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 Shortest Championship Season Ever

The Ottawa Rangers played at the intermediate level in the early 1930s. I'm going to look into their origins more closely at a later time but for now I want to review the back end of their existence.

In 1934, the Quebec Rugby Football Union was struggling. There was some question as to whether it would even attempt to play a season, at least at the intermediate level. They decided to proceed after all, with the plan being that two sections (divisions, basically) of four teams would compete to determine a champion.

Things clearly deteriorated from there because Ottawa was given a bye...for the entire regular season. Only two exhibition games were scheduled and of those, only one came to pass. The article below is from October 12th of that year.

Canadian National would win their section and take a trip into town for the "play downs". So not only did Ottawa make the playoffs without playing a single regular season game, they hosted it!

Emerson Ogilvie. Remember him? He was the guy who entered "The Gallery of the Gods" with his performance for Glebe in the 1927 high school championship game.

The intent was for this to be a semi-final game, but things didn't quite work out that way.

So by virtue of winning the single contest in which they participated, Ottawa Rangers won the championship.

But that would not be enough for our plucky Rangers! They challenged St. Thomas for the Dominion championship!

That game was played on December 9th on a frozen field. Go figure. Ottawa lost 5-2, the two points being scored off the foot of football god Emerson Ogilvie.

Recently, I was impressed that the Ottawa Sooners played 16 games in order to secure a national championship in 1974. At the other end of the spectrum, no one will ever win a championship in fewer games that our 1934 Ottawa Rangers.

I have not located any results for the Rangers in 1935 so evidently, they went out (Québec) champions.

Emerson's Big Day

Last night I copied an article about the most recent high school championship game. Today, I'm going  to copy one from the least recent.

Any account of high school football (senior) that I've ever come across dates back to 1927. No doubt games were played well before then but that appears to be the year that operations became solidly structured and/or a champion was crowned.

Note that this was a city championship, hence the reference to playing Renfrew the following week in the portion of the article below.

The lasting impression of this game was that one Emerson Ogilvy entered the Gallery of the Gods.

Luckily, the game was not marred by vaccinations.

This would be the first of 13 championships for Glebe between 1927 and 1946. They remain, to this day, the most decorated team in the city for high school football with 17 overall, though the last was in 1991.

As for Emerson Ogilvy, after entering the Gallery of the Gods, his name appeared in the Canadian Junior Football league record books. He is tied with several others for having kicked seven singles in a game for the Ottawa South Roamers in 1928. I had not heard of this team until today but I might just have to do a little digging now!