It’s been a while.
When the Toronto Argonauts host the Ottawa Redblacks on Saturday in the Eastern Semi-Final, it will be the first time the two cities have met in a playoff game since 1990 when Willie Gillus and the Argos defeated Damon Allen and the Rough Riders 34-25 at SkyDome.
That’s thirty-four years between post-season meetings, but there have been some incredibly memorable moments in previous battles between the provincial rivals.
Founded in 1876 they were known as the Ottawa Football Club, becoming the Rough Riders in 1898. For a brief period beginning in 1925 they changed their name to the Senators, then became the Rough Riders again in 1930. They kept that name until 1996 when the franchise folded.
There was a rebirth of football in 2002 under the name Renegades, but it wasn’t embraced by the market and the team folded four years later.
Football fans in the National Capital Region finally had a CFL team of their own to cheer for again with the birth of the Redblacks in 2014, but while they’ve won a Grey Cup since their formation, they’ve never met their fellow Ontarians in a post-season matchup.
That changes on Saturday at BMO Field.
The Golden Age of the CFL in Ottawa would be the late 1960s to the mid-70s. Players like Russ Jackson, Ronnie Stewart, Whit Tucker, Jerry “Soupy” Campbell, and Tony Gabriel dominated the league, and the Riders won the Grey Cup four times in nine seasons between 1968 and 1976.
It was during this period that the most memorable moment in the Toronto/Ottawa playoff rivalry took place. It wasn’t a win, a touchdown, nor a defensive or special teams play that stands out. It was a quote, and it was a doozy.
Frank Clair’s Riders had won the Grey Cup in 1968 and were the favourites to do it again in ‘69. They had won the regular season title in the East and were going to face the Argos in the Eastern Final, a two game, total point series.
The Boatmen were the up and comers. They were a team that hadn’t won a Grey Cup since 1952 but had assembled a roster filled with exciting players like Tom Wilkinson, Bill Symons, Bobby Taylor, Ed Harrington, Marv Luster, Dave Mann, Mel Profit, Dave Raimey, and Dick Thornton.
They had finished 10-4, and after beating Hamilton in the Eastern Semi-Final they upset the powerful Riders 22-14 at Exhibition Stadium in the first game of the Final. The team was filled with confidence, no one more so than their head coach.
Leo Cahill was nicknamed “Leo the Lip” with good reason. He was equal parts football coach and showman, never failing to gain the public’s attention with a great quote. After the victory in the first game against Ottawa he met with reporters and fans and made a statement that is surgically attached to his name over half-a-century later and was ranked number 13 when the club assembled the 150 most memorable moments in Argo history last year in conjunction with the teams 150th anniversary season.
Cahill told the story in his autobiography “Goodbye Leo,” written with Scott Young in 1973.
From the book.
“And then a few days later in the Playback Club meeting looking ahead to the second half of the final, I made a statement that later made me want to cut my tongue out. ‘It will take an act of God to beat us on Saturday,’ I said. From coast to coast, it was one of those quotable quotes that you always wish you didn’t say. What I meant was we knew physically we were getting close enough to Ottawa to win and that unless somebody breaks a leg, or unless the weather is terrible, or there’s a bad-break fumble or something, we’re going to win. But that isn’t how it sounded in the papers, especially in Ottawa. It was just what they needed to get psyched up for the second game.”
It turns out that in 1969 God was a Riders fan.
In the book Cahill described the playing surface that day as “A badly frozen, rutted field. The Ottawa players wore broomball shoes and I looked like a clown because we hadn’t expected those conditions and it was too late to order special footgear.”
The final score on that day was 32-3 for the Riders, who won the total point series 46-25 and went on to beat Saskatchewan 29-11 in the Grey Cup in what would be Russ Jackson’s final game.
Thirteen years later it seems God switched allegiances.
The Argos hosted the Rough Riders in the 1982 Eastern Final. The city was buzzing after the team posted a 9-6-1 record after finishing 2-14 the year before. Under rookie head coach Bob O’Billovich, who had been hired away from the Ottawa staff, quarterback Condredge Holloway and receiver Terry Greer found ridiculous chemistry, and Holloway would be named the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player.
As in Ottawa 13 years earlier, bad weather became the game’s backdrop. It was cool with a temperature at kickoff of 13 C, it was rainy, and the CNE grounds were blanketed by fog.
And as in the Act of God game, the home side rolled to a win.
Toronto’s offence amassed 521 net yards in a 44-7 victory. Holloway threw for 388 yards, Joe Barnes added 73 more on a TD pass to Geoff Townsend. Greer caught 9 passes for 186 yards with a pair of touchdowns, and Paul Pearson caught a 62-yard TD pass.
Defensively, the goal was to try and shut down the league’s leading rusher that season, All-Star running back Skip Walker, who had rushed for 203 yards in one game that season. The Riders offensive gameplan revolved around their star back, who despite the one-sided nature of the game, still carried the ball 19 times for 87 yards and Ottawa’s only touchdown, adding 5 catches for 52 yards to account for almost half of Ottawa’s offence on the day.
O’Billovich’s defence picked off three passes and sacked Ottawa QBs four times. Despite Walker’s performance, the Argo D had a dominant day.
The win also appeared on the list of the franchise’s top 150 moments, checking in at number 80.
A crowd of 43,000 fans was deafening on that day, cheering loudly from the pre-game warmup to the post-game celebration. Their heroes were going to the Grey Cup for the first time since 1971, but the next week would not provide the same joy, as the Boatmen lost on the same field to Edmonton, extending the Grey Cup drought to 30 years.
That would change a year later when the Argos defeated the Lions at BC Place in Vancouver.
Fast forward to this week. Nobody is expecting Ryan Dinwiddie or Bob Dyce to make an incendiary comment like Cahill did a generation ago, but the potential for an offensive outburst is there.
Kelly threw for 463 yards in an Argo loss in Ottawa in early September, while two weeks ago the Toronto offense rolled for 38 points through three quarters against the Redblacks before taking their foot off the gas.
Saturday will see playoff football between two franchises with lengthy histories, even if their post-season rivalry had been dormant for 34 years.
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