Nov 18th, 1973: Montreal Alouettes 14 @ Ottawa Rough Riders 23

What follows is Ottawa Citizen coverage of the 1973 Eastern final game which put the Riders in that year's Grey Cup. Take it away, Bob!

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.

Sept 15th, 1996: "Turnovers Ignite Late Riders Rally"

It never really jumped out at me that the Rough Riders' final victory came against a similarly shitty Saskatchewan team, in Regina no less.

The real Rough Riders winning out there would be cause enough to store this game summary forevermore, but that it was the team's last makes it damn near mandatory to do so. And so...here we are!

Oct 5th, 2013: Return of the Panda

Oct 29th, 1983: "Sooners Beat Montreal to Make National Final"

The image below is of Peppi LaRiccia (left) and George Gariepy according to the accompanying caption which I didn't not copy. 

Nov 11th, 2005: Merivale 22, Colonel By 02

The high school page was originally built to include only the senior level. Generally speaking, the site tracks football from ages 17 onwards so junior high school football doesn't get much attention.

For a few years in the mid-2000s, the senior level operated in two tiers. I believe the major difference was that tier one could compete provincially, and tier two did not. Tier one, then, was perceived as being the superior of the two and got all the attention here.

Whether that perception is accurate or not, tier two was still senior football and now that the high school page is filling up quite nicely, it's time to start adding the second tier, starting with Merivale's championship in 2005. Standings and playoff results leading up to that game have been added, as well as a brief summary of St. Peter's semifinal win in Tier 1.

I'm not sure exactly why the article goes off a cliff like that at the end but that's not my doing. 

Oct 12th, 1927: Glebe 05, Lisgar 02

1927 is largely considered the year in which high school football started in Ottawa.

That claim is not entirely factual; games from 1925 and 1926 have been recorded here so teams did play prior to 1927. However, I believe that the local schools began being affiliated with the EOSSA that year and therefore fully organized for the first time, hence it began the recognize starting point.

The majority of championship results/recaps have been recorded on the High School page with some additional work done recently to track down standings and playoff game finals from the mid-2000s. But tonight, I thought I'd go back and track down the first "official" senior high school game played in Ottawa. 

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a little unclear.

The brief Ottawa Citizen article below states clearly that Glebe and Lisgar met in the "opening game of the school season", yet the Ottawa Journal's summary of the game made reference to the teams looking crisper than they had in an earlier contest. I was unable to locate any reference to a game being played in the prior two weeks or so, so I don't know for certain what the Journal's writer meant by that. So the article below will do for now until I prove myself wrong.

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. 👏👏

Oct 20th, 1973: "'Bombs' Save Sooners from Grid Defeat"

The game below was the first playoff contest for the 1973 Sooners. While the team was said to be undefeated, accurately, they did have a tie in their regular season record that had come against this same Verdun team.