1926, Oct 11th: "Senators Set Sail For Big Four Title Win By 8-6"

Aside from the championship game summary on the Grey Cup page, there is very little content about the 1926 Ottawa Rough Riders / Senators team. We're going to remedy that a little bit today.

The following cut outs are from the Ottawa Journal and recap the team's first game that season. Ottawa were launching the defense of their 1925 championship and doing so in style, winning on a field that had been nothing but trouble for them going back to 1912. 

As a sidenote, the article also mentions that Eddie Emerson was the only player on the field to be present when Ottawa last won in Hamilton. 

He wasn't anywhere near done. According to his Canada Sports Hall of Fame biography, he would play until 1937 and in 22 seasons overall. Upon retiring from the playing field, he held the record the longest playing career, which held until 2000. 

1925, Oct. 5th: "Senators Smother Montreal In Opening Game; Score 17-1"

The game summary below is a joint effort between the Ottawa Citizen and the Ottawa Journal. The lineup and scoring recap came from the former, while the unfortunately blurry game details are from the Journal.  

Let's take a moment to properly highlight the top performers.

Connell's first name was Charlie. He is a member of the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame for his success in lacrosse, but also recognized for his ability in football and boxing.

Mulroney is Edgar Mulroney, who also played lacrosse. He played hockey as well, and became a referee following his playing days.

Tubman is Joe, a Canadian Football Hall of Fame member, class of 1968. He played from 1919 to 1931 and was the team's captain for this championship season as well as the next.   

Nov. 8th, 1924: Westmount (Montreal) 02 @ Rideaus 15

The summary below is for the first of a two-game series between the junior QRFU's Rideaus and Westmount for that union's championship. The winner would earn the right to play for the Dominion title.

McInenly below, first name Bert, was singled out for quality play by the article's writer prior to the quarter-by-quarter breakdown copied here. 

St. Germain, meanwhile, was named Ralph, and was in the early days of what would be a distinguished athletic career, as evidenced by his write-up in the McGill Hall of Fame. 

There's an obvious error in the article below as the first paragraph suggests that Westmount lost the point they earned in the first quarter.

Laishley below was named Lyle, while Bruce's first name was Stewart.

That would be Clyde Moran getting into the action in the fourth quarter.

Rideau would travel to Montreal the following weekend and lose 12-06 but still win the series on total point and therefore secure the QRFU junior title. A battle against Hamilton loomed on the march towards the Dominion championship.

Nov 28th, 1925: Queen's 02 @ Ottawa 11

It's Grey Cup weekend, and since the Rough Riders' Grey Cup victories are fairly well documented on the page dedicated to that championship, we're going to spend some time this weekend looking at some of the games that led up to them. 

The game below seemed like a good place to start. It is Ottawa's (at the time often called Senators or simply "Ottawas") Eastern Final victory against the defending champs from Queen's which placed them in the Grey Cup game.
  
The "Tubman" referred to numerous times in the partial article below is, of course, Canada's Sports Hall of Fame member Joe Tubman. See the bottom of the post for more on him, after the cropped game summary.

Oct 12th, 1927: Glebe 05, Lisgar 02

1927 is largely considered the year in which high school football started in Ottawa.

That claim is not entirely factual; games from 1925 and 1926 have been recorded here so teams did play prior to 1927. However, I believe that the local schools began being affiliated with the EOSSA that year and therefore fully organized for the first time, hence it began the recognize starting point.

The majority of championship results/recaps have been recorded on the High School page with some additional work done recently to track down standings and playoff game finals from the mid-2000s. But tonight, I thought I'd go back and track down the first "official" senior high school game played in Ottawa. 

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a little unclear.

The brief Ottawa Citizen article below states clearly that Glebe and Lisgar met in the "opening game of the school season", yet the Ottawa Journal's summary of the game made reference to the teams looking crisper than they had in an earlier contest. I was unable to locate any reference to a game being played in the prior two weeks or so, so I don't know for certain what the Journal's writer meant by that. So the article below will do for now until I prove myself wrong.

So What Happened Before 1926?

Records of past high school champions tend to start from 1927. In December of 2019, I tried to figure out the structure of high school ball prior to that year. did they not play at all? Or were schools playing but only in exhibition contest?

There did appear to be a local champion in 1926, namely Ottawa College, but they clinched the championship when Glebe defeated Lisgar late in the season. Lisgar had been the only team left to challenge for first place in the circuit so Ottawa College won the championship due to the result of a game in which they did not participate. You can read more about that here.

So then, was there a champion prior to Ottawa College in 1926?  It would appear so and as is so often the case, I found it by fluke. 

I was adding some more information about the 1966 high school season, won by Nepean, their first and only one.

Or was it??? (As Rod Black would say)

Early in the newspaper game summary, this part stands out. 

Well, then, let's see what happened in 1925.

In looking for additional information/confirmation, I located a bunch of Nepean high school yearbooks in pdf format added to the Lost Ottawa Facebook page by one Martha Aksim in 2018. The 1926 edition was included, much to my pleasant surprise, and it features the 1925 team rather prominently. There are summaries of every game including the 12-01 victory over Glebe described above as well as the photograph below.

You'll note that it states Dominion Interscholastic champs.

The yearbook explains further. The newspaper article above explained that Nepean was expected to meet Renfrew shortly after defeating Glebe. Nepean did just that and defeated them 7-4 for the Ottawa Valley crown.

Cornwall was next on the schedule. We'll let the yearbook take it from here.

Hell of a run!

Having shared the 1925 team picture, and having the Nepean yearbooks at my fingertips right at the moment, let's take a second to display and honour the 1966 too, then.

New Page: EOSSA Championship

We have expansion! More and more info is being added to the High School page so to make things a bit more manageable, a new page has been built specifically for the Eastern Ontario championship that existed between 1927 and 1946. This involved Ottawa-based schools playing teams from towns such as Kingston, Smiths Falls, Perth, and so on. The information already gathered is being moved and more is being added.

Ottawa U. first claimed the EOSSA championship for the area in the contest's second year. Glebe lost the first in 1927 but they would go on to win quite a few in the 30s.

Here's a summary of UOttawa's 1928 victory. I was not able to track down a similar recap of the game against Hamilton mentioned at the end of the first paragraph so it may not have actually taken place.

1929 Rideau Team Sketches

I've come cross an article similar to this one for the 1940 Rough Riders but finding one for a junior team is quite an indicator of the popularity of "minor" football back in the day. 

It's too bad that the image quality goes to pot towards the bottom, and unfortunately there was a very inconveniently placed ad right in the middle of the whole thing. I did my best to crop and clean it up but the starting material was just not easy to work with.

The Forward Pass Is Introduced

The portions of a game summary posted earlier today, between the Ottawa Rangers and the Quebec Aquatic Club ("Swimmers") and making reference to the excitement caused by the forward pass, made me question when the first legal forward pass was used by a player representing the capital.

Not surprisingly, it's not an easy question to answer. It may, in fact, be impossible to answer, or depend heavily on your criteria.

The forward pass was well in use by the time that playoff game between Rangers and Swimmers took place in 1931. So we can start by moving backwards from there.

The 1931 Rough Riders opened the season in Montreal on October 11th. They got walloped something fierce, 32-06. But they did attempt a forward pass during that contest. 

Wait...Ogilvie? 

That's awesome. About 18 months ago, I came across Ogilvie's name (as "Ogilvy") while tracking down a game summary for the 1927 senior high school championship. The statement that Ogilvie had entered the "Gallery of the Gods" of the Glebe sporting element tickled me to no end but damned if he may not, in fact, hold the distinction of throwing the first ever professional football forward pass in the city's history.

It's important to quantify that he did so as a professional. The Rough Riders played a game the week before in which a few passes were thrown, but that was an exhibition game. Three junior games were also played that day as the Junior City League began its season and at least one of those games included forward passing. 

Gladstone beat the Ottawa Seconds as the "curtain-raiser" to the Rough Riders game. 

Damn, this Crain dude was a natural! 

Two games would be played on St. Patrick's field that day, the first of which featured the host St. Patrick's team against a club known as the Rangers (not to be confused with the intermediate squad of the same name). The recaps of the action in that contest, won by St. Pat's 08-06, make no mention of the forward pass.

Meanwhile, in Brockville, the intermediate Rangers were welcoming that town's new entry into the QRFU with a 15-01 beating. 

Tommy is hall of fame inductee Andy Tommy Sr. Arnie Morrison played with the Rough Riders for several years and later coached the Carleton Ravens. Morrison-to-Tommy is one hell of a historical connection.

But was it the first? For one thing, it's not clear that the pass above was a forward one, being that Tommy went around right wing. It may have been a lateral. When the pass was a forward one, the summary usually made that distinction.

There's another significant factor at play. Most local teams started using the forward pass in 1931 but junior high school programs began using it in 1929 (one article claimed they started using it in 1927 but I've seen no evidence of that). So to be completely accurate, it was probably a player at the junior high school level who uncorked the first one. 

Unfortunately, the recap of the first junior high school game of the season doesn't see fit to specify who threw it.

In a game about two weeks later in the season, a Lisgar pass attempt was made by one R.A. "Beaner" Sheppard to a teammate named Zelikovitz. Zelikovitz might be Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame inductee Joe Zelikovitz. I'm a little unsure about that as Lisgar's Athletic Hall of Fame states that Joe started playing there in 1930.

Either way, it's difficult to know if Sheppard handled all the throwing duties for the Lisgar team (in fact, it seems doubtful) but if so, it could be that the first forward pass thrown by an Ottawa player almost a century ago was a by a dude nicknamed "Beaner". 👍

The End Of The Rideaus

The 1928 Junior City League championship (see earlier post) would not be the last for the Rideaus but 1929's would be.

The 1929 Rideaus were a scrappy bunch, to a fault. They started the season with a victory, predictably, against the South Ottawa Roamers and two weeks later found themselves challenged by a revived St. Brigid's club. They didn't take well to it.

They would continue their winning ways throughout the season, gathering a 5-0 record and securing first place. For the fifth time in a row, they would meet Montreal AAA for the QRFU championship but at long last, they won that two-game series by a total score of 17-14.

Way to go, Basil! 

The Rideaus continued their march towards the junior national championship when they defeated the University of Toronto 10-01 at Lansdowne Park. Two weeks later, they met a team from St-Thomas in the national semi-final and that's when things went south for the "Paddlers".

The St-Thomas Tigers won 10-05 and the Rideaus' "fighting" label from the article above would become prophetic. As the game was getting away from the Rideaus, one of the players got heated against a ref and things quickly got out of hand. 

The above description is from the December 2nd, 1929, Ottawa Citizen. The Ottawa Journal adds what might be an important detail.

It appears that while Johnson was being told to leave the field, "suddenly Umpire Bailey staggered under the impact of a blow to the face". In other words, the mob wasn't triggered by Johnson's behaviour towards Foster but by whoever corked Bailey. 

Whatever the case may be, the Rideau Aquatic Club was deeply embarrassed by the whole event and the following day apologized to all involved and withdrew from all sports not aquatic in nature. Just as well, the Canadian Rugby Union suspended them indefinitely later that month. 

Just like that, the top junior team in the city was done.

The following year, a team called the Ottawa Rangers, (not) coincidentally wearing the same colours, would emerge  but that's a story for another day.

As for Arnie Morrison's "lifetime" ban, it didn't hold up particularly well. He was reinstated in 1931, played for the Ottawa Rough Riders from 1933 to 1938 and would later coach Carleton's football team during its formative years. That's how you overcome a ban!

1928: "The Most Sensational Upset Of All Time in Junior Rugby In The City"

If you are particularly observant, you will have noticed a page in the banner above that appeared a few weeks ago and has changed names numerous times since. At this time, it bears the name "Junior QRFU (1918 - 1928)" and it will continue to change as I add seasons at the back end. 

The "Defunct Teams" page includes (at least for now) some details about a team from the Rideau Aquatic Club then often referred to as simply the Rideaus. While that team was undeniably the most successful of its little league, it didn't seem quite fair to ignore all the others. So instead of focusing on the Rideaus only, I started a page specific to the league in which they all participated.

The Rideaus were not a charter member of the league, entering it only in its second season in 1919. The league became affiliated with the Quebec Rugby Football Union the following year.

In short order, Rideaus became dominant to the point that some found it detrimental. While they constantly won the local title with ease, they fared very poorly against outside competition. Some speculated that this was due to a lack of a proper challenge in its own league.

Then in 1927, a team from Ottawa College joined the circuit and in 1928, they shocked the junior rugby football world (well, at least the local one) by defeating the Rideaus, breaking the "Paddlers'" 29-game local winning streak in the process!

The game is recapped below, as is the other game played in the four-team league that day, a matchup of the Ottawa South Roamers and Gladstone. 

As exciting as the win may have been as it happened, it would turn out to have little impact. Rideaus won the rematch 18-00 a few weeks later, and every other match on their schedule for that matter, to collect a 5-1 record. Ottawa College would stumble in overtime to the Ottawa South team in the last week of the season to be knocked off the top spot in the league at 4-2. 

And so this was the sixth straight city championship for the Rideaus and they would get skunked against the Montreal AAA team in the QRFU playoffs for the fourth year in a row, too. The City Junior League was pretty much business as usual in 1928, except for that one game which rattled the cage for a while.

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.