Courtesy Regina Leader Post:

Because they’ve apparently forgotten, here are two reminders for the Saskatchewan Roughriders: 45-18 in 2006 and 27-25 (in overtime) in 2004.

Those were the scores the last times the amnesiac Roughriders visited the B.C. Lions for the CFL’s West final. It happens again Sunday when the second-place Roughriders, trying to earn their first Grey Cup berth since 1997, visit the reigning Grey Cup champions in Vancouver.

“The biggest thing we’ve learned this year is to not think about the past,” defensive back Eddie Davis, a 13-year-CFL veteran, said Friday at Mosaic Stadium following the Roughriders’ last home workout of 2007. “It’s time for us to move on. Everbody believes we can go out and win, regardless of what the score is or the time.

“I’m looking forward to this one. I’m ready to go. It’s been 13 years for me and I don’t know how many I’ve got left. This is a good shot for us.”

The West winner advances to the Grey Cup, Nov. 25 in Toronto, against the winner of Sunday’s East final between the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and home-town Toronto Argonauts. The 12-6 Roughriders are coming off their first 12-win season since 1970 and their first home playoff victory — a 26-24 win over the Calgary Stampeders on Sunday — since 1976. In the last five years the Roughriders have advanced to four West finals (counting a 30-23 loss to the Edmonton Eskimos in 2003) but haven’t won once.

Now the receivers are growing facial hair, Davis is ready to consume his lone game-day meal of bacon and eggs, centre Jeremy O’Day’s family is making sure everybody is wearing the same clothes they donned to watch last week’s victory as the Roughriders try to break the hex that has kept them from winning a Grey Cup since 1989. Not that they’re looking backwards.

“It hasn’t even crossed my mind, last year,” said O’Day. “It’s a new year and when you start a new year you have to forget about past seasons. We’re focusing on this season and that’s all we talk about.”

That’s the edict of head coach Kent Austin: Forget the past.

It’s easy for him to say. He was the winning quarterback for Saskatchewan’s last championship.

Austin, a rookie head coach, is leading his troops into a West final for the first time. He occasionally brings out his three Grey Cup rings — the others were won as a B.C. Lions quarterback and as a Toronto Argonauts assistant coach — to provide visual aids for his players as he tells them about the sacrifice, the focus, the preparation that’s required to become a champion.

That means looking forward, throwing out the fact the Roughriders have won their last two games inside domed, humid, loud B.C. Place Stadium — 24-15 in a June 15 preseason game and 21-9 in the sixth week of the regular season.

“Any winning streak is a good sign, but I guarantee that means absolutely nothing to them,” said Roughriders linebacker Reggie Hunt. “I haven’t thought about it myself, so it doesn’t mean much to me either.

“I don’t know if we’ve learned, but been-there-done-that is experience, that’s the best teacher. If nothing else it forces us to pay more attention in practice. I think we’re fully ready for this one.”

So throw this old sports adage at the Roughriders and see how they respond: Before you learn how to win something, you have to lose it first.

“I hope that’s the truth,” said Hunt.