Thirty-one years ago, arguably the greatest Grey Cup game in the CFL’s history was played in SkyDome, which hosted the Canadian classic for the first time. With his pivotal role in the championship game, Dave Ridgway ignited a province. This is his journey to the 77th Grey Cup between the Saskatchewan Roughriders and Hamilton Tiger-Cats.
I would say there are any number of a dozen players who have had a fabulous day here under the SkyDome in this 1989 Grey Cup game and it could all come down to this field goal try by David Ridgway…it will be a 34…35 yard attempt…Osbaldiston and Steve Jackson are in the endzone…the timeout has been called by Hamilton…in the event the field goal try by Ridgway should be wide, they will be kicking the ball out of the endzone. (Don Wittman – play-by-play commentator CBC)
Saskatchewan Roughriders 40 Hamilton Tiger-Cats 40, seven seconds left on the clock.
Dave Ridgway stood alone with his thoughts. His quarterback, Kent Austin, had just driven the ball downfield from their own 36, in a clinical exhibition of precision passing and tough catches. “Ridge,” as he was known to his teammates, was now well within his range.
The offence jogged off the field, calling out a blur of encouraging words, Austin said something too, the soundwaves were indecipherable, but the sentiment was acknowledged.
Saskatchewan Roughriders head coach John Gregory had called a timeout to follow one called by Al Bruno, his counterpart with the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Given the stakes, nothing was left to chance.
Ridgway was staring straight ahead at a portrait of Hamilton’s defence, a snarling canvas of super-sized men, contriving heinous scenarios which would make any mother cringe. They hurled these epithets at the veteran placekicker, willing their words to throw him off his game at this crucial juncture.
He was inside 40 yards, a “money kick” as his former coach, Joe Faragalli, would have regularly reminded him. Those were the ones you had to make.
Hit this and leave town a legend. There goes the man who nailed the winner in the dying seconds to give the Roughriders their first Grey Cup in 23 years. He would live forever in the folklore of a fanbase like no other in the CFL, those who married their identity to the team. Finally, an unrequited love would be reciprocated, now just sit back and watch them scream through the night like a prairie wind.
As the tension mounted, his best friend and the field-goal holder, Roughriders safety Glen Suitor, returned to the field. Ridge could always count on Suitor, a future TV commentator, for levity. It was needed now more than ever, as the 30-year-old had never, at any level, kicked for a title.
Quite frankly, Ridgway hadn’t tasted much in the way of success on a team level since turning pro with the green ‘Riders in 1982.
Saskatchewan had a losing record in each of his first six seasons — winning 33 games, losing 63 and tying four.
In 1988, they went 11-7, their best record in 12 years, but were trounced 42-18 by the B.C. Lions in the first round of the playoffs. The two postseason games leading up to the 1989 Grey Cup were already more than he had played in his entire career on a team that had secured the last seed in the West.
Individually it was a different story.
Ridgway was already a three time all-star and extremely accurate, which was impressive considering the conditions he had to contend with playing in the west. Taylor Field in Regina was open at each end zone which made the winds a constant factor. It wasn’t much better at McMahon Stadium in Calgary or Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton depending on the time of year, and Winnipeg Stadium might have been the most difficult place to kick in the entire league.
Yet over the past three regular seasons, he had led the league in field goal percentage every year, making over 80 per cent of his attempts during that stretch. In 1987, he became the first kicker in league history to make a 60-yard field goal, and a year later, he led the league in scoring. Here in the climate-controlled confines of SkyDome, this attempt should be a piece of cake, but it was baked under 1,000 pounds of pressure.
*Dave Ridgway’s 35-yard attempt to give his team the lead with seven seconds remaining in the 77th Grey Cup. (Credit: Mike Cassese / Toronto Sun / QMI Agency)
Football could hardly have existed in the realm of imagination for a boy born on April 24, 1960, in the town of Stockport, England. The North American version at least.
Nestled in Greater Manchester, David Ridgway grew up on Hillgate within earshot of Edgely Road — home to Stockport County FC. On match nights, the stadium’s floodlights would shine through his bedroom window at 6 Dunham St. Just a few miles away, were Maine Road and Old Trafford, the hallowed grounds of Manchester City FC and Manchester United. However, the young boy’s allegiances lay farther west, with Everton FC. When he slept, dreams of playing like Alan Ball Jr. their star midfielder, swept through his mind.
“It was a very poor, disadvantaged part of the town,” Ridgway recalls. “My father was a factory worker; my mother was a stay at home mom. We were provided for quite well. When you are a kid growing up, you don’t understand poverty until you see the other side of things. I’m proud to say I grew up on Hillgate.”
Ridgway was the oldest of four children born to parents Leonard and Mary (Harrop). There were two other boys, John and Neil, along with sister Lyn.
His paternal grandfather Tom Ridgway worked as a hatter at Battersby & Co., in a town synonymous with the industry. He also owned and managed an amateur football team known as the Ward Street Old Boys, where Leonard played.
With athletic genes running through his veins, David Ridgway seemed destined to boot free kicks, not field goals.
Leonard apprenticed as an airframe fitter with British aircraft manufacturer, Fairey Aviation Company Ltd. and after two years in the armed forces, began employment at A.V. & Roe Aircraft Co. where worked on aircraft such as the Vulcan Bomber used during the Cold War.
An avid sportsman, he joined a baseball league organized by American serviceman and Canadian businessmen. He became fast friends with the group of expats as they travelled a circuit around joint Air Force bases that were still being operated by the U.S. after the Second World War, such as RAF Burtonwood.
Through that social group, he was able to get his hand on Sears’ Christmas Wish Book. His kids would scour it, looking for items associated with North American sport so they could emulate Leonard’s foreign friends, who would rep such items such as an Oakland Raiders shirt or a New York Yankees hat.
But apparel wasn’t enough.
“I remember taking a wooden Adirondack baseball bat to school and the teacher confiscating it,” Ridgway recalls warmly. “She thought it wasn’t a good thing to have in the school, I had to collect it from the headmaster at the end of the day and was told not to bring it back.”
Ridgway went deeper, indulging in a hobby of writing to NFL and CFL clubs and their Halls of Fame, looking for anything they could send.
He was exhilarated on days he would catch site of a package or envelope that would arrive at the house emblazoned with the logo of a pro team.
In fact, he still has much of the memorabilia he received in the early 1970s including decals, media guides and one fateful letter from the Canadian Football Hall of Fame.
“The gentleman that was the head of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame had handwritten me a letter that read, ‘hopefully in the future, you would be able to visit us here in Hamilton.”
Unbeknownst to him at the time, a decline in the aviation industry and the dissolution of his parents’ marriage would set in motion the events that would lead to Ridgway having a bust in that very place.
*Ridgway was inducted into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame in 2003. (Credit: Canadian Football Hall of Fame)
Leonard Ridgway often had to look for contracts as work dissipated in the aviation sector. You took what you could get.
The industry suffered in the 1960s and 70s from a double whammy on the military and civil side that traces its origins to legislation created in the 1950s.
British Parliament passed the Defence White Paper in 1957 which outlined the future for the British Military. Aircraft modernization, primarily phasing out manned fighters and bombers in favour of missiles, was a key component, so many projects were cancelled.
In the civil sector, Britain lost their lead in commercial jet transport following the crash of the de Havilland Comet in 1954, allowing the United States to become the industry leader.
“It gives you an idea of why British Aviation people sought their fortunes elsewhere,” writes Mick Oakley, the managing editor of London- based website The Aviation Historian.
Leonard and Mary’s marriage was already strained. In 1971, when David was 11, he spent the majority of the year working at RCAF Station Gimli, Manitoba. Following his return to England, they agreed to a divorce which was finalized three years later.
As Ridgway recalled in his 1995 autobiography, RoboKicker: An Odyssey through the CFL, his father talked often of Canada after his time there.
Now that country was about to offer him a new, albeit heart wrenching beginning.
Forty-six years ago, Leonard Ridgway flew to Toronto Pearson International Airport with his two of his three sons, David and Neil, several suitcases and a steamer trunk. He had $100 in his pocket. John and Lyn would stay behind in England with their mother.
It would simply be too hard to raise all four on his own as a single dad in a new land.
“He did very much enjoy Canada, and he made a judgement after the family divorce, that it would be a good opportunity for the kids I think.” Ridgway says in hindsight on his father’s life-altering decision. “We came here with half our family. It was incredibly intimidating, it’s sad. Not only did I leave my friends, but I left my mother, brother and sister.”
The news was particularly hard on his grandfather Tom, to watch as two generations made a new home, half a world away.
And so, it was done. The soccer pitch would soon fade as the green field in David’s mind and the gridiron that existed on the pages of Sports Illustrated in northwestern England, was about to come alive, in living colour, for the 15-year old…but not right away.
The Ridgways initially stayed in Kitchener, Ont., with a friend of Leonard’s named Paddy Koch. David, six-foot-one and 145 pounds, was enrolled at Grand River Collegiate Institute, a local secondary school, to start Grade 10 (1).
“I think when we immigrated to Canada, the thoughts of playing for Stockport County FC or somewhere bigger, that fell by the wayside,” he says. “Now, all of a sudden I am playing soccer and high school football in Canada.”
Leonard was acutely aware that his sons could parlay their sporting skills into U.S. college scholarships. Even though his eldest boy was no slouch at tight end and could hold his own as a sweeper in what was now being called soccer, the key to his future lay in the strength and accuracy of his right leg.
“I really knew very little (about football), I didn’t understand offensive sets, didn’t understand much about defence, I had never played it,” he remembers. “The easier route for me to stay in that game was to play a position that I had some natural ability to do, which was kick.”
Ridgway’s father eventually secured a position at Westinghouse Electric Company and bought a home in Burlington, Ont., which was less than half a kilometre away from M.M. Robinson High School. Much like Grand River, it had opened in 1960s to accommodate a burgeoning Canadian baby boomer population.
Through amalgamation following the Second World War, the amount of people that called Burlington home, skyrocketed over 10 times the original number of 9,127 townsfolk in 1956, to 104,314 by 1976 (2).
Canada’s growth was also being fueled by increased immigration. During the nation’s centennial year, policy was overhauled with the introduction of the merit based points system. Its implementation preceded the Ridgway’s arrival by seven years.
As it relates to the work of two scholars, their family was part of a larger, subtle phenomenon. They were invisible immigrants.
In a book of the same name published in 2015, Prof. Mary Watson and Murray Barber studied English immigration to Canada starting in 1945.
According to their research, over four million people emigrated to Canada from 1945 to 1975 with the English forming the largest national group of immigrants in all but eight of those years. Like David and his family, their reasons for leaving home included industrial decline, as well as unrest and record inflation (3).
Invisibility came not only the fact that they did not stand out physically in their new country but that their story - why they left, how they added to the diaspora and adjusted to a different way of life, is often overlooked (4).
Ontario was the most popular destination for English migration to Canada (5). What initially helped mitigate an immense culture shock to a teenager from Stockport was that Burlington and the surrounding area, was a melting pot of recent British and Irish immigrants.
David played sweeper in a high-level soccer league which was comprised of many newcomers and though reserved, he didn’t have to hide his thick Mancunian accent when speaking.
“It helped that there were a lot of people that understood perhaps where I’d come from.”
It was in Burlington where Ridgway’s career path took shape thanks to a Christmas gift from his father — a high-quality football and kicking tee.
From his home on Mountain Grove Avenue it was only a short “quarter mile jaunt” for a teen with nothing but time on his hands, to get to the new high school. Every evening and on weekends, he would make the trek to practise splitting the uprights.
“He told me to go out there and start working on it, so I did,” he said. “I would take my cleats, my one football and a tee and just go up and down the field. I would kick it 60 or 65 yards, run down and get it and kick it back, I’m sure if anyone was watching they must have thought I was an idiot, but that’s what you do, when you are a kid, you don’t have a bag of 15 footballs.”
M.M. Robinson High School’s motto is Per Ardua Ad Scientiam: Through Hard Work, Knowledge
As a stranger in a new land, Ridgway gave credence to the dictum.
By his final year of high-school in 1976-77, the letter writing he practised years earlier in search of souvenirs, had been replaced by solicitation queries for tryouts at U.S. colleges.
With money tight, Ridgway secured a full-ride to the University of Toledo. And in 1977, for the second time in three years, he was jetting off to a new country, this time to kick for the Rockets.
It was during this move to Ohio, that Ridge began a conscious effort to mute his accent in order to fit in. It has since given way to the midwestern drawl he has today.
*Ridgway with a concentrated gaze from the bench in SkyDome. As the final seconds ticked down, he would be counted on to make the biggest field goal of his career. (Credit: Bryan Schlosser / Regina Leader-Post)
SkyDome was a jewel, cutting edge, top class and seemed to be born with a silver spoon in its mouth, but one of the reasons for its conception was far sloppier.
Toronto had gone seven years without hosting the CFL’s marquee match, which was profound when considering they were regular hosts of the Grey Cup until the fateful “Rain Bowl” of 1982. A sloppy field was only matched by the miserable conditions in the stands, on the concourses and with the washrooms (6).
A city poised to fashion itself as world class needed to have something much better, even futuristic, if it was to host baseball and football in the modern era — so the bureaucrats got to work.
Now, six-and-a-half years and over $500 million later, the facility was a reality and it was an exciting time for people in Toronto and across the country, including fresh faced Rod Smith, who was cutting his teeth in sports media.
“Because Toronto had been so used to hosting it and to suddenly go seven years without it, I think added to the excitement (for this game),” he says. “I certainly think moving into this — what was at the time — a state of the art building, was a big part of it.”
He was less than a decade removed from playing as an offensive lineman under legendary coach Doug Hargreaves at Queen’s University. As a recent graduate of Ryerson Polytechnical Institute’s radio and television program, Smith was freelancing as a radio reporter with CBC and also working at an upstart all-sports network known as TSN.
This past November, he covered his 15th Grey Cup. The first was patrolling the sideline for CBC Radio in 1989.
Armed with a cassette recorder and Shure microphone, Smith’s job was to conduct interviews live to air in the shiny new five-month-old building that was all the rage.
Contributing to the hype was that the nearby Hamilton Tiger-Cats would add some flair as their supporters only needed to travel 70 km to attend, but the major story was that Cinderella was arriving at the ball.
The Roughriders came out of nowhere. They were a .500 team at 9-9 and with starting QB Austin out of the lineup in the West Division final, they upset Tracy Ham and the 16-2 Edmonton Eskimos in Commonwealth Stadium. To this day no team has had a better record since the league went to an 18-game schedule in 1986.
“The big seller was the Saskatchewan Roughriders, with arguably the most passionate fanbase you will find in the CFL, were getting this sudden and unexpected trip to the Grey Cup for the first time since 1976 when they had their hearts broken by the Ottawa Rough Riders,” says Smith. “In a championship starved market like the province of Saskatchewan, who hadn’t seen a Grey Cup champion since 1966, it had been 23 years … I think that final week infused a tremendous amount of excitement and passion as the Riders were going back to the Grey Cup.”
Smith, positioned next to the Roughriders bench, sensed the significance of what was transpiring before his eyes, at homes thousands of kilometres away, and in the heart of the man standing alongside him - CFL president Bill Baker. The 45-year-old Baker had shone with the Roughriders as a formidable defensive end known as “The Undertaker.” During a hall of fame career which lasted from 1968 to ’78, he lost two Grey Cup finals with Saskatchewan, first in 1969 and then again three years later to Hamilton on a field goal by Ian Sunter on the final play of the game.
It would turn out to be the last game of Baker’s tenure. The leadership structure of Baker being president and chief operating officer and Roy McMurtry, a former politician, being chairman and CEO, lasted only a year. Donald Crump would take over as commissioner in 1990.
Prior to moving to the league office, Baker had been the general manager of the Roughriders. During his watch, they had snapped an 11-year postseason drought in 1988. Now he was trying to maintain an impartial front while watching the team he had helped assemble, play in a championship game that had come down to the final minutes.
At six-foot-three and 255 pounds, he was the physical embodiment of the hopes of a province and as Smith could see, Baker was doing everything to contain his rooting interest, but it leaked out ever so slightly through his façade. The Undertaker knew what this meant.
Smith pulled out his “clunker” of early model cell phone and interviewed Baker live to air.
“He was so excited as representative of the league, for how dramatic and how great this game was,” recalls Smith. “I could also tell there was a big part of him that was still bleeding green and white and I don’t think anyone including Ticats fans could fault him for that.”
Tension. Drama. Excitement. It was all channeling through Smith as he watched the clock tick away. It was a 40-40 deadlock and Saskatchewan had one last chance to break the tie in regulation.
*The 77th Grey Cup was the first to be held at SkyDome (now Rogers Centre), and is viewed as one of the greatest championship games in CFL History.
If you want to get a hold of Dave Ridgway today, you have to catch him at work in rural Indiana where he has lived with his wife Connie since 2003. The demolition and salvage company where he works is one of the few spots where there is a decent cell signal. The closest town to where he lives is Seymour, Ind., which has a population of about 20,000. After work, Ridgway, now 60, can talk at will without a hint of the accent he once tried to hide.
He recalls the game with boyish charm. It is evident that he has recounted the tale before, time and time again for Canadian fans, on the banquet circuit and to reporters. The media loves an anniversary story. Now, even as the event approaches middle age, it’s still fun for him to reminisce, and for good reason.
Where Ridgway lives, the focus of pro sports is centered around basketball, professionally and at the college level. Sports talk is focused on the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, Louisville Cardinals, the University of Kentucky and Indiana University. Summer belongs to the Cincinnati Reds and pro football leans toward the Indianapolis Colts…the CFL might as well be played in another universe.
There is no recall in U.S. sporting lore of Saskatchewan trailing early as expected, down 13-1 after the first quarter to the best team in the East, nor of the two teams trading five touchdowns — all via the pass, including a 75-yard score by the Roughriders’ Jeff Fairholm — and heading into the half with the deficit cut to five as Hamilton led 27-22.
What about when Tim McCray punched in a one-yard run to give the Roughriders their first lead late in the third quarter? Or how, up by 7, and under a minute to go in the game, Hamilton receiver Tony Champion had so many clad in green, seeing red, contorting to make a touchdown catch on third down that is still talked about — to bring everything down to this crucial moment.
It may as well have not happened, but it did.
There the memories don’t exist, but they are alive in the North.
Tiger-Cats wide receiver, Tony Champion, breaks free of coverage and stretches out for an incredible touchdown to help tie the game at 40 with under a minute left in the 4th Quarter. (Credit: CHCH-TV)
Two consecutive timeouts gave Ridgway a long time to think, too long. The matter was further complicated when Suitor was instructed to call a shift which might coax the Ticats into an offside penalty that would set up a closer kick. Suitor sensed a needless complication that could go horribly wrong and called it off. He took the last few seconds before play resumed to crack a joke to his nervous kicker about their upcoming camping trip in the Rockies and also inquired if his buddy had noticed a buxom blond sitting about four rows up behind their bench.
It was what the doctor ordered, Ridgway was transformed into Robokicker, a moniker he earned for reliability…the crowd noise faded out and then, like a movie, what transpired happened in slow motion.
*Ridgway, Suitor and Centre, Mike Anderson watching as the ball heads toward the uprights. (Canadian Press)
Ron Lancaster: Ridge, well within his range, if he kicks it, he should split those uprights
Wittman: A 35-yard attempt for David Ridgway… it’s up…. it’s good!
“My God, we did It!” Ridgway recalls as his first words when the ball between both posts.
In the celebration that followed, Osbaldiston calmly sought out No. 36 in green.
Hamilton’s kicker had recovered the football in the back of the endzone. In the chance of a miss, he would have booted it right back out.
“Here,” he said, extending his hand. “I thought you might want this.”
The gesture left Ridgway speechless at the time and remains one of the most profound acts he has experienced in his life.
The revelry had to be tempered, albeit briefly, as two seconds remained on the clock. He had to kickoff once more, but it was a formality. Hamilton was unable to conjure any magic in such a small window of time.
The game was over.
“It’s your teammates that you hear first, Scott Oake from CBC rushed onto the field (for an interview) and that’s really the first time the crowd noise hit because I am trying to listen to his questions.”
Ridgway dedicated the win to the people of Saskatchewan
“They’ve hung with us for an awful long time and I’ll tell you what, probably nobody, other than the players, deserves it as much.”
The first Grey Cup held in SkyDome was a classic, the building that had it all and a contending Major League Baseball team now was host to the greatest Grey Cup of all time.
Ridgway converted four-of-five attempts in the title game. For his efforts, the British-born hero was awarded Dick Suderman Trophy as Most Valuable Canadian.
In the dressing room, champagne flowed, players embraced and sipped from the trophy, they posed for photos and gave exuberant interviews. Saskatchewan had finally made hay again, for the second time in franchise history. Their first and only championship since 1966. Amid it all, the man of the hour slipped away to make a long distance phone call to Largo, Florida.
On the line with was his father, now in semi-retirement in the Deep South, where the game wasn’t televised. Dave told Leonard about a winning kick that travelled 35-yards – tried and true. Though in many ways, its journey began far away, across the Atlantic Ocean.
*Ridgway celebrating the Roughriders Grey Cup victory in the dressing room, he was awarded the Dick Suderman Trophy as Most Valuable Canadian. (Credit: Bryan Schlosser / Regina Leader-Post)
SOURCES:
1-DAVE RIDGWAY: ROBOKICKER – AN ODYSSEY THROUGH THE CFL (DAVE RIDGWAY WITH DAVID A. POULSEN) JOHNSON GORMAN PUBLISHERS (1995)
2 – STATSCAN CENSUS OF CANADA
3-5 – INVISIBLE IMMIGRANTS – THE ENGLISH IN CANADA SINCE 1945 (MARILYN BARBER AND MURRAY WATSON) U. OF MANITOBA PRESS (2015)
6 – GREY CUP: MISERABLE ATMOSPHERE AT EXHIBITION STADIUM IN 1982 LED TO SKYDOME’S CREATION (DAVE PERKINS) TORONTO STAR (NOV. 22, 2012).