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Like most nights since he was a little kid, Brady Oliveira went to bed on Wednesday night dreaming of becoming a Winnipeg Blue Bomber.

By the time Thursday night rolled around, it was no longer a dream but a long awaited reality.

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“It’s almost like surreal,” Oliveira said Friday, a day after getting taken in the second round of the CFL draft by the Bombers.

“It took some time to sink in and waking up this morning being a Winnipeg Blue Bomber and me being from the city here, coming to games at the old stadium and then coming to games at IGF, it’s like a dream come true. I’m extremely thankful.”

Oliveira, a talented running back from Winnipeg who spent the last four years at the University of North Dakota, had a pretty good feeling he was going to end up with the Bombers.

The team expressed more interest in him than any other, though he did think there was a possibility the Hamilton Tiger-Cats might take him.

“I met with (Bombers GM) Kyle Walters and (head coach) Mike O’Shea a couple days ago leading up to the draft and it was a good conversation,” Oliveira said. “By the end of the conversation I had a pretty good feeling that I’d end up here. “Me being from Winnipeg, I’m friends with quite a few guys on the roster here, like Nic (Demski) and Andrew (Harris) and D.J. (Lalama) and they all reached out to me yesterday and I was able to talk to Andrew. I’m honoured to work behind such a talented running back like that and I think it’s going to elevate my game even more just by learning from a CFL great like that.”