Joe Ryan poached American football talent to help bring the Grey Cup west for the first time.
The recast Winnipegs opened their season on September 14, 1935, beating Concordia College of North Dakota 26–0 in an exhibition game (they had lost 33–27 to the same American school the previous year). A week later, the next challenge would be a formidable one: the 1934 Grey Cup champion Sarnia Imperials were on a western barnstorming tour, taking on the best opposition available, and riding a fourteen-game winning streak. A record Winnipeg football crowd of 3,800 gathered to see the hometown team pull off the upset, defeating Sarnia 3–1. Imperials’ coach Art Massucci said the Winnipegs were the best team he’d seen in the previous two years, but that realization didn’t spread among the football cognoscenti of Eastern Canada. As the Winnipegs went on to decimate all available competition – without a league in which to compete, they played a series of exhibition games, knocking off two American teams, the Minnesota All-Stars and North Dakota Freshmen, and crushing the local Winnipeg Vics in three successive matches – the traditional football powers in Ontario and Quebec were consumed with what had become a strange Big Four season.
The Toronto Argonauts looked like the obvious Grey Cup favourites after beating their traditional rivals from Hamilton twice, 13–8 and 7–1. It wasn’t just Winnipeg that had come to understand the value of imported talent. The Argos had their own American star that year, halfback Tony Rosso from Washington and Jefferson University, while the Tigers employed running back Johnny Ferraro and centre Jerry Brock, both out of Cornell University. And in Ottawa, they had a sensational halfback from Tulsa University named Roy Berry – or at least that’s what it said in the program. It turned out he was actually Bohn Hilliard, from the University of Texas, who had borrowed another player’s name to cover up the fact that he had played baseball in the low minor leagues, and therefore was a professional, ineligible under Canadian Rugby Union rules.
When Hilliard and another Ottawa import were barred from the team’s two remaining games against Toronto, the Argonauts’ path to the Big Four championship seemed assured: beat Ottawa twice and it would be all theirs. But they lost both games, 18–13 and 9–5, which allowed Hamilton, by virtue of a 23–0 win over Montreal, to sneak through and claim the Big Four title. In the eastern playoffs, the Tigers humiliated Queen’s University 44–4 (it was the last time a Canadian university team would challenge for the Grey Cup), and then knocked off the defending champion Sarnia Imperials, champions of the Ontario Rugby Football Union, 22–3. The Grey Cup game would be played on Hamilton’s home field, the HAAA Grounds.
Back in Winnipeg, on November 2, the home team had played its first “real” game of the 1935 season, a playoff against the visiting Regina Roughriders at Osborne Stadium. Local sportswriter Ralph Allen, who would go on to become one of the legends of his profession, predicted a 13–1 Winnipeg victory in his column. He was rather prescient: a last-minute Regina touchdown made the final margin 13–6 for the home side. Lionel Conacher was on hand to watch the match, and predicted that Winnipeg would beat whichever team came out of the east – but again, it seems no one was listening.
Sarnia Imperials jersey.
THE VENUES
OF THE 99 GREY Cup games played between 1909 and 2011, only two have been played outside of what may be viewed as a “CFL” city (the nine cities that have had teams since the CFL was formed in 1958, which comprise the current eight plus Ottawa). Today, the Grey Cup moves around the country, with each club that has a viable stadium getting a chance to host the game. Between 2006 and 2011, the Grey Cup was staged in six different cities, and the nine games between 2003 and 2011 were played in eight different stadiums.
But such wasn’t always the case. Between 1976 and 1982, for instance, the Grey Cup alternated between Montreal and Toronto. Between 1945 and 1957, Toronto’s Varsity Stadium had a virtual lock on the Grey Cup (only in 1955, when the game went to Empire Stadium in Vancouver, was this pattern broken). And for many years prior to the Second World War, the game was usually played at the home of the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (IRFU) champion.
The Grey Cup was played in a “non-CFL” city for the first time in 1922, when the powerhouse team from Queen’s University defeated the Edmonton Elks, 13–1, on their home field, Richardson Stadium in Kingston, Ontario, before 4,700 fans. The only other instance was in 1933, when the Sarnia Imperials, champions of the Ontario Rugby Football Union (ORFU), hosted the Toronto Argonauts at Davis Field.
Founded in 1928, the Imperials were among the best teams of their time, winning the ORFU championship in 1929, and in every season between 1931 and 1939. (They would win again in 1951 and 1952.) In 1933 they were coming off a 5–1 season, en route to their matchup with the Argos. After stumbling out of the gate with back-to-back losses, Toronto won their last four regular-season games, took both ends of the two-game, total-points eastern final, and shut out the Winnipeg ’Pegs, 13–0, in the Grey Cup semifinal.
Conditions in Sarnia on December 9, 1933, were anything but perfect. Amid temperatures of −10ºC and a snowstorm, the field was frozen. The final score – 4–3 for Toronto – gives us a hint as to how tough it must have been to move the ball. Only five passes were completed, and Sarnia fumbled the ball nine times. The game was notable for featuring 53 punts, most of which came from the talented legs of two Hall of Fame talents: Toronto’s Ab Box kicked the winning single in the fourth quarter, while Hugh “Bummer” Stirling kicked for all three Sarnia points.
The final result hinged on the game’s most exciting play, in which a late completion to the Imperials’ Norman Perry from Rocky Parsaca that would have put the ball on the Argonauts’ 5-yard line was ruled out of bounds back at the 45 instead. Sarnia was unable to punch in a tying score after that close call and Toronto had its third Grey Cup title in hand.
Sarnia reached the Grey Cup again in 1934, defeating the Regina Roughriders, 20–12. Two years later, they prevailed over Ottawa by a 26–20 margin, becoming the last ORFU team to win the national championship.
In the western final a week later, the Winnipegs squeaked by the Calgary Bronks 7–0 on a snowy field at home. With a month off before the Grey Cup game, they sent Bert Oja ahead to scout the eastern final. He liked what he saw of the Hamilton Tigers’ kicking game but was otherwise unimpressed. “Hamilton tacklers will have trouble bringing down Fritz Hanson and Russ Rebholz,” Oja reported.
With the Grey Cup apparently within their grasp, Winnipeg was leaving nothing to chance. The team departed early and established a training camp in Detroit, where they could presumably avoid the onset of prairie winter. But the weather in the Motor City was terrible, and so they practised in the snow, while members of the eastern sporting press, and just perhaps a few spies representing their potential opponents, looked on from the sideline. The Winnipegs played a single exhibition game, against Windsor’s Assumption College – essentially a high-school team. They won 17–0 but looked unimpressive in the process, and word soon spread that this western challenger was no better than the rest – worse, perhaps – and that the mighty Tigers had nothing to fear. Later, the story would leak out that the Winnipeg players had done everything possible to hide their skills, including intentionally playing out of position and wearing different numbers to conceal their true identities. They were setting a trap – and, to some degree, it worked. The Tigers had no idea what was coming, and were overflowing with what turned out to be unwarranted confidence.
One story, perhaps apocryphal, had Hamilton’s Bill Friday, whose day job was as a city cop, sauntering into a local sporting goods store on the night before the big game. He was about to start the night shift, he explained to the guys behind the counter. Off at eight the next morning. Then he’d head home, grab a couple of hours’ sleep, and make his way to the HAAA Grounds. Hardly the ideal preparation for a gruelling championship football game, but Friday certainly didn’t seem worried.
The football used in the 1935 Grey Cup game.
> Neither did the eastern sports press, which was pretty much unanimous in their opinion that the Tigers would win easily. In his pre-game column, Tommy Munns, the sports editor of The Globe, listed seven reasons for a Hamilton victory:
1. Tigers should show a definite backfield superiority.
2. Tigers should be as effective as their opponents in tackling – if not better. Their heavy hitting in bringing down opposing ball-carriers has been a feature of their play this season.
3. Granting that Winnipegs possess the expected advantage along the line, it is doubtful if they can make enough gains by plunging to offset the yardage earned by Tigers’ backfielders.
4. Tigers’ extension plays should equal those of Winnipegs, and perhaps prove better.
5. Home grounds have proved a greater advantage to Tigers than to any other senior team in Canada in the past.
6. The switch to Eastern rules will prove a handicap to Winnipegs, and possibly cost them considerable yardage in penalties.
7. Tigers are at their peak; Winnipegs, who won the Western title several weeks ago, may not be “in form” to the same extent.
Much could be written about the possibilities of the game; many conjectures could be made, but the above reasons back Tigers as this writer’s choice. To them may be added the recollection of the defense shown by Tigers against the Sarnia forward passes last week, and the manner in which Johnny Ferraro has adapted himself to Canadian broken-field running without the interference to which he was accustomed in the United States.
What Munns could have added to his list, had he known, was that the Winnipeg players might also be at a disadvantage because of their diet. They had been offered two options for their time on the road: eat at the team hotel for free, or take a dollar-a-meal allowance and look after themselves. To a man, the players opted to take the dollar. At 1935 prices, you could buy a couple of hot dogs, and still have money left over from your buck. So the Winnipegs headed into the 1935 Grey Cup game fuelled almost entirely by tube steaks. Funny, but that didn’t seem to slow them down.
It was a nasty, wet, cold day in Hamilton, and the field at the HAAA Grounds was as much mud as grass. Due to the inclement weather, and no doubt because of the anticipated mismatch, only 6,400 fans turned out, paying $1.60 a ticket.
Soon after Winnipeg recovered the opening kickoff, Russ Rebholz hit Bud Marquardt with a touchdown pass, and the visitors took an early 5–0 lead. Moments later, across Canada, radios tuned to the CRBC – the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, the precursor of the CBC – crackled to life.
“Winnipeg has a touchdown. The score is now 5–0.”
It was the voice of Francis “Shag” Shaughnessy, finally coming through after a technical glitch had kept the first five minutes of the first national broadcast of a Grey Cup game off the air. (There had been scattered local broadcasts before that.) Shaughnessy, a Notre Dame grad who became famous as a coach and football innovator at McGill University, was doing his first and only broadcast. He was joined by two others who would call several Grey Cup games during the 1930s and 1940s: Wes McKnight, and the sportsman and philanthropist Harry “Red” Foster.
Shag Shaughnessy was a player, coach, and broadcaster for the CFL. He was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 1963.
In the third quarter, the score was 12–10 Winnipeg – shocking to some because it was so close, but still well within reach of the heavily favoured Tigers. And then Hanson took over, turning in one of the most memorable individual performances in any Grey Cup game. Official statistics weren’t kept, so there’s no way of knowing for sure whether Hanson actually did return punts for an astounding 300 yards, but if that wasn’t precisely the number, it was close enough. Playing on the slippery field, and taking advantage of the way Hamilton punter Huck Welch was kicking the ball long and low, Hanson again and again evaded the onrushing tacklers, who were unable to deal with his feints, his quick changes of direction, and his tremendous speed. When the Tigers finally decided to start kicking the ball away from him, a Winnipeg teammate would catch the ball, wait for the Hamilton defenders to be drawn towards him, giving the necessary yards, and then lateral to Hanson, who would immediately head for daylight.
Hanson scored only a single touchdown, which came on a 80-yard return in the third quarter, and the Tigers didn’t quit, fighting back to within six points of Winnipeg. But the final score – 18–12 in favour of the new Grey Cup champions – was evidence enough of the seismic shift that had taken place in Canadian sport.
“The Grey Cup, emblematic of the Canadian senior football championship, goes West, and it is in good hands, because this afternoon on the rain-swept H.A.A.A. field a great machine became the titleholder for 1935,” wrote M. J. Rodden, the associate sports editor of The Globe. “Winnipegs outplayed a courageous Tiger team in nearly every department of the sport, and were full value for their 18-to-12 victory. They had what it takes, and they took it in a bitterly fought engagement, where there was no mercy sought or given.
“In the greasy going Bob Fritz, Russ Rebholz, Greg Kabat and Fritz Hanson were the stars, but the ’Pegs all scintillated, and it appeared that they were out there to ‘die for dear old Minnesota, Manitoba and the Canadian West,’ and possibly also to prove that those who lured them to Winnipeg knew their business.”
A western team had won the national football championship for the first time. American professional players had been essential to that victory. There was no turning back now – though, over the next few years, the eastern football establishment would do its best. Tommy Munns wrote:
The result will be in the interest of football. No more will a Canadian final be regarded as a foregone conclusion that another Eastern team is about to win. Finalists henceforth will meet on an equal basis, and the Westerners – they’ll be defending champions next time – will command the wholesome respect of their opposition.
From a Western point of view the one regret was that the long-sought victory was scored, not by a team of Western Canada athletes, but by a powerful football machine, principal cogs of which were imported duty-free from the United States market. It was a triumph for Minnesota as well as Manitoba, and in saying that we quote a former Winnipeg resident.
No Interprovincial Union team, despite all the trouble over imports, ever was as ‘packed’ with U.S. talent as the new Canadian champions. That, of course, doesn’t alter the fact that they are a great team. They overcame some very real handicaps to win, and in doing so produced some scintillating football that amazed the onlookers and stamped the Winnipegs as by far the best gridiron squad ever to come out of the West.
The Bombers won their last Grey Cup in 1990, at B.C. Place Stadium, Vancouver.
And Fritzy Hanson had now entered the Canadian football pantheon.
“He’s the fastest thing I ever saw on a Canadian football field … and I’ve seen them all for over thirty years … haven’t missed an eastern semifinal or a national final,” Lou Marsh wrote in The Star.
Russ “The Wisconsin Wraith” Rebholz, one of the American imports who helped lead the Bombers to their first Grey Cup in 1935.
That wasn’t quite the end of the adventure for the Winnipeg football team. There was the embarrassing matter of their Hamilton hotel bill. Because of the disappointing gate receipts, they didn’t have the money to pay it. Fortunately, a loyal fan and future Blue Bombers’ president named Les Isard stepped up to bail them out.
And then, on the joyous and no doubt rather lubricated train ride back to Winnipeg, the players learned that another famous “Fritzy” was making the same trip: violinist Fritz Kreisler, a musical superstar of the day. Some of them decided that the two Fritzes ought to meet each other, and that Kreisler might perhaps be inspired to play something for the newly crowned Grey Cup champions. They found his compartment and started banging on the door.
“Sorry, but I’m too tired to play,” Kreisler said.
“Well, then, you don’t have to play a real number. Just twang up the fi
ddle and practise a little,” said one of the players.
“I don’t practise.”
“You don’t practise? Mr. Kreisler, how do you expect to amount to anything?”
A story too good to be true? Perhaps. But that’s how legends are born.
Following what, for them, was a humiliating Winnipeg victory, the eastern football powers tried desperately to put the genie back in the bottle. The Canadian Rugby Union quickly passed a rule that it claimed was designed to protect domestic talent, but which in reality seemed to have far more to do with preventing any more unpleasant surprises. Players would now be ineligible to compete unless they had lived in Canada for at least a year; in addition, they would have to live in the city in which their team was based from at least October 1.
The new statute would have an immediate impact in 1936, after the Regina Roughriders beat Winnipeg and Calgary in the western playoffs and were told that, under the rule, the five Americans on their roster were ineligible to compete in the Grey Cup game.
The first response from Saskatchewan was one of defiance. If the ’Riders couldn’t bring their full roster, they weren’t coming east.
“Let them declare their cheese champions,” Regina coach Al Ritchie said.
But when the Western Interprovincial Football Union decided that the runners-up from Winnipeg could go instead, the Regina club had second thoughts. Too late, said the CRU, we’ll have our championship game without you.
100 Grey Cups Page 4