Moose Jaw's Maguire Abell and Griffin Barrett brought some hardware back with them from Quebec.

The two local football players and Team Saskatchewan captured bronze at the 2015 Football Canada Cup, beating Alberta 22-9 in the third place game on Sunday afternoon.

This is the second straight year that Saskatchewan has finished on the podium after picking up silver in Saskatoon last year.

“Finishing third feels great,” said Barrett. “It means we ended the tournament with a big win and it felt great winning that.”

Saskatchewan had opened the week-long tournament with a dominating 53-2 win over New Brunswick last Monday. Barrett picked up a sack in that contest and he said it really set the tone for the team for the rest of the week.

“The team played great,” he said. “We were a little undersized and a lot of teams didn't give us the respect that we deserved, but we showed that by the end of the tournament because of the amount of hustle that we gave and the amount of hard hits that we had as a team.”

Following their win on Monday, Saskatchewan advanced into the semifinals where they were lined up against the host Quebec Blue squad, but the upset didn't come for Saskatchewan as they lost 17-10 to the eventual champions.

They were able to regroup quickly from that loss and put together a strong perfomance to end the week in the third place game against Alberta.

“We worked really hard all summer and it feels good to come home with some hardware,” said Abell, who started at offensive guard for Saskatchewan.

He said going against the top players in Canada was a little intimidating to begin with, but he felt like he settled in as the tournament went on.

“Slowly over time, we messed together and there's a lot of really good guys that were on our team and I'm really happy that I got to have that experience,” said Abell.

In the bronze medal game, Saskatchewan and Alberta were tied 3-3 heading into halftime, but Saskatchewan came out firing in the third quarter and took a 19-3 advantage that they were able to carry to the win.

Abell said they made some good adjustments at halftime and it helped propel them to the win.

“In all these games it was such a short time that you don't really get to know a lot about the teams, so the first half is really just feeling them out and finding out where their strong parts are and where they're easy to run on,” he said.

“Alberta had a really strong defensive line, but there was a rain delay right before half and we were able to sit down as a line and we identified all the fronts and made sure we made some adjustments. Coming out after that, we were clicking and just started to march the ball down the field.”

Both players were among a group of 11 under-age players taking part in the tournament, meaning both will be able to return next year. They're hoping to take what they learned over the course of the week and become stronger players going into the high school season this fall.

“It helped so much, it put so much knowledge into my brain, just helping me with where I need to be, what I need to know and showing me what it takes to be at that next level,” said Barrett.

“It was a super high level of football, so Griffin and I can come back to Peacock and help teach a little bit and help the other guys just be that little bit better,” added Maguire.