[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/sandwiches.jpg” caption=”The Marauders had sandwiches from Hamilton’s Bonanza Bakery shipped to Vancouver after growing accustomed to them during training camp. Members of the team have a number of superstitions, including touching a plaque that reads “]VANCOUVER – A touch of the familiar, a lucky habit that could help to keep the streak
alive, a piece of home from more than 3,000 km away.

The rituals that precede any game are never more sharply focused than they are in the
period right before a championship.

So it is with the McMaster Marauders football team as they prepare to face the Laval
Rouge et Or in tonight's Vanier Cup, Canada's national university championship (TSN,
900 CHML, 9 p.m. EST).

Kicker Tyler Crapigna likes to wear his iPod in warm-ups and hand it off to his position
coach to hold in the pocket of his hoodie while he finishes practice.

When he heard his coach, Dana Segin, was planning to wear a golf shirt to Thursday's
final practice, he asked Segin to wear a hoodie. He did, no questions asked.

“Guys love doing the same thing,” says Segin, smiling. “We're superstitious as heck, but
we go with it, that's for sure.”

No one dares mess with success, especially when the team is facing its toughest
opponent after nine straight wins.

How far will they go? Pretty far, it turns out.

During training camp, a pattern emerged among the coaching staff, who enjoyed Italian
cold-cut sandwiches from Bonanza Bakery on Murray Street in north-central Hamilton,
across the street from the home of receiver Matt Peressini's nonna, or grandmother.

It started with rounding up some appetizing road food to take on the bus to a pre-
season game with Laval.

The pre-game sandwich run evolved into an imperative among the coaches, to the point
that they had dozens packed and shipped in dry ice to the Uteck Bowl in New Brunswick
last weekend.

“When we won there, the first question from some of the coaches was, 'Are we going to
have sandwiches?'” Segin remembers. “It's all in fun. We just thought we'd keep it
going, and they're amazing sandwiches.”

Before today's game, the coaches will be eating the same $2.50 sandwiches again, with
the order being flown in as a favour from a friend of the team.

And then, as they leave the locker room before the game, every player will take part in
the most reverent of the Marauders' rituals, involving a plaque that reads, “Play with
pride”.

The plaque is usually in the team's locker room back at McMaster, hanging near the
door, as it has for years.

“Everybody taps it on the way out, as a bonding thing,” explains general manager Stuart
Smith.

For today, that plaque, which also made the trip to the Uteck Bowl in Moncton, is in the
team's locker room at BC Place, where it will keep another ritual intact for the biggest
game of all.