Queen's Golden Gaels Football

2007 Roster - Coaches - Statistics - Login

History

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 Queen's in the late 1870s and has been the most popular sport ever since. The first games were informal matches of "Association Football [soccer] with catching." Then, in 1882, two brothers from Ottawa, Fred and Jackson Booth, introduced Queen's athletes to the game of "rugby football," an older version of modern rugby and the game from which football at Queen's evolved. The game was referred to as rugby football until well into this century and was quite different from the modern game of football. It was not until the 1930s, for example, that the now-crucial element of forward passing was permitted.

Up until the 1930s, Queen's teams played not just against university teams, but against the best football squads in the country. They often did so with spectacular success. Queen's won its first national rugby football championship in 1893 and, in the early 1920s, its teams were virtually unbeatable. Led by Canadian hall-of-famers Harry "Red" Batsone and Frank "Pep" Leadley, Queen's won consecutive Grey Cups in 1922, 1923, and 1924 and went undefeated for a stretch of 26 games. An indication of Queen's strength was the score of the 1923 final, in which Queen's 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.

Queen's played for years in a league with traditional rivals McGill, University of Toronto, and Western. But the growing number of universities in central Canada led to realignment and Queen's played in the Ontario-Quebec Intercollegiate Football Conference (OQIFC) from 1980 to 2001. Subsequently, due to realignment changes, the Golden Gael shifted back into the Ontario Universities Association (OUA) conference in 2001.

Overall, since the founding of the first intercollegiate league in 1898, the team has won 30 conference titles, including six OQIFC titles. Since the first national intercollegiate championship was played in 1959, Queen's has won three Canadian titles (1968, 1978, 1992). Numerous Queen's players have gone on to play in professional leagues. Among the most notable since the 1950s have been CFL great Ron Stewart, 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 most prominent coaches in recent decades have been Frank Tindall (1947-1975), Doug Hargreaves (1975-1994) and Bob Howes (1994-2000).

History of Richardson Stadium

Captain George Taylor Richardson was a member of the football Gaels from 1900 to 1905, and was also a hockey standout around the same time. A native of Kingston, George was a senior member of the great Canadian merchant firm James Richardson & Sons Ltd. At the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, George was an officer of the 14th Regiment P.O.W.R. of Kingston, and within days of the outbreak of hostilities had joined the Kingston contingent which left for overseas service.

On the night of 9-10 February 1916, Captain Richardson led a patrol of No. 2 Company, 2nd Canadian Infantry Battalion from their front line position near Dranoutre, France, to raid positions held by the Germans. In the course of this action, Captain Richardson was mortally wounded and died at 8:00 a.m. of February 10. He was buried will full military honours on Friday 11 February at Bailleul.

To perpetuate the memory of George Richardson, his brother James Armstrong Richardson had the first Richardson Stadium built, and on 8 October 1921 formally turned the facility to the university. In that first game at Richardson Stadium, Queen's defeated the Varsity Blues 9-5. The building of large football stadia of this sort continued a trend begun by the University of Toronto with the opening of the 10,000 seat Varsity Stadium in 1911, and was followed in 1919 by McGill's Molson Stadium. The larger facilities assisted in increasing the popularity of university sport, and had the added benefit of increasing gate revenue.

The original Richardson Stadium was located on the main campus, immediately east of the current Tindall Field. The stadium consisted of a covered grandstand seating 2,000 people on the west side of the field, and wooden bleachers along the east sideline. Not long after opening, uncovered sections were added to each end of the west stands, adding some 1,500 seats.

For half a century Richardson Stadium served Queen's and Kingston well. It was used in 1922 for the Grey Cup game between Queen's and Edmonton, and became an important civic location for staging sporting events, or hosting public receptions for visiting dignitaries and heads of state. The intimacy of the field was noteworthy: fans were packed in up to the sidelines, and the resultant lack of crowd control led to the destruction of many a good goal post. The west grandstand underwent renovations in 1949, and the wooden east bleachers were replaced by a steel-framed structure in the mid-1950s. Nevertheless, the stadium was began to show its age by the late-1960s, and administrative pressures to free up land on the main campus hastened its demise. The 1970 season was the Golden Gaels' last at their old home, and Queen's closed the stadium on 7 November, defeating the Waterloo Warriors 20-6.

The current Richardson Stadium opened on Queen's west campus in 1971, with seating for some 10,258 spectators, in addition to an eight-lane, all-weather track. The stadium opened on 18 September 1971, with Queen's losing 27-16 to the Ottawa Gee-Gees. To create a tangible link of continuity between old and new, several pieces of sod were transferred to the new stadium, and two plaques of dedication were removed from the old west grandstand and mounted in the north endzone of the new facility. The upper portion of the current east bleachers was constructed primarily of the old stadium's east bleachers. While lacking the unusual intimacy of the old Richardson Stadium, the new structure provided more seating along the sidelines, providing better overall accommodation for spectators, as well as floodlighting for night games. Renovations in 1987 saw alterations to the ticketing facilities, improvements to stadium security, and a rearrangement of east-side aisle ways. Further renovations in 2003 saw improvements to the Golden Gaels' football dressing room.

Today, Richardson Stadium remains a key facility for Queen's, being the home of Golden Gaels football and soccer, and also providing the city of Kingston with a superb 10,000-plus-seat facility. A renewed partnership with the Richardson family has helped ensure that the stadium will continue to be a vibrant part of Queen's athletics. Richardson Stadium is currently the second-largest natural grass stadium in Canada.