Lions' Post Season and on into 2015

[squishy35]

Sorry if it's been mentioned somewhere already, but are the Lions any closer to confirming where their "home" preseason game is going to be played?

The Edmonton Eskimos preseason game will be held either at Thunderbird Stadium in University Endowment Lands, BC or at Shell Place in Fort McMurray, Alberta. However, the City of Kamloops is trying to land the Game at Hillside Stadium as a continuance of the training camp.

[B.C.FAN]

Sorry if it's been mentioned somewhere already, but are the Lions any closer to confirming where their "home" preseason game is going to be played?

The Edmonton Eskimos preseason game will be held either at Thunderbird Stadium in University Endowment Lands, BC or at Shell Place in Fort McMurray, Alberta. However, the City of Kamloops is trying to land the Game at Hillside Stadium as a continuance of the training camp.

And without a preseason game scheduled, the Lions have not finalized their training camp schedule. I'd like to attend camp and the preseason game but time is getting short to book a vacation.

[dodger]

This link will get you to this years training camp schedule. Its says 2014 but has Tedford as coach and the dates match this year. For some reason it is not viewable from the Lions site but I googled training camp and it came up.

http://bclions.com/training_camp

[B.C.FAN]

This link will get you to this years training camp schedule. Its says 2014 but has Tedford as coach and the dates match this year. For some reason it is not viewable from the Lions site but I googled training camp and it came up.

http://bclions.com/training_camp

Excellent! Thanks. The calendar has camp breaking on Wednesday, June 17 and the vets returning to Vancouver, so I doubt the Lions would want to extend their stay in Kamloops to host a preseason game there on June 20. UBC is the only logical site for that game.

[B.C.FAN]

The Lions have remained silent for far too long on the date and location of their home preseason game. It's been assumed that B.C. Place is unavailable because of the Women's World Cup, but why? There are games scheduled there on Tuesday, June 16 and Sunday, June 21. What's to stop the Lions from having a home game there on Friday, June 19 and still leaving plenty of time to convert the building back to soccer for the June 21 soccer game, which is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.? The stadium usually can accommodate a two-day turnaround between Lions and Whitecaps games, including repainting the lines on the field each time. There is such a turnaround in July between a Lions game on Friday, July 24 and a Whitecaps game on Sunday, July 26.

[sj-roc]

The Lions have remained silent for far too long on the date and location of their home preseason game. It's been assumed that B.C. Place is unavailable because of the Women's World Cup, but why? There are games scheduled there on Tuesday, June 16 and Sunday, June 21. What's to stop the Lions from having a home game there on Friday, June 19 and still leaving plenty of time to convert the building back to soccer for the June 21 soccer game, which is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.? The stadium usually can accommodate a two-day turnaround between Lions and Whitecaps games, including repainting the lines on the field each time. There is such a turnaround in July between a Lions game on Friday, July 24 and a Whitecaps game on Sunday, July 26.

I suspect there are added logistics. The WWC event might have been awarded on the condition that the event be granted exclusive access to the venue for its duration. There may be extra physical WWC branding for the event placed all over the building that would have to be removed and re-installed, which wouldn't occur for a regular Lions<->Caps changeover. This might also explain why even the Whitecaps, for whom NO field changeover would be necessary (unless the field has diff dimensions), are also exiled.

On top of all this, perhaps even most significant for all we know, the building is probably fully booked with WWC team practices when games aren't going on between June 16-21 (which would be a good reason for the aforementioned exclusive access). I'm sure the Lions would be putting up more of a "fight" for lack of a better word, if they felt having the pre-season game @BCP was amenable. Having to play the pre-season game elsewhere is just as big an inconvenience for the Lions as it is for fans — one I'm sure they'd just as soon NOT have to bother with. The fact that it's taking this long to get it ironed out shows just how big of a bother it is. It seems clear that it's not as simple as "Oh, let's just play it at <*insert alternate location here*> instead. All right then, who's for lunch?"

[Toppy Vann]

The Lions have remained silent for far too long on the date and location of their home preseason game. It's been assumed that B.C. Place is unavailable because of the Women's World Cup, but why? There are games scheduled there on Tuesday, June 16 and Sunday, June 21. What's to stop the Lions from having a home game there on Friday, June 19 and still leaving plenty of time to convert the building back to soccer for the June 21 soccer game, which is scheduled for 4:30 p.m.? The stadium usually can accommodate a two-day turnaround between Lions and Whitecaps games, including repainting the lines on the field each time. There is such a turnaround in July between a Lions game on Friday, July 24 and a Whitecaps game on Sunday, July 26.

I'm with sjoc on this one in terms of logistics issues but it definitely is odd that this is not yet announced!

It would be a nightmare to convert from soccer to football as it probably has seating situations involved too with the WWC having areas of the stands set up for their VIPS. A bit of spec here.

The number of staff to do a changeover might be limited compared to say other major stadiums where the rental/lease rates are higher.
I doubt they let them train in the stadium between games. In soccer tourneys they get each team a park and set times to train and it is not in the playing venues - although with turf it is not an issue of wrecking the field.