Lights go out on Steelers, too

Forced into several turnovers by a stifling defense, the Sault Steelers season ended on Saturday as the Oakville Longhorns powered their way to another championship.

Oakville won their 11th consecutive Northern Football Conference championship this afternoon with a 51-0 win over the Steelers at Bronte Athletic Field in Oakville.

While as powerful as the Longhorns are, a disappointed Steelers head coach Barry Rushon felt that his team didn't play the type of game that led them to a perfect 8-0 regular season and a pair of playoff victories.

"We played poorly today," said Rushon. "All aspects of our game seemed to shut down there for 15 minutes in the first quarter and a good part of the second quarter and by that time we had been smashed in the mouth and couldn't recover.

"We only managed six first downs and we threw six interceptions. We had a punt returned for a touchdown on us and defensively we had them third and long and we let them off the hook, so we made a lot of errors. It was not our typical game."

The win marked the eighth shutout in 10 games for the Longhorns this season. Only Oshawa with 21 and Tri-City with seven managed to score points on Oakville during games in the regular season.

"(Oakville) are just an unbelievable team," said Steelers president Don McBain. "We got down big by the middle of the second quarter and had a lot of turnovers after that trying to get back into the game. It's tough to come back on a team like that, they are very, very good."

SCORING AND STATISTICS ON THE GAME WERE NOT READILY AVAILABLE. THE STORY WILL BE UPDATED AS INFORMATION ARRIVES.