HAMILTON—He walked off of Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton on Thursday, his Hamilton Tiger-Cats practice uniform soaked with the sweat of a hard day’s work.

Almost seven months after signing with the Tiger-Cats and now halfway through the season with his new team, Chad Owens feels at home on what was once the arch-enemy’s turf. The fact that the next team on the schedule is the Toronto Argonauts and the only colours the receiver has known in his previous seven CFL years is irrelevant.

“You have to move on. It’s no different than when you’re in the game and you drop a pass or you fumble the ball,” Owens said. “You have to move on to the next play. If it lingers, it affects you on the next play. And I didn’t want to let anything linger and affect me this year so I have to make a switch and mentally, all my chips have been in. I’m a Ticat.”

At 34, Owens has 43 receptions for 596 yards this year, good for second on the team. He’s also on pace for what would be just his second-ever 1,000-plus-yard season. He’s already surpassed his totals from 2015, where he had 570 yards on 55 completions in 13 games.

“This is my new family and I’ve still got love and brothers on that side,” Owens said. “Those memories will always be there but I’m a professional football player and this is what I signed up for.

“We’ve got to win just as much as they’ve got to win.”

He’s right on that front. Both the Tiger-Cats and the Argos are 4-5, second- and third-place, respectively. Neither team is happy with its record but here they both are, in the thick of what’s been a disappointing race in the East Division.

While Owens feels comfortable with his daily drive from his Mississauga home taking him to Hamilton instead of Toronto, his current team and his former team are set to meet for the Labour Day Classic. They line up in Hamilton on Monday night at 6:30 p.m., then meet next Sunday at 4:30 p.m. at BMO Field. As any CFL vet will tell you, Labour Day is the turning point in the season, where the playoffs start to loom and team’s identities are formed.

“It’s Labour Day, so that means it’s that much more of a big game. It’s like a playoff-type game,” Owens said. “Realistically, it is like a playoff game, regardless of if it was Labour Day or not. We’ve got the same record. This is to gain ground in the East.”

Owens had said leaving the Argonauts, where he won a Grey Cup in 2012 and named the league’s outstanding player after setting a record 3,863 all-purpose yards, felt like a divorce.

Diving into training camp with the Tiger-Cats in June helped him move on, as did facing the Argos at BMO Field to open the season on June 23. Owens had six catches for 67 yards in a Hamilton win, with a highlight-reel touchdown catch that put the game out of reach.

“It was probably harder going through the off-season when (the signing) happened. Leading up to Week 1, that was probably the hardest part,” Owens said, “but you get through it, get over it and you know, they moved on. They have to focus on winning games as well.”

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He’s seen the other side of this rivalry already, but given their identical records and the expectations on the Tiger-Cats this year as Grey Cup contenders, Owens knows that these next two games are big for him and his team.

“I know what it is, I know what that rivalry is,” he said. “This is when it gets real. Every game in the beginning counts, but whether you start 0-9 or 9-0 you’ve still got nine more games to go. I’d rather be much more on fire in that second half than in the first half. It’s about building momentum going into the last stretch into the playoffs. Normally the hottest team is the one that wins it all.”