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“We’re starting to reach our peak, starting to come together as a team,” Williams said. “It’s definitely a rivalry, I love rivalries, they bring out more dogs.”

This dog, for one, ended up having his day on a night that could just as easily have been cut short by injury.

“Duke was awesome for us,” said Eskimos quarterback Mike Reilly, who completed 30 of 44 pass attempts for 397 yards, three touchdowns and an interception, while rushing for three more scores. “The toughness, the heart that he showed. He took a pretty good hit and landed on the ground hard. We thought he was out for the game. I came in and saw him in the training room during halftime and asked him how he was feeling.

“He said he was going to be back out. A lot of guys tell you that, so I just nodded my head, ‘Yeah, OK. He’s not coming back.’ Not only did he come back but he made huge catches for us during the time that he was in.”

As for who won the war of words, that might have to wait until the playoffs to determine after the provincial rivals split their 2018 regular-season series.

“We always feel like we’re going to win when we go out there and I think they were just voicing some frustration that we didn’t play as well as we could have in the last one,” said Reilly. “But Calgary’s going to feel the same way after this game as we did last week, because it’s such a tight game and they had mistakes that I’m sure they’ll look at and say, ‘If we wouldn’t have done that, we would have won the game.’ And they’re probably right.

“But we forced some of those mistakes, just like they forced some on us last week. That’s how football goes, man. But it was a good battle both games against these guys.”

On Twitter: @GerryModdejonge