The Shortest Championship Season Ever

The Ottawa Rangers played at the intermediate level in the early 1930s. I'm going to look into their origins more closely at a later time but for now I want to review the back end of their existence.

In 1934, the Quebec Rugby Football Union was struggling. There was some question as to whether it would even attempt to play a season, at least at the intermediate level. They decided to proceed after all, with the plan being that two sections (divisions, basically) of four teams would compete to determine a champion.

Things clearly deteriorated from there because Ottawa was given a bye...for the entire regular season. Only two exhibition games were scheduled and of those, only one came to pass. The article below is from October 12th of that year.

Canadian National would win their section and take a trip into town for the "play downs". So not only did Ottawa make the playoffs without playing a single regular season game, they hosted it!

Emerson Ogilvie. Remember him? He was the guy who entered "The Gallery of the Gods" with his performance for Glebe in the 1927 high school championship game.

The intent was for this to be a semi-final game, but things didn't quite work out that way.

So by virtue of winning the single contest in which they participated, Ottawa Rangers won the championship.

But that would not be enough for our plucky Rangers! They challenged St. Thomas for the Dominion championship!

That game was played on December 9th on a frozen field. Go figure. Ottawa lost 5-2, the two points being scored off the foot of football god Emerson Ogilvie.

Recently, I was impressed that the Ottawa Sooners played 16 games in order to secure a national championship in 1974. At the other end of the spectrum, no one will ever win a championship in fewer games that our 1934 Ottawa Rangers.

I have not located any results for the Rangers in 1935 so evidently, they went out (Québec) champions.