udo like what a mountain of a man and i would be like yeah i just throw the ball to him all day long and just play play the odds like just play the odds that he's coming down but i think that touchdown he catches in the end zone actually hits the ground the refs call it a touchdown that gives manitoba all the momentum now now they start this comeback and then i start thinking i'm like university ball can west cis whatever you sport there's no replay right they can't go to a replay

Yeah, that's right, and that's sort of the trouble you have sometimes, and you sort of had that experience a little bit at Griffith Stadium a couple of weeks ago with the referees putting up 0.4 on the clock.

You don't have a replay of when the time runs out, so that's sort of the disadvantage there, but it just goes to show games can flip on a dime, and you got to be careful, and all it takes is one big play, and it could be one big play that decides it between these two teams.

The nice thing about the Rams and the Huskies, what you're seeing is you're being two teams that are very good but at very good different things so you have a Regina Rams team best passing offense in the conference by far it's not even close you got the great story about the you got the Saskatchewan Huskies you got the great story about Keaton belcher you know the first year kid comes in out of Moose Jaw he's absolutely dynamite and then you have the Regina Rams they're the best rushing team in Canada West and they've done it not with one or two main guys.

Like I said, they've gone all the way down the depth chart and they've battled so many injuries to still get to four wins.

And the Rams also lost three of their four games by five points or less.

Like this team with a couple of field goals could be hosting a playoff game.

Have you see, you're probably in tuned here, what's going on in Calgary for the Grey Cup? Like, wow, there's a lot of empty seats.

The junior football playoffs, somehow, someway, The Saskatoon Hilltops are hosting a game?

Yeah, yeah, and it is kind of interesting how this all kind of unfolded.

So, first of all, good to be here with you.

And I got to say, I saw the high school ranking.

Shout out to my guys at Balfour, yours truly is alma mater from 1997 when shoulder pads were huge.

But great job on the high school season so far.

But yeah, let's get into this because this is really interesting and it's got the football world talking when it comes to math and tiebreakers and things like that.

yeah

What stood out to you most about that game, Matt?

Yeah, you know, it's interesting because, you know, a little story, a little background here.

So everybody's always heard, and sometimes you hear about it in the States, of that high school or college football team that hasn't beaten their crosstown rival in like 20 years.

And they finally do it, and it kind of makes the news and makes national news sometimes.

And I thought this was just about on that level.

I've been doing play-by-play for the Hilltops since, You know, 2014, 2015, 10, 12 years.

And I couldn't remember the last time the Edmonton Wildcats came into Saskatoon and beat the Saskatoon Hilltops.

What are you watching for in these exhibition games?

Well, I suppose the touring side of it, the way you write, just the whole package really.

Yeah.

Well, I think I guess when we started writing and stuff, the before you do get to that first album, it's sort of, you can't, you've got this period of time, I guess, where you're a new band and you're writing your first songs together and having fun and doing all that stuff and you can kind of get away with overplaying and finding your feet and everything.

It's, it's, it's a given that, you know, like we, I mean, we're from Melbourne and we've got a great music scene here so we used to just play as much as we possibly could but we also like had a, had a bit of a goal that we wanted to, uh, be a band that was able to tour internationally and, and, and take this kind of sound that we were generating, um, you know, like an extreme Australian metal band, um, with, that sounded like an extreme Australian metal band, not like a Florida death metal band or a, you know, Norwegian black, you know, we wanted to encapsulate like, some of our favorite Aussie bands and, and be influenced by that stuff.

So, but having that, um, first record, uh, period of time where you're getting all that together you can kind of get away with a bunch of different stuff and then once that's out um it changes things and it changes the way that you approach everything and and you know like we initially got signed to candlelight records over there with you guys and they put out our first record and um And, you know, we thought maybe we would get that opportunity to come over to Europe and the UK first.

But so it turned out that we ended up going to America and doing that sort of stuff first.

And, you know, we spent a good year and a bit.

well when we we kind of

I don't think anybody would say anything to you.

I can tell, I might've told this story somewhere else, but it's, it's kind of embarrassing, but kind of funny.

When I was like 21, 22, I lived in my first studio apartment in Chicago and I lived just right upstairs from like a little strip mall.

And in that strip mall at the time it's gone.

Now there was a little Caesars and I would go down there at, every other night at like nine 58, I would like plan it out.

Cause they closed at 10.

And if I went down at nine 58, most of the time they'd be like, we're going to throw this away.

Adel, Matt, besides Hello from the Magic Tavern, I think, which is the first podcast that's ever existed and the best, is there anywhere else that folks can see you or listen to you coming up in the near future here?

And I was just going to ask you, Matt, kind of how important is that to you? You know, how important of the artist voice to you, especially when it comes to sustainability, we know there's some loud ones out there.

There are some loud ones, but for the right reasons.

Again, why not? So not that that'll be the theme for today, but it seems to have started that way.

For us, it's about the connecting of the artist and fans.

I'll refer to the banner once again.

Our job is to be the plus sign and sort of do whatever it takes to build the bridge between the artist and the fan.

And on the merchandise side of things, it's kind of the last physical element of music, right? If we go back to the beginning of why we're doing it, it's about emotion.

How did that even

Wow.

Um, in the new, in the new and modern music business.

Obviously, that's a piece of it.

I don't think it's all of it.

It's easy to say.

But what merch is now-For me, feels like it's just the last physical piece that you have to touch, to feel, um, to, to, to, to, to partake in the emotion that the artists generate, right? You guys are creating a melody.

You guys are writing a hook.

Talk to me about vinyl, what you've been able to see, um, and how much of a revenue, and how important is that in a marketing plan for an artist?

Oh, Harold.

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But what do you think the issue is?

Yeah, I went into that locker room trying to figure that out, you know, asking around.

Of course, no one's going to point fingers, but from going back to looking at the tape, it really looked like there was just a problem with the snap on multiple occasions, which is weird that that would happen, you know, what are we, 19 weeks into the season or whatever, but the snaps were coming out hot and a little low, kind of at the knees.

CJ's trying to look downfield to figure out the coverages, and He wasn't looking the ball in.

The snaps weren't atrocious, but they weren't great either.

So that's something that I've got to work on.

Like I said, I went around the locker room asking about people's confidence in C.J. Stroud, and I didn't expect anyone to throw him under the bus.

Why did he step back these last two seasons?