¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥

¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ Golden Gaels football team, 1955. Courtesy Pete Owen and ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ Archives.

 

For generations of students, Saturday afternoon football games at Richardson Stadium have been a fall ritual.

The game was first played in a rudimentary form at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ in the late 1870s as informal matches of "Association Football" [soccer] with catching.

In 1882, two brothers from Ottawa, Fred and Jackson Booth, introduced ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ athletes to the game of "rugby football," an older version of modern rugby and the game from which football at ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ evolved.

The game was referred to as rugby football until well into the 20th century and was quite different from the modern game of football - for example, it was not until the 1930s that the now-crucial element of forward passing was permitted.

Up until the 1930s, ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ teams played not just against university teams, but against the best football squads in the country. ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ won its first National Rugby Football Championship in 1893 and by the early 1920s, its teams were virtually unbeatable. Led by Canadian hall-of-famers Harry "Red" Batsone and Frank "Pep" Leadly, ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ won consecutive Grey Cups in 1922, 1923, and 1924 and went undefeated for a stretch of 26 games. An indication of ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ strength was the score of the 1923 final in which ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ beat the Regina Roughriders 54-0.

Shortly after these triumphs, the big-city teams took over the game and universities restricted themselves to intercollegiate play.

¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ played for years in a league with traditional rivals McGill University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Western Ontario. But the growing number of universities in central Canada led to realignment and ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ played in the Ontario-Quebec Intercollegiate Football Conference (OQIFC) from 1980 to 2001. In the 2001-2002 season, the Golden Gaels were shifted back into the Ontario Universities Association (OUA) conference.

Numerous ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ players have gone on to play in professional leagues, including CFL great Ron Stewar - a star for Ottawa in the 1950s and 1960s and Canadian male athlete of the year in 1960 - and Mike Schad, one of the few Canadian-trained players drafted in the first round by the National Football League (fourth overall in 1986).

The ¾ÅÐãÖ±²¥ team has won the Vanier Cup in 1968, 1978, 1992, and 2009.

Learn more about ...