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Brendan Taman attended a hockey game and discovered that, in one sense, there wasn’t an intermission.

Even outside the parameters of football, the scrutiny and pressure were unrelenting as Taman was in the process of assembling a Saskatchewan Roughriders team that would ultimately play host to, and win, the 2013 Grey Cup game.

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“I remember attending the 2013 Memorial Cup when the Saskatoon Blades were the hosts,” Taman recalls of his fourth year as the Roughriders’ general manager. “We were walking out of one game and some guy said, “See, Taman? That’s how it is when you have a home team in the championship.’

“We weren’t even in training camp yet and some guy was giving me a shot … at a hockey game.”

Taman enjoyed the last laugh on Nov. 24, 2013, when the Roughriders defeated the Hamilton Tiger-Cats 45-23 on Taylor Field to win a CFL championship.

But there were some trying days along the way.

“It probably engulfed me more than I realized at the time,” he says. “The most nervous I was all year was from the Saturday afternoon on Grey Cup weekend until the opening kickoff (the next day). I remember thinking, ‘Is this going to end?’