1945: Arnie McWatters is Awarded the Imperial Oil MVP Award

I'd gradually been putting together a list of the men who have played for the Ottawa Combines/Trojans of the ORFU from 1943 to 1947 prior to that team amalgamating with the Rough Riders.

The list usually only grew in small spurts. Today, I decided to dedicate some time to that task specifically.

I took a longer look at some mid-week articles from September through November of 1945 and 1946 instead of only game summaries from that time range. The mid-week articles often listed injured players being removed from the roster and their potential replacement as teams resumed training. They used the players' full name in doing so. Far too often, game summaries only refer to players by family name. 

Reaching the end of 1945, I landed on the union's MVP award announcement. It was given to Trojans  veteran player/coach Arnie McWatters and that seemed like a notable achievement to record here. I believe McWatters is the only Ottawa recipient of the award but that's hardly shocking since Ottawa was in the ORFU only a short period of time while that award was being handed out. 

McWatters was the most valuable player but was not named to the union's all-star team. Only George Sprague represented Ottawa in that regard. That would suggest that McWatters' coaching ability and sportsmanship were substantial decision influencers in determining his "value".

McWatters' career started in Sarnia but he joined the Rough Riders in 1939, won the Grey Cup with them in 1940, and stayed with the club until it was disbanded after the 1942 season because of WW2. He then joined the Ottawa Combines/Trojans in 1943 and stayed with that club until the aforementioned merger with the Rough Riders prior to the 1948 season. He has coached at both Ottawa universities. 

Oct 11th, 1947: Ottawa Trojans 21 @ Sarnia Imperials 06

I'm in the middle of adding some game summaries from either the Ottawa Citizen or the Ottawa Journal to the Trojans page, being the ORFU club that played from 1943 to 1947 inclusively. I've added one from 1943 and another from 1947, their most successful (yet final) season.

I'd like to shine a little more of a light on the game below from October 11th, 1947. Why is that, you ask? Was it a particularly impressive team or individual performance? Is there something about it that makes it iconic? Was it a turn-around performance after a winless 1946?

Not really, I just laughed out loud at the chaotic nature of the game and it was made all the funnier to me by the casual way in it which it was reported. Read on.

Very few games include brawls, fan swarms, and a manager having a bucket of water dumped on him after "just retaliation" from having an opposing player get in his face. We go from a mention of that incident right into the description of the success of the off-tackle play.

This may be my favourite game summary in nearly 150 years of Ottawa football history. 😁