1931, Oct 5th: "Gladstones Surprise Rough Riders To Win, 13-6"

Not THOSE Rough Riders. 

This partial article from the Ottawa Citizen summarizes one of three junior games played that day. It was the first weekend of action for the league as a whole, as it launched that year. 

I'll have summaries of the other two games played that day in separate posts. 

A portion of this article was used in a post on this blog a couple of years back in which I attempted to nail down the guy who threw the first-ever forward pass for an Ottawa team. Since this was the league's first year of operation, this Art Crain dude is likely the first to do it at the junior level.

There were two other games played that day, including St. Patrick's College vs Rangers, which started at the same time as the Gladstone / Ottawas match. Crain still seems likely to be the man, as his passing prowess appears to have taken place during the first quarter. We'll likely never know for sure, but a strong argument can be made for him.

January 1st, 1937: "Fr. Wm. J. Stanton Dies In Crash Near Chatham"

Father William Stanton, long-time coach of several sports at the University of Ottawa in the early 1900s, died in a car accident on new year's day of 1937.

The snippets below are from the evening edition of the January 2nd, 1937, Ottawa Citizen. The Citizen combined reports from the Associated Press, Canadian Press and other sources, which caused the article to be a little disjointed and repetitive. I've chopped out the parts that are more relevant to his football contributions. 

Not mentioned above is that Father Stanton coached the Ottawa Combines team of 1913, a fusion of Ottawa city team (the Rough Riders) and the university of Ottawa club.

Sept. 8th, 1937: Welcoming (back) Stan O'Neil

The image below is from an unusual source for this site: The North Bay Nugget!

O'Neil was among the first American players to suit up for the Ottawa Rough Riders. He did not participate during the 1936 season, however, because he did not meet the requirements to do so. The article below, also from the Nugget, explains. 

Following that ruling, O'Neil returned to the States. He spent the summer in Ottawa in 1937 in order to meet the criteria to play for the Rough Riders in the fall. He remained with the team through to the 1941 season inclusively, winning the Grey Cup in 1940.

There is an error in the article above, aside from the one-word spelling of Rough Riders. The other player ruled ineligible in 1936 was Tony Rosso, not Tommy. While O'Neil chose to head home, Rosso stuck around town and coached St. Patrick's to their first Eastern Ontario senior high school championship.

I don't believe that Rosso returned to the Rough Riders or to St. Pat's for that matter. The Ottawa Journal reported, in May of 1937, that Rosso had continued coaching but at Washington and Jefferson College in the U.S.

But in 1936, neither man could play for the Rough Riders because, in effect, they didn't spend enough time pretending to live in Canada.

Dec. 2nd, 1939: Ottawa Rough Riders 23 @ Sarnia Imperials 01

Already going off script a little bit with the game summary below.

The Rough Riders did not win the Grey Cup in 1939 but they did reach the big game. They did so by defeating Sarnia of the ORFU as described in the following article. They suffered a narrow loss in the Cup game, 8-7, to Winnipeg.

Sammy Sward, while not as "household" a name as that of many Rough Riders of yore, had himself a day. "Herman" refer to Charles "Tiny" Herman and Burke's first name, unused in the article portions copied below, is Orville.   

1934 Senior High School Playoffs: Glebe 8, St. Patrick's 00

I intend to add many more game summaries to this blog and where senior high school football is concerned, this particular match-up is the best place to start.

This game has the distinction of being the first playoff meeting in the history of the sport at that level. Prior to that, meaning from 1927 to 1933, the team at the top of the standings by season's end was deemed the circuit's champion.

In 1934, Glebe and St. Patrick's had identical records and split their two meetings during the season.  

The system didn't catch on immediately. I'll need to do some double-checking but I believe teams first played semi-finals in 1937 on their way to naming a champion and the method held up from that point on.

We'll figure it out for sure later but for now we know that Glebe and St. Pat's staged the first ever playoff game in Ottawa senior high school history. 

Nov 4th, 1938: Quilty Comes Off The Bench

I think I  saw something similar in an episode of Coach.

Now that most of the senior football championship summaries are collected, it's time to move on to semi and quarter finals.

The first sudden death playoff game at the senior high school level came in 1934 when Glebe and St. Patrick's were tied at the top of the standings at the end of regular play. Rather than leave it to some tie-breaker, the two teams met for the third time a few days later after having split their regular season meetings at a win apiece. Perhaps in (eventual) response to that situation, a shorter regular season with a semi-final playoff format was added in 1937.

The 1938 playoffs include an interesting anecdote in which St. Patrick's Johnny Quilty went from spectator to key contributor. 

Down 5-0, Quilty's efforts set up the tying score and an interception late in the game sealed the victory.

In light of how often he is mentioned in the strip above, I wish Hazel's first name had been provided.  

In any event, while the playoff system was still in its infancy and the forward pass was still somewhat viewed as a novelty, it seems that roster rules had yet to be fully worked out as well.

1933: Tommy Daley Explodes Onto The Eastern Senior Interscholastic Football Scene

Tommy Daley's career with the local pro teams (Rough Riders and Trojans) spanned most of the ten years between 1936 and 1945 and four Grey Cup appearances including the 1940 title.

Daley's potential to excel at the highest level of the sport was in full display during his first senior high school season in 1933. Glebe's rather dominant points-for/points-against ratio is mentioned in the article below, written after Glebe had secured the senior city championship but prior to the Eastern Ontario playoffs.

Daley's dominance that season is also noted. Get a load of that ridiculous scoring summary.

Glebe's 1933 scores have been added to the high school page. The Blue and Gold would go on to win the city and EOSSA titles for that season and continue to do so over the next two.

With Daley no longer on the team in 1936, Glebe turned the title over to St. Patrick's. No doubt there were other factors at play, but Daley's departure had to have played a large part.

Nov 18th, 1931: "Burghs Finally Win"

Everyone deserves their day in the sun. When researching sports history, it's easy to be focused on the great accomplishments like championship victories, record-setting performances, first-time events, etc.

I enjoy coming across that unexpected moment of glory. I feel for anyone going through a winless season and therefore find stories like the one below enjoyable.

The Junior City League page is getting some additions today. Its first season, in 1931, culminated with St. Patrick's narrowly besting Gladstone by a score of 02-01 in the championship game. The summary for that contest has been added to the league's page above but I'll instead draw some attention to a late-season game in which New Edinburgh pulled out its first victory after an 0-6 start. They could have tanked like the Rangers team apparently did but played through and were rewarded for it. Good for them. 

Import #1 (and #2)

Recording results from the 1957 Rough Riders season earlier today produced two points of interest. Unexpectedly, one of them was from 25 years prior.

The first (and current to that article) notable event came in a convincing road victory against Toronto. Ottawa won 55-14 and in doing so, it appeared as though Bobby Judd had a record-setting play. Judd ran back a missed field goal 112 yards for the game's first score, a rather rare occurrence. 

It was said to be a record-setting play but...not so fast! The record book just didn't quite go far enough, it would seem. And in investigating that play, the Ottawa Citizen brought up the other detail that got my eye. 

I wish the above article's writer was properly credited but I'm sorry to say that's not the case.

It is the reference to "first two imports" in the second paragraph that I found interesting. It never occurred to me to try to find out who the first American Rough Rider was, let alone the second. Yet that information just fell right into my lap. Sweet!

Wally Masters is an Ottawa Hall of Fame inductee so tracking down his career is relatively easy. I posted his obituary about 13 months ago here.

Swede Carlsen is a whole other deal. As you may have guessed, "Swede" is more of a nickname. I believe his first name is actually Rolf but I've seen it spelled in the more traditional English manner of "Ralph" as well.

That's going to be a bit more problematic for research purposes but nevertheless, knowing he and Masters are the team's first official import (i.e. American) players is a neat new piece of trivia.

1937: New Edinburgh Rough Riders Clinch JCFL Championship Against...No One.

For the most part, the smaller amateur local leagues that emerged between the 1920s and 1960s tended to lack real competitiveness. Often, one team was particularly dominant and pulled away from the pack in no time.

The 1937 Junior City Football League season was a relatively rare exception. It turned into two-horse race that unfortunately thudded out at the end. Check out the final standings. 

New Edinburgh beat St. Pat's in game two but an upset loss to Gladstone by New Edinburgh opened the door for St. Patrick's to sneak back into the race. And, as you would hope as a spectator, it all came to a head in the final weekend of the regular season!

First, St. Patrick's defeated Gladstone which put them in first place with their 13 points in the standings.

St. Patrick's then had to stand back and pray for a miracle in which Strathcona, they of the 17 points scored in eight games to that point, would upset the strong New Edinburgh club.

Strathcona didn't put up a fight at all. Literally. They refused to play. And with the game having been moved to St. Patrick's field, the team wishing for a miracle instead got to watch New Edinburgh score a touchdown unopposed and in doing so, even bump one of their players from the scoring title. Harsh!

The player bumped in that scoring race, by the way, was Johnny Quilty, son of Hall of Fame member Silver Quilty. 

The whole episode comes off like a bit of a dick move but New Edinburgh had defeated St. Patrick's twice during the regular season and tied with them once. St. Patrick's ended with a 6-2-1 record as a result.

It's hard to argue that New Edinburgh didn't deserve first place and wouldn't have secured it anyway by defeating toothless Strathcona, a team they'd clobbered twice already by a combined score of 33-00, with that much at stake.

But if you were a St. Patrick's man at the time, that still had to sting. 😬

The 1939 Gladstones: Your First Interprovincial Junior Football Champions

There's a new page above called (for the moment) "Rough Rider Seasons (1907 - 1925). Most of the teams featured here have their results, coaching history, awards, etc. all included on the same page but there is so much content with the Rough Riders that it has to be separated. Of course, I plan to include seasons prior 1907 and right up to the sad end in 1996 but that is the chunk of time that I have carved out as of this writing.

Needing a break from that, I went back to a Junior City League (1931+) page I'd started but had yet to complete. In building it, for most years, I'd started by finding and posting the announcement of which teams would be participating in the coming season. I had managed to do this from the period between 1931 and 1938 and had stopped there, so last night I decided forge ahead a little more and in doing so found what I believe to be a little-known accomplishment by a local club.

The city league only had three teams in 1939. Each would play the other two twice each. Gladstone, defending champs from 1938 and coached by former Rough Rider Arnie Morrison, sealed up the three-team division on October 21st with a game left to play. They would defeat an Air Force team the following weekend in an  exhibition game, win their final regular season the week after that, then wait to hear about playing a Quebec champion in an Eastern junior football playoff semi-final.

That champion would turn out to be Montreal's Westmount team. Westmount had defeated Gladstone in the 1938 playoffs in Montreal but Gladstone got the better of them this time around at Lansdowne. 

That led to an Eastern junior football championship contest against the Hamilton Italo-Canadians which Gladstone also won. I know very little about the HIC but it seems they'd won a Toronto/Hamilton junior league, similar to how Ottawa won their own city league. 

Here's our hero now.

Gladstone subsequently (almost immediately, in fact) received a challenged from a team from Sarnia, winners of the Ontario Rugby Football Union, but that match never came to pass. The Gladstone/Hamilton game took place on December 2nd so it was already late in the year to organize additional games, then the two organizations could not come to an agreement on who would cover certain expenses. Also, the Interprovincial Rugby Union already recognized only Gladstone as junior champions so Ottawa ultimately had nothing to gain from playing another game.

That IRFU recognition was a new accomplishment for a team from the area.  

So the Sooners were not the first Ottawa team to reach the top of the junior level. A true national championship may not have been feasible for Gladstone but Arnie Morrison's squad achieved the highest level of success of the time, better than all that preceded them locally.

1934: Jr. Rough Riders 09, Strathconas 02

Ottawa's presence in the junior QRFU came to an end in 1929 but junior football did not disappear altogether, it just took a year off. A local six-team league was formed in 1931 called the City Junior Rugby Football League, or some variation thereof (media was inconsistent in its naming).  

A page was recently built and added to the banner above to record that league's progression. Actually, "progression" might not be the right term, the league quickly shrank to operate with only three or four teams, but it did last longer than I expected. I believed it might have run all of three to five seasons but it carried on in some form until at least 1941. 

1934 got the bulk of the attention this afternoon (before I noticed I totally skipped over 1933). This was a three-team season, Jr. Rough Riders, Strathcona, and New Edinburgh, two of which would play a "curtain raiser" before the "senior" Rough Riders games. 

The game below was something of an exception, I believe. Strathcona had played on October 6th then played this one on October 8th. 

The junior Rough Riders won the league that year. The recap to their final game states that they would wait to find out whether they'd play a team from another league in some sort of regional playoff but aside from what appeared to be an exhibition game against Smiths Falls Collegiate, I have not located an actual playoff contest.

"Rough Rider Dad"

Partial credits for this article are included at the bottom of the second image but as the article will quickly make clear, it was written by George Fraser's son, Andy. Rough Rider Dad was the article's title, which I've cropped off.

I bought the October/November 2012 issue of Canada's History Magazine when it hit shelves at the time but had no memory of this article being included. I came across it this past weekend while cleaning out a drawer at my cottage and thought you fine folks might enjoy it. Sorry I didn't do a better scanning job of it. 

The article makes no mention of it but George Fraser was also involved with the 1943 and 1944 Ottawa Combines/Trojans. 

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". 👍