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.

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.

The Red Feather Tournament(s)

I was in the process of gathering results from Ottawa Tech's 1957 championship season (successfully, I might add) when I happened across the image below. 

That's a rather rare look at players from those junior teams of the time, taken from the September 27th, 1957, Ottawa Journal. Though you probably could not tell with great certainty based on the jerseys, Monk was also a St Anthony's player.  

It was the mention of the Red Feather Tournament that I found intriguing so I did a quick search. It first came about in 1949 but as a high school football showcase and charity fundraiser held in Toronto. Ottawa Tech was, coincidentally enough, the city's first representative in the tournament. 

October 21st, 1949, Ottawa Citizen, written by Bob Abra

Ottawa Tech scored a 9-0 victory over their Humberside opponent and yet...The trophy was awarded the East York Goliaths team on the strength of a scoreless tie against Hamilton earlier in the tourney. 😕

October 24th, 1949, Ottawa Citizen

Wow. Even understanding that this was supposed to be a fun event to raise funds for charity, imagine telling the kids with the only convincing win in the tournament that the trophy is being given to a team that didn't even win its contest?

Back to the photograph of the JIFL players at the top of the post, at this point I don't know if the Red Feather Tournament became one involving junior teams or if the junior circuit adopted the same name for an event of their own (I suspect the latter) but it's probably going to be part of the weekend reading/research.

Just Added: 1938 Glebe Team Picture and Roster

Fresh off attempting a series of tweets of high school football photography from every decade since the 1920s, it came to light that I did not have a lot of images from the 30s. It also came to light that there are very few to be found, obviously.

But I did land on the image below which I did not have copied until this morning. It has now been added to the High School page.

The Long-Delayed 1933 EOSSA Championship Game

I've spent some time over the past couple of days fleshing out the early days of high school seasons in and around Ottawa. The results can be found near the bottom of the "high school" page above.

There have been two tricky aspects to this.

1) The lack of an actual playoff game. The champion was determined by achieving first place, not necessarily by winning their final game. In some instances, the champs might have defeated a team to go 6-0 while the next best team only had three wins. Finding that "clincher" game can be tough.

2) Moving beyond the city championship. For a while, the Ottawa winner would take on other teams from the region for the Eastern Ontario Secondary School Association crown. Results of a game played in Perth on a Tuesday or Wednesday can be hard to locate, for example.

There was one that was particularly challenging. The 1933 EOSSA championship game was played much later than one has any right to expect.

In 1933, Glebe sailed through the local competition.

You have to appreciate that points differential. Tech, on the other hand...

This is a good example of the first challenge. Glebe had this thing sealed up before the end of the regular season. They did so by removing any mathematical chance of anyone (meaning Lisgar) catching them in the standings when they trounced Nepean 35-05.

I'm not sure that "outgeneralled" would survive a spell check.

In any event, good stuff by the Glebonoids. Off to the EOSSA Championship playoffs! The first obstacle was in Pembroke.

Ha! Take THAT, Lumber Towners!

We're on to Carleton Place. And here is where challenge #2 takes place. Scheduling could be tricky so games would be moved to the middle of the week at a moment's notice to accommodate someone, etc. The junior title game was cancelled outright, for example.

The Glebe/Carleton Place game was initially scheduled for Saturday, November 18th. It was delayed by heavy snowfall. Then delayed again by more snow. It was delayed further until, on December 7th, a decision was finally made to play the game...right around Easter of the following year.

Wow.

At the very least, Glebe can not claim that the wait affected them in any negative way. They dominated the game in defeating Carleton Place 30-00, using a wide array of weapons, like the...huh...forward pass.

"Crashed the leather". I love that.

So a mere five months after the regular season came to an end, Glebe added the EOSSA championship to its trophy case. The delay would not deter them at all; they nailed down the city championship in 1934 as well.