It’s a rivalry game fans circle on the calendar.
The Labour Day Classic between the host Saskatchewan Roughriders and visiting Winnipeg Blue Bombers usually sells out weeks in advance.
This year’s sell out, however, took until Thursday for the Roughriders to announce; largely thanks to a year where both teams are struggling with losing records.
Sunday will mark Ryan Fritch's tenth consecutive trip to the Labour Day Classic. In all those years, he's never seen the Blue Bombers win the game.
"Our motto is go 'til we win,’ but I'm sure there'll still be some people going after we card that first 'W’,” said Fritch.
Every year Fritsch and a group of friends purchase twenty tickets at the start of the season to make sure they have enough for their entire group.
This year, Fritsch has leftovers to sell for face value online, but so far there are no takers.
"Previous years Saskatchewan fans would've snapped up Labour Day tickets in a heartbeat. Any extras we had were never a problem,” he said. “But this year we've had them up for about a month and still three left."
It's a similar story for Ken Burns at All-star Tours.
He and his partner organize trips to the game, which once brought as many as six bus loads to Regina. This season, they have yet to fill up two.
"Since they started losing, 2005 was our first loss in a row that started that off, we're down to three and now we got about 90 per cent of two buses," said Burns.
Burns said he's only able to buy 100 tickets for the tour because the Riders are usually so popular. That's another reason for fewer buses heading west.
While he expects to fill up his buses this weekend, Burns said clients are getting tired of coming home to Winnipeg after a loss.
"These are die-hard fans that come out,” said Burns. “It's still frustrating, you want to win. But go out and support your team, that's what they do year after year."
This year it's not just the Blue Bombers struggling with a losing record.
