2023 Riders Plaza of Honour Inductees – Only One Needed
Published: Monday, May 8th 2023, 2:05pm
By Alex Dormuth (@RealAlexD)
Pretty soon the Saskatchewan Roughriders will unveil the names of this year’s Plaza of Honour Inductees, the team’s Hall of Fame or Ring of Honour, if you will. Last year, we had some absolute no brainer names go in like Mike McCullough, Weston Dressler and Ken Miller. These men and 135 others have been inducted into the Plaza and have been celebrated at a home game and this season will be no different.
The Riders will honour the 2013 Grey Cup team and this year’s Plaza inductees on Legends Night at the October 7th home game against the Hamilton Tiger-Cats… fitting, since the Riders won the 2013 Grey Cup against the Ticats. I am sure that Rob Bagg will be one of this year’s inductees into the Plaza. A no-brainer who absolutely deserves the recognition and I am looking forward to seeing him back at Mosaic Stadium in that green #6. It will no doubt be a great celebration like it always is.
But it just won’t be what it should be without one former player involved… Darian Durant.
It’s no secret that after Darian Durant was traded from the Riders to the Montreal Alouettes back in January of 2017 that the team and Durant have not made amends. It’s to the point where Durant didn’t (and still may not) answer a phone call from a Saskatchewan phone number. Yes, it got that bad.
Roughriders, you just can NOT honour the 2013 Grey Cup team without Durant there. You can’t. He is the reason they got to that game in the first place. If not for him literally putting the team on his shoulders and carrying them past the BC Lions in the West Semi-Final, they don’t get the chance to give Rider fans the greatest day in team history. We’ve seen guys take over games and will a team to a win before, but nothing like what Durant did that night. That game was the Riders Grey Cup. I knew that if they won that game, they’d go in and beat Calgary at McMahon Stadium in the West Final. The Stamps just lost 2 starting D-Linemen and I knew Kory Sheets would run over them (which he did)… and we all knew that the Ticats stood no chance at Taylor Field in the Grey Cup.
Durant put up with a lot of crap from the fan base in his time here in Riderville, but thanks to a tweet by Christian Zuck (fittingly using the handle @ZuckRightOff) that Durant responded to, calling Zuck a ’dumb f**k’, he channelled that crap he has always taken and used that as the motivation he needed to put together a great ending to a magical season in Riderville.
Saskatchewan Roughriders, I beg of you to fix whatever issues still exist between you and Darian Durant. It NEEDS to be fixed and we NEED to honour him at Mosaic Stadium for Legends Night (and all week long with the Plaza of Honour activities). We discussed this on the Piffles Podcast when we talked about the Riders theme nights for 2023 and Steve convinced me that it would be a massive fail if the team doesn’t get Durant there. They just can’t have that happen. PLEASE get it done, Roughriders… or at the very least, induct @ZuckRightOff’s tweet for its contribution.
(Also, hurry up and put Roy Shivers in there already!)
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