Touchdown Atlantic

Touchdown Atlantic (French: Touché Atlantique) was a series of Canadian Football League games played in the maritime provinces of Canada.

In 2003, the league had struck a committee to examine the feasibility of adding a tenth team, with the leading candidate cities being Quebec City and Halifax. Before the suspension of the Renegades, league commissioner Tom Wright had indicated that Halifax was the leading candidate for expansion. With the success of Touchdown Atlantic 2010, Moncton has moved into position of front runner for CFL expansion.

As every CFL field at the time had an artificial surface, the Touchdown Atlantic game was the only CFL game played on grass in each season it was held. However, artificial turf has to be laid over the track at each end of the stadium in order to accommodate the end zones.

Prior to the official Touchdown Atlantic series, Saint John, New Brunswick, hosted a pair of exhibition games. In 1986, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defeated the Montreal Alouettes 35–10 at Canada Games Stadium before a sellout crowd of 11,463 fans. The following year, the Alouettes returned to the Port City and lost 14–13 to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats; the Alouettes would fold a week later. An exhibition game between the Ottawa Renegades and Montreal was held in Quebec City in 2003 at PEPS Stadium, with the Alouettes winning 54–23 in front of 10,358.

The first game of the Touchdown Atlantic series was an exhibition pre-season match played in Halifax, Nova Scotia at Huskies Stadium in June 2005. The game, between the Toronto Argonauts and the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, ended in a 16–16 tie. The game was to gauge Halifax's support for a potential CFL expansion team, which would likely be named the Schooners. Temporary seating was added to boost the capacity, and a sellout crowd out 11,148 attended. It was also used by the league to test its instant replay challenge system which was implemented in the 2006 CFL season.

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