Dave Leaderhouse
Special to the Herald
It has been a somewhat disheartening start to the 2026 North Saskatchewan Football League campaign for local teams as the St. Mary Marauders were soundly beaten 40-0 by Moose Jaw Central in an exhibition tilt on Friday while the Carlton Crusaders had their pre-season game slated for Saturday cancelled due to miscommunication with the scheduled visitors.
To get things moving in the right direction a mini-tournament will be held on Friday at Max Clunie Field with all five entrants in the league competing in a series of games to knock off some of the rust.
“We are obviously disappointed not having the game on Saturday,” says Carlton head coach Lindsay Strachan. “We thought we would be further ahead in our reps, but we are looking forward to playing against players in different coloured uniforms.”
The regular season gets underway on Sept. 17 with the Marauders heading to North Battleford to take on Composite High School while the Crusaders will have one more pre-season tilt on Sept. 18 when they will welcome Bishop Mahoney from Saskatoon before opening the campaign with a home game against North Battleford on Sept. 25. Both of those games begin at 6:30 p.m. and will be played at Max Clunie Field. St. Mary begins the season with a pair of road games before finally returning home in early October.
Strachan says his team has been working out since Aug. 23 and while there are many new faces he likes what he sees so far.
“There is definitely some turnover, but we have some good pieces coming back,” begins Strachan. “Our defence is looking good so far and our offence – we are trying to put things together.”
Carlton is coming off a season that saw them reach the provincial semi-finals where they gave the eventual champion Moose Jaw Central squad everything they had. A 31-24 setback was the closest anyone came to Central in the post-season as Moose Jaw rolled over Swift Current 44-3 and Regina Johnson 51-8 in their other post-season matches.
St. Mary, meanwhile, had their season end last year when they were outscored 41-12 by Carlton in the opening round of the playoffs.
Marauders’ head coach Curt Hundeby says although the team graduated a lot of skilled players from last year’s squad he has “high hopes” for the upcoming season.
“We returned some good linemen on both sides of the ball,” states Hundeby. “We also have a good crop of skill guys coming in.”
“If we can figure out how to play together I think there is a lot of potential,” added Hundeby.
Friday’s jamboree is a first at the senior level and Hundeby feels it is a great opportunity to not only gauge the talent, but to continue preparing for the upcoming season.
“I’m very curious to see how this goes,” admits Hundeby. “We will be making sure guys are in the right spots to get better and it will show us how we stack up with the rest of the league.”
Carlton and St. Mary were each scheduled to play a total of six games – four regular-season and two exhibition – but with last Saturday’s game not working out the Crusaders’ schedule has been reduced by one. The Marauders and Crusaders will play one game each against the other teams in the NSFL – Lloydminster, Martensville and North Battleford Composite – with the big game being the head-to-head clash taking place on Oct. 2 at 6:30 p.m. at Max Clunie Field.
