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.   

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.

Oct. 1907: Rough Riders and St. Patrick's Merge

The history of the Rough Riders includes a number of mergers and amalgamations with other local clubs. They absorbed the Ottawa Trojans in the mid-40s, combined with a St. Brigid's club in 1923 and merged with the University of Ottawa squad in 1913.

Much of the details of those events have been recorded here, so today we'll go even further back to the club's rebirth in 1907 as the IRFU (Big Four) was being formed. The Rough Riders and a club from St. Patrick's combined to join the new Union. 

It wouldn't be a an Ottawa football team restructure without a debate about the name!

I haven't come across a list of name suggestions as of yet. The Rough Riders name stuck, perhaps in part because most of the new roster was built from the previous year's version of that team. The articles above are from October 2nd, the one below is from October 11th.

Using the "professional" tag for this post is more a reference to what this team would become than how it operated at that point, based on the second item below. 

Their first season under the new structure would be underwhelming as they achieved two wins and four losses. The 1908 club, however, would win five out of six and take first place in the Big Four.

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.   

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.

Nov 13th, 1954: Montreal Alouettes 12 @ Ottawa Rough Riders 14

Got my day started by looking up the last time an Ottawa professional football team went winless at home as the Redblacks did this season.

The 1987 - 1988 Rough Riders teams had a long home losing streak, but it was bookended by victories in each season. The 1987 team won its first two home games, the second of which took place on July 11th. The 1988 team won on October 22nd, its second-to-last home game. So neither provided the answer.

I thought the 1954 edition that went 2-12 was a good candidate, but no. It won its final game of the season, at home, against Montreal. The summary of that game is copied below. Sorry about the page breaks, I can't seem to avoid those.

In fact, the last time an Ottawa team did not win at home throughout an entire season was in...1934. They played only six games in those days and Ottawa won once, in Montreal.

Congratulations to the 2022 Redblacks for matching an "accomplishment" dating back to the year Don Cherry was born. 👏👏

Nov 23rd: Ottawa Rough Riders 08 @ Toronto Argonauts 01

The summary of the first contest in this two-game series for the 1940 IRFU (Big Four) title was posted earlier today.

Nov 16th, 1940: Toronto Argonauts 01 @ Ottawa Rough Riders 12

Continuing to gather the various teams' playoff successes, here we have the 1940 Rough Riders' first such victory in a two-game series against Toronto. The second game will be added shortly. 

The 1941 games were a better fit for the Rough Riders 1907 - 1942 page so I added them there directly rather than create a post for them. You can check that out at your leisure using the link bearing that exact name under the banner image.    

Nov 21st, 1951: "Rough Riders Get Seven Majors To Wallop Sarnia Imperials, 43-17"

This third consecutive Rough Riders game summary concludes that team's run through the 1951 playoffs. It's nice to get an unusual opponent in the form of the Sarnia Imperials.

The championship game coverage, against Saskatchewan, has been included on the Grey Cup page for some time. You can click on the page link under the top banner.

Nov 17th, 1951: "One More Hurdle For Riders to Grey Cup Final"

We flip to the Ottawa Journal for the summary of the second game in the two-game series against Hamilton for the IRFU (Big Four) championship. The image at the bottom is from the Citizen of the same date, however.  

Nov. 14th, 1951: "Riders' Last Quarter Rally Results in 10-Point Lead"

The summary below is for the first of two games in a series to win the IRFU title. Game two will hopefully be added later on today.