX, N.S. - After blazing past J.L. Ilsley Judges last Saturday, the Cobequid Educational Centre Cougars have their eyes set on a title.
They’ll take on the Halifax West Warriors in the NSSAF Division 1 Tier 2 football championship, capping a season where they finished lower in the standings than they would have liked.
The Tier 2 championship game will be held at 1 p.m. this Saturday, at Burnside All Weather Fields in Dartmouth.
“We just had a really good game, so I feel a lot better going into it now, than I would have a week ago,” said head coach Brent MacPhee on competing in the tier 2 championship.
The team had a rough start to the season when all-star rover Lorne MacLean suffered a serious injury outside of football, and another high-level player was injured during their third game, taking both players out of the picture.
“We’ve also had about four other injuries to key guys we couldn’t afford to have injured this season,” said MacPhee.
“We’ve had to reteach our game to the players, and they’ve had responsibilities that were much bigger than they anticipated at the beginning of the year.
“The injuries had definitely taken away a bit of our competitive edge, and it has taken us awhile to adjust, but now we are doing pretty well with it.”
The team is facing some uncertainty as they prepare to face off against the Warriors, a team they haven’t played against in two years.
“It’s so hard to say how we will stack up against them because they play in a different division,” said MacPhee.
“We don’t have a lot of common opponents, in fact. I’m looking at them; they’re looking good and have a nice little team over there. They are well prepared, you can tell.”
The Cougars are spending this week practicing and going over game footage of Halifax West to prepare for the championship.
“Our last few games, we’ve learned a lot,” said MacPhee.
“We beat Sackville, a pretty good team, two weeks ago and J.L. Ilsley, they are a nice little team but we were able to get some success from them. Hopefully we will be able to keep that going.”
Win or lose, spirits are still high with the team.
“We had a fine season, a fun season and it has been great,” said MacPhee.
“Other than the fact that we aren’t finishing as high up in the standings as we had hoped, we’ve had great support from the community, the school, and great fans coming to our games. It’s been fun.”
