What's Constitutes "Rough Play" Anyway?

After taking a long look at the origins of the Rough Riders name yesterday, I now feel like going back a little further to determine how they earned the rough rider reputation before earning the nickname.

The Ottawa City Football Club was kicked out of the Quebec Rugby Football Union in 1897 for rough play. If that didn't set the perception of the team being particularly...feisty...it must have at least cemented it.

What were they accused of, exactly?  Let's have a look.

Ottawa's City team and Ottawa College, now the University of Ottawa, had a natural rivalry but things boiled up one November evening during one of their contests.

Before we go any further, let's have a basic line-up handy for quick reference when the injuries start piling up.

Officially, the game resulted in an 8-8 tie, though that score was disputed. The team that would become the Rough Riders felt that College was awarded a two-point safety when they actually had only earned a single point on the play, which would make the score 8-7 in favour of the city team. 

But that wasn't even the controversial part! 

It's not clear why Smellie was targeted. His name doesn't even come up in the Journal's summary of the first game between these two teams held on October 16th. I don't believe he played. 

The Montreal Gazette also reported on the game, including an incident in which Walters of Ottawa struck an official. 

It's easy to make a case for Walters to be suspended and even expelled from the league altogether, but the club as a whole? Consensus seemed to be, at least locally, that both clubs were equally responsible, especially since Ottawa's Smellie was assaulted within seconds of taking the field. 

Accusations of rough play came from McGill as well, which is odd since there is actually no mention of any such incident in summaries of that game, played two weeks earlier, even in Montreal newspapers.

In that contest, McGill was ahead 18-01 in the second quarter. Ottawa came back and took a 20-19 lead. And yet, when the game had to be called due to darkness...It was declared to be a 19-19 draw. Go figure. 

Back to the Ottawa City/College game, the QRFU heads agreed to meet the following Wednesday to discuss the events of that day. McGill, according to one report, wanted the Ottawa Club gone and failing that, they certainly didn't want to meet them again.

And yet, that's precisely what happened. Walters was expelled from the Union and the City Club was suspended. No action was taken against College. 

As one Ottawa newsman pointed out, Ottawa City's fate was in the hands of its accusers and all three voting clubs stood to benefit from voting a certain way. 

Yeah, that worked out nicely for everyone...else. Ottawa City had already had the results of two its apparent victories turned into ties and yet was still comfortably at the top of the standings. Getting rid of them reset the race between the remaining three teams, so to speak.

The Montreal papers, for the most part, treated the result of the vote like unfortunate business that had to be done to send a valuable message that rough play would not be tolerated.

The Ottawa media was unsurprisingly upset at the suspension. The Ottawa Club was initially shocked but rather than fight the decision or attempt to retaliate, they appear to have just accepted the matter and looked towards the future. They would join the Ontario Union in 1898 rather than return to the QRFU.

Outside media were of the opinion that the ruling made the QRFU appear "ridiculous" (Toronto Star) and one-sided in avoiding punishment for Ottawa College when they were said by the game's referees to be equally guilty (Hamilton Spectator and Hamilton Times).

A year later, the Hamilton Herald would refer to them as thugs and murderers. 😁  Life came at you fast in 1898 too! 

That Whole Name Thing

One of the more interesting aspects of researching football history directly from media reports from the time is the frequency with which you find that things thought to be common knowledge are completely inaccurate or at least open to debate.

There are already several examples on this blog, none of which I deliberately sought to find. Rather, while trying to support or add to a certain claim, I instead found myself questioning it. These include...  

• The CFL lists four draft choices for Ottawa in 1952 when there were at least twice that. 
• Tom Clancy is often named as the Ottawa Rough Riders coach for 1904 but looking more closely into it, that seems doubtful. 
• The Rough Riders are often said to have "changed names" to Senators for the 1925 and 1926 seasons but the headline announcing the team's Grey Cup victory that first year makes that claim easily questionable.

So let's stay with the name thing...

The club adopted the name Ottawa Rough Riders on Friday, September 9, 1898, and changed its team colours to red and black. Since then, red and black have been Ottawa's traditional sporting colours. Although in later years the name was said to derive from logging, the team based its colours on Teddy Roosevelt's regiment in the Spanish–American War, which, with the date of the renaming, suggests that the name also comes from the war. The team changed its nickname to Ottawa Senators from 1925 to 1930.

That's from Wikipedia and its source is the 2009 Canadian Football League Facts, Figures & Records book. One could reasonably expect it to be reliable but I think a lot of it is based on assumption.

Let's start at the beginning; The club indeed held its annual meeting on September 9th, 1898, but neither newspaper of the time, the Journal and the Citizen, makes any mention of a new name being adopted. In fact, the Journal's report's headline is "Ottawas Are Ready For Rugby". The first practice was held the following Monday and articles about that also made no mention of a new name. The Citizen referred to the team as the "Ottawa Football Club" specifically in its recap of that first practice. 

Let's also bear in mind that on November 10th, 1897, the Ottawa Football Club was suspended from the Quebec Rugby Football Union for "having played roughly against (Ottawa) College last Saturday and for having been rough in the match here against McGill".

The above is from the November 11th Citizen. The match against McGill was in Montreal. McGill was believed to be pushing hard for Ottawa's expulsion (more so than "College", which was a reference to Ottawa U. ) from the QRFU and threatening to refuse to play their scheduled game in Ottawa. The Journal added that an Ottawa City player named Walters also attempted to assault officials during the game against College.

So Ottawa joins the Ontario Union instead. Problem solved. Until...

This may be the first instance of the Rough Riders name being put in use...sort of.  It's not capitalized so it obviously was not an official name, it was meant more as an insult. 

What prompted said insult? You'll note that this partial article is copied to Ottawa papers from the Hamilton Herald. Evidently, Hamilton media types were upset at Ottawa handing Hamilton a loss and accused them of rough play again, the very thing that got Ottawa bounced from the Quebec union less than a year earlier. 

Issues of the Herald from that era are not available (at least to me, at the moment). Here's how one Ottawa paper described the game between Hamilton and Ottawa from the previous Saturday that had that Hamilton writer all riled up.  

Nicely said! 😄

Before we go on, we would benefit from seeing the lineup. 

The above will be beneficial when reading the summary of violence that took place on that fateful Saturday.  

Hey, there's Walters again! I'm going to start thinking of him as the OG Rough Rider.

All that took place during the first match-up between these two teams, in Ottawa. It seemed as though Ottawa was mostly on the receiving end, though that may have been the local bias at work in reporting it.

Ottawa had to travel to Hamilton about two weeks later. They did so and won that contest as well.

Murderers might have been a little strong...

From that point on, the name Rough Riders comes into play frequently in the Ottawa papers. It's hard to believe that the name was decided upon at the annual meeting in September but didn't appear in a local newspaper until one of them decided to copy a Hamilton writer's article six weeks later. It seems more likely that after someone in Hamilton got his nose out of joint over the result of a game and used that term derogatively, Ottawa media (and the team) embraced the club's renegade image and ran with it. I'm reminded of the Millwall soccer club's "No one likes us, we don't care" chant, as an example. 

Why did that Hamilton writer get so bent out of shape, anyway? Surely it wasn't the first time he was exposed to rough tactics while covering a game.

Oh.

As far as the mention of Roosevelt's Rough Riders goes in that Wikipedia article, I've never seen a quote or report to the effect that our Rough Riders had anything to do with his (but if do, I'll add it here). There were a great many articles about Roosevelt's RR at that time so it would have been an easy assumption to make but the names appear to be independent and with completely different meanings.

We Should Know More About...Tom "King" Clancy

We should know more about Tom Clancy not just because he was a successful, influential figure in the late 1800s and early 1900s but also because an important aspect of his career is often reported incorrectly.

Many lists of Ottawa Rough Rider coaches name him as the team's coach starting from 1904. That does not actually appear to be the case and if not, then the win-loss record credited to him would also be wrong.

Let's work our way down his career and piece it all together. His obituary (he passed away in September of 1938) states that he joined Ottawa College in 1892, apparently because he was drawn to their baseball team. He was considered an outstanding center and his U. of O. teams won national championships in 1894, 1896 and 1897. He planned to stop participating in 1898 but returned as a player-coach.

Ottawa Journal, October 18th, 1898: "The College (vs) Granite game next week should be a corker. Tom Clancy will practice and coach the college team every day this week."

His continued presence would have an inspirational impact on the team.

Ottawa Journal, October 24th, 1898:

He finally would pull the plug on his College playing days in late 1899.

Ottawa Journal, December 16th, 1899:

He was named President of the Rugby Football Union that year in 1901 but was back on the field by 1903. That year, Ottawa U. lost the championship game to the Rough Riders by a score of 13-12. Clancy played in that game for the garnet and grey, scoring a touchdown that was unconverted.

Clancy continued in his coaching role with Ottawa U. in 1904. He was only involved in Ottawa Rough Riders matches as a referee.

Then in 1907...

Ottawa Journal, October 2nd, 1907:

Ottawa Citizen, October 2nd, 1907:

He would hold the post through most of the 1911 season. He had planned to retire from the position in 1910 because he had been named president of the Big Four and did not want a conflict of interest but he was persuaded to return.

Beyond 1911, he contributed to the sport as an executive and as a referee. He was involved with the Rough Riders in 1919 but more as an assistant coach. He would, among other things, coach the intermediate team that the main club practiced against.

So official info appears to incorrectly indicate that he coached from 1904 to 1907 but they do it at the other end as well. It is said that Clancy coached the Rough Riders in 1921 and 1922 but that is difficult to support.

In 1921, the October 8th Citizen said that Clancy and Dave McCann were "directing their destinies in first-class shape" in reference to the Rough Riders. But in 1922, his coaching appears to have been as a substitute for Dave McCann. A practice report mentions Clancy's assistance but specifically named Walter Gilhooley as being in charge.

Ottawa Citizen, October 7th, 1922.

That isn't to take anything away from Clancy. He contributed to the game, and to Ottawa's place in it, in pretty well every conceivable manner for decades. For that matter, he was heavily involved in hockey, baseball and lacrosse as well locally.

So if Clancy didn't coach the Rough Riders from 1904 to 1906...who did?

Ottawa Journal, October 5th, 1904: "Bob Shillington coached the men and is confident with a few more practises (sic) the champions will be in good shape, and will not lose another game this season."

Ottawa Citizen, September 26th, 1905: "The Rough Riders had another turn out on the exhibition grounds yesterday afternoon when fully thirty-five men lined up under the coaching of Weldy Young."

Also in 1905:

Ottawa Citizen, September 29th, 1905:

Ottawa Citizen, September 20th, 1906: "The club will hold its first practice on Saturday afternoon at 3 o'clock and George Brown will handle the men this season."

Another article from early October 1906 names Dick Shillington as "assisting" with the coaching. I can't tell whether that is actually an erroneous reference to Bob Shillington above or another person altogether. What I do know is that don't see Clancy's name among the coaches.

So as a coach, Clancy might be given a little too much credit but overall his involvement in the sport is very much overlooked and perhaps overshadowed by the hockey accomplishments of his son, Frank.

He may be responsible for one very significant part of Ottawa football history. The following is from Frank Cosentino's book "Canadian Football: The Grey Cup Years".

Tom "King" Clancy was the coach of the Ottawa team, and he, a former American who went to Ottawa College is credited with giving the Ottawas the name 'Rough Riders' because of his admiration for Teddy Roosevelt's famous military outfit of the same name.

I have my doubt about this. The Rough Riders name is traced back to 1898. Clancy was playing against the Rough Riders for Ottawa College that year. It seems odd that he would bestow such a label to his opponents no matter how much he might respect them.

I think this paragraph in a recap of a game against Ottawa College is the cause of the confusion.

Someone named King Kennedy rallied the troops and perhaps his nickname is causing him to be mistaken for King Clancy.

But that is only speculation on my part. I own one of Cosentino's book and there is no question that the man does his research. He would not make that claim lightly so it must be possible that Clancy is responsible for the Rough Riders name.