Just Added: 1961 Ottawa Sooners Championship Recaps

That's "recaps", in plural form, because as was often the case back then, the championship game was a two-game series.

It was not the Sooners' first playoff  appearance. They made the playoffs in their inaugural season in 1960 but lost that game to the Hull Tigers. So this series includes both their first playoff victory in game one and their first crown in game two.

Game 1

Game 2

Just Added: The 1976 Panda Game

The recap below was copied from the Ottawa Citizen dated October 25th, 1976. 

That Gee-Gees team was an interesting one. Coming off their national championship from the previous year, they won their first four games by shut out and averaged 44 points of their own. The first score against them was a single point on missed field goal in the first half of the fifth game of the season when they ultimately beat Queen's 26-07 in Kingston.

With the game below, it seems like things started to unravel.  They won it, but then lost to Queen's at home the following weekend by a score of 19-00. At that point they had won 18 straight games over the course of the past two seasons.

With the regular season concluded, they barely got through their first playoff game against Bishop's. It was played in Ottawa and the Gee-Gees won by a score of 22-20 when the Gaiters missed a field goal attempt with five seconds remaining in the game. They then went on to lose to Acadia in the Atlantic Bowl 18-16 when they failed to take advantage of a number of scoring opportunities and good field position.

I have not been able to find a specific turning point (such as a major injury) but I am curious as to what a member of that team would point to. Obviously they couldn't have been expected to win every game 44-00 but the speed with which they began to struggle is mysterious.

Rival Captains

I'm looking to fill out the Ottawa Trojans page a bit more today and in so doing found the picture below from the November 5th, 1945, Ottawa Citizen. I thought it was of pretty good quality for 1945 and certainly worth sharing. 

The AIA Game

I need to thank the two gentlemen below for the inspiration for this post and, eventually, a page devoted to the Athletes In Action football game.

The Athletes In Action high school football game has been running since the mid 70s. I recall posting about it a bit on the previous version of this website, which crapped out in 2014 or so, so it was run until recently though not with anywhere near the amount of media coverage that it received upon its launch. Normally played in May, it tended to serve as the unofficial start of the football season, in my view.

Initially, in 1975, it was the capping event of a training camp held by the Ottawa Rough Riders and, for all intents and purposes, an all-star game between players from the Carleton and Ottawa school board teams.

Athletes In Action began sponsoring it the following year, I believe. Bear with me, I'm still doing a bit of research. 😉

At the start of camp, on a Tuesday, 104 players were said to have registered. It was expected that some would drop out as the work started but an article the following Friday pointed out that not a single one had left by that time.

The recap of the first game, played the next Monday, follows. 

Kind of neat to read about the Cook brothers in this game as both would play for the Ottawa Rough Riders later on. 

There will be much more added here about this annual event.

1986 Midget Championship Game

I had some success this afternoon filling out some of the details from the early years of the midget level in the Ottawa area, the mid-to-late 80s in particular.

In doing so, I came across the image below from the 1986 championship . While the level of play was covered much more extensively at the time than it is nowadays, it seldom included photography (or at least the Ottawa Citizen didn't include much) so I thought it was worth holding on to and sharing. 

The Trojans went on to win the game 20-07. It was their third straight championship.

1989, Oct 14th: "Bootleggers Stuff Rams"

This will seem rather random...

I was collecting game results for the Carleton Ravens. I've finally got a complete list for the 1990s and was working back to the late 80s when I spotted this Bootleggers game recap, so I thought I would share it.

For those who did not get to enjoy the all-too-brief zaniness that was the Bootleggers, this type of result was not uncommon.

Additions To The Carleton Ravens Hall of Fame

The Carleton Ravens page above has a list of football players and builders that have been named to the school's hall of fame. Two more names were added earlier today, one in each category, following an announcement by the school on September 29th. Both men have connections to the pro level in the city as well.

Cameron Legault is the player added. He was a defensive tackle from 1996 to 1998, the program's last season until its return in 2013.  He was a first-team All-Canadian selection in 1998 and has been named the school's athlete of the year.  

Legault was a second round draft choice in 1999. He played eight years in the Canadian Football League including one season in Ottawa with the Renegades in 2005.

The other HoF addition was John Ruddy. Ruddy played for the Ravens as a defensive back between 1970 and 1975 but he is inducted as a builder for his key contributions to restoring the Ravens program. Ruddy is also a member of the OSEG ownership group that brought pro football back in the form of the RedBlacks. 

Chris Isaac (1959 - 2020)

Former Ottawa Rough Rider quarterback Chris Isaac passed away a week ago today from an unspecified illness. He was 61 years old.

He did not spend a lot of Ottawa, only playing 1982 and 1983, but he made an impact during during his short stay. Tom Casey told us all about it on July 30th, 1982. 

 

Isaac would not be able to sustain that success. He would conclude the 1982 season with 18 touchdown passes, 18 interceptions, and 3408 passing yards. He ran for 244 additional yards and another score. He was named the league's rookie of the year that season but 1983 proved to be a difficult, with 10 interceptions thrown in only 63 attempts (against four touchdowns). He moved on to coaching at various high schools and colleges following his playing career.

The single-game yardage total has been surpassed four times; twice by Henry Burris (both in 2015) and twice by Trevor Harris (in 2016 and 2018). Obviously those performances were at the helm of the RedBlacks. Isaac's Rough Riders record held up until the team's demise in 1996. 

Just Added: Wally Masters

The Rough Rider Coaches page displays win-loss records for most of the coaches throughout the team's history, even if some of the official data from the early years is somewhat questionable.

My plan was to provide a spotlight on the more accomplished gentlemen on the list (don't expect me to elaborate on Fred Glick much, for example). Unfortunately, the best accounts of one's career often take the form of an obituary.

Such is the case with Mr. Wally Masters. I did not originally intend to include any sort of more detailed biography about him, frankly, being more preoccupied with the Cup winners.

However, while Master never did win a Grey Cup as a coach, he is a member of the Ottawa Sports Hall of Fame. Also, it is true that the page was meant to be specific to Rough Rider coaches but Masters' coaching of the 1947 Ottawa Trojans to the ORFU championship certainly should not be discounted.

Read on, from the July 12th, 1992, Ottawa Citizen.

Just Added: 2007 Manson Cup, Ottawa Jr. Riders 29, Ottawa Sooners 27

With the addition of the 2007 Manson Cup recap to the Jr. Riders own page, all of their championship games as members of the Quebec junior football league are now included there or as standard blog posts.

The one below was a hell of a game. I recall some shock in the crowd when the Sooners chose to gamble on third down from about their own six-yard line.

The layout of the article made it tricky to copy but Sooners coach Mike McCarthy explained that had they punted from there, it is likely that they still would have been in Jr. Riders kicker Luigi DeLellis' range with a good chance of not having possession of the ball again. With that in mind, attempting to gain an inch or two to retain possession seemed like the way to go. 

 

I missed including it when cropping, but it should be pointed out that the article was written by Darren Desaulniers for the Ottawa Citizen. 

Also just added: results of the Ottawa Sooners 1976 season and a few scores for the Ottawa Deacon Demons semi-pro team that played for a few years in the mid 2000s. The latter info is on the "Defunct Teams" page.