The 1942 RCAF Flyers

The 1929 shutdown of the Rideau Aquatic Club's football program, a self-inflicted punishment for a postgame brawl at the conclusion of a national semi-final game against a team from St. Thomas, appeared to be a killing blow for junior football in the city.

That turned out to not be the case. In fact, junior football only disappeared for one year.

In 1931, a new junior league sprang up featuring six teams. I initially thought that it had lasted only a season or two but while tracking down its results, I came to find that it ran until 1941. A rough page has now been built for it though at the moment it's little more than a skeleton.

Not surprisingly, the league did not run in 1942 during World War II, much like the professional football unions. Ottawa did have a three-team senior league, however, involving the Rough Riders, members from the Air Force and a team of civil servants.

This league only lasted one season. Each team played the other two twice each so there's little to report.

It wasn't without its highlights though. The Rough Riders defeated the RCAF team 18-00 in the first weekend's action. RCAF would then play the Civil Servants a week later with a special guest star hanging around.

There's the two-time All-Star (at the time), the previous year's recipient of the Jeff Russell Memorial Trophy and the Lionel Conacher Award and 1940 Grey Cup champion Tony Golab, home on leave, just casually chilling with the RCAF lads. Could he bring a little star power to the proceedings?

And he did that very thing for the November 7th game against the Civil Service. 

Both the Rough Riders and Flyers ended the regular season with 3-1 records (and the poor Civil Service team was winless with eight points for and 89 scored against) so they met in a playoff, won by RCAF.

Unfortunately, our RCAF club would lose to Toronto's (the Hurricanes) the following weekend in Toronto by a score of 18-13 and therefore fail to qualify to play for the Grey Cup. 

That was it for the Flyers. The following year, a team named the Combines joined the Ontario Rugby Football Union. They became the Trojans in 1944 and eventually merged with the Ottawa Rough Riders. All that is recorded in the "Ottawa Trojans (1943-1947)" page above.