The Roughriders are starting to feel like family again as they prepare to face the Alouettes Thursday

"Click, click, boom!"

The chants echoed through the Saskatchewan Roughriders dressing room at Mosaic Stadium after the team's 19-9 victory over the Winnipeg Blue Bombers in Week 6 of CFL action.

No, a bomb wasn't going off.

"Click, click, boom" has become the team's rallying cry since its Week 3 victory over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. After that win, the Riders players stood in a circle and chanted it three times, once for each of their three victories.

It's only a chant, but it might also speak to something starting to click for the team and its fans.

The Riders are 5-1 and sit atop of the CFL's west division standings. For fans, it feels like the team is back to form.

The tone for the season was set right away.

After the Riders' first win of the season, a 29-21 road victory over the Edmonton Elks, the players gathered in the visiting locker room at Edmonton's Commonwealth Stadium to present Corey Mace the game ball, commemorating his first victory as a CFL head coach. 

"We speak about family … much love, man, because I feel that. My family feels that, for real. I love you guys already," Mace said in his post-game address. He also shared a message important to fans.

"I don't want another one of these until you have a reason to give it to me."

The implication was clear. The ball Mace wants is the one from the final game in November.

Passion for the Roughriders is a family affair in Saskatchewan. Parents pass their season tickets — and their love of the game — on to their children. 

As the fan base suffered through back-to-back years of losing football, the Riders started to feel less like a family and more like that old friend from high school you have not seen in 20 years.

Under Mace, that is beginning to change.

Perhaps nothing better illustrates this point than what happened during — and after — the final play of Saskatchewan's most recent victory over the rival Winnipeg Blue Bombers.

With the game well in hand and seconds remaining, quarterback Shea Patterson took the snap and began to drop back to kill the remainder of the clock. After Patterson threw the ball out of bounds, effectively ending the game, Blue Bombers linebacker Adam Bighill hit Patterson and drove him into the Mosaic Stadium turf.

The crowd at Mosaic Stadium leapt to its feet to express its displeasure, but the ensuing scene on the field made the fans feel proud. The Riders' bench immediately emptied as Patterson's teammates rushed to his defence.

It was a message to the Bombers. If you mess with one of us, you mess with all of us.

With the Roughriders starting to feel like a family again, they will travel to Montreal this Thursday to take on some former family members.

Standing on the opposite sideline will be quarterback Cody Fajardo — who held that position for the Riders from 2019 to 2022 — and head coach Jason Maas, who was hired as the Riders offensive co-ordinator in December 2019 and held the position until he was let go in 2022.

Fajardo and Maas helped pilot the Alouettes to the 2023 Grey Cup.

Meanwhile, the Riders finished the 2023 season with a 6-12 record, including zero wins after Labour Day. It was the team's second-straight disastrous season and led to head coach Craig Dickenson being fired.

As Fajardo lifted the Grey Cup over his head in November, the Riders appeared to be lost. Now some critical pieces of the puzzle are falling into place.

Patterson, filling in for injured quarterback Trevor Harris, has shown some running ability. He has a young beast of a receiver in Ajou Ajou, Saskatchewan's seventh-round draft choice, who showed his skills in the victory against Winnipeg with four catches for 110 yards.

With Mace at the helm, the Roughriders will ride into Montreal looking completely different than the fractured and broken squad Fajardo and Maas left.

After Thursday's game, the fans will wait with bated breath for that now-familiar cry.

"Click, click, boom!"