REGINA — Saskatchewan Roughriders' receiver Dhel Duncan-Busby is under no illusions that what happened in his second Canadian Football League season was anything but a rare and special occasion.
Some players will go through an entire career without getting a chance to win a Grey Cup, but in only his sophomore season, there Duncan-Busby was hoisting the trophy on stage at Princess Auto Stadium in Winnipeg as green and white confetti flew all around him and his teammates.
The 26-year-old Vancouver native might not have played in the game — Duncan-Busby was one of two line-up changes from the West Final — but that did little to dampen the excitement and joy of winning the fifth championship in Riders history.
“I understand it’s been just over a month, but it still doesn’t seem real,” Duncan-Busby said when asked what his best memory of the Grey Cup was on The SportsCage. “Honestly, that final play when they threw it up and we knocked the ball down, I remember looking at Trevor, I remember looking at all the guys on the sidelines, the smiles and all the happiness and stuff like that — that right there is something I’ll never forget.”
Duncan-Busby would naturally have preferred to be in uniform in the contest, but all that mattered in the end was the final result.
“I’m going to use that to motivate myself going forward,” he said. “I had the opportunity to play every other game and sitting out the big one hurt a little bit, but it’s OK, we got the job done and that’s all that matters.”
One game Duncan-Busby did get to play was the aforementioned West Final against the B.C. Lions, a contest that has gone down in Roughriders lore thanks to the miraculous last-minute drive that led to the 24-21 Saskatchewan win. He had three catches for 27 yards in the contest and recounted what it was like as Harris drove down the field before ending the drive with Tommy Nield’s touchdown catch.
“When you’re out there, you don’t really feel the nerves,” Duncan-Busby said. “It’s like the saying that when you’re on the field you don’t really hear the crowd until you're out of the game on the sideline. You don’t have time to think about what could happen and what might happen, but man, that was a great job by the guys."
“We understood our assignments and there were a lot of things you gotta come up with on the fly, and Tommy’s catch at the end, oh my gosh, it was so insane that play right there. That was a huge moment.”
Roughriders' offensive coordinator Marc Mueller joined The SportsCage and talked about how Saskatchewan practiced for that exact situation in the weeks leading up to the West Final. Duncan-Busby concurred with his assessment that the team was as prepared as they could be to pull things off.
“The coaches do a really good job throughout the week with film study and things like that to put us in the position so that we can execute what we want to do, but I can definitely say that we ran that last play quite a few times that week,” Duncan-Busby said.
On a whole, Duncan-Busby’s second CFL season was a serviceable one, as he dressed in all 18 regular season games and had 29 catches for 355 yards with two touchdowns. While the stats might not have hit his admittedly lofty goals, the prize in the end more than made up for it.
“We have such a deep receivers room and a lot of mouths to feed, so that’s something that’ll happen as the years and my career goes on,” Duncan-Busby said. “But at the end of the day, the goal was to win the Grey Cup and that was the most important thing.”
Now, with the championship season behind them, all eyes are turning toward the 2026 campaign and a potential repeat. There are many orders of business to attend to first, especially when it comes to free agency, and there’s plenty of chat going around with regards to what players have in mind. Duncan-Busby wasn’t about to reveal any trade secrets, but there’s hope there won’t be a lot of change in the near future.
“We’re in a big group chat with Dohnte and Kian and Sam and KeeSean and Joe, our whole receiver room basically,” he said. “I feel like a lot of the veteran guys are reaching out together and saying ‘what are you feeling’ and stuff like that. I can only speak to what the receivers are thinking about, but we’re definitely looking to get the band back together.”
You can check out the complete SportsCage conversation with Dhel Duncan-Busby by clicking on the video below.
