When Winnipeg Blue Bombers legends Kenny Ploen and Gerry James died last week — on the same day yet! — it moved me to re-visit their dominant team from 60-plus years ago. This is, after all, a “Distant” Replays.
It’s widely acknowledged the greatest Canadian Football League team is the Edmonton Eskimos, the only one to win five consecutive Grey Cups, 1978 to 1982. Yet there’s a case to be made for the Bombers of exactly 20 years earlier. Winnipeg won four Grey Cups in five years, and had a better five-year record than Edmonton (.804 to .750 in winning percentage, 74-70 in victories), and won one more post-season game (11-10).
What separated these two demi-decades of excellence was one game, and it wasn’t the 1960 Grey Cup the Bombers watched on TV. It was one game earlier. As it happened, I was there, and for many years kept a piece of canvas torn from the goal post fronting the end zone where the Bombers lost the game. Who knows why I had it, and why I kept it?
On a frosty Saturday afternoon in November (all Saturday afternoons in November were frosty then), the deciding game in the best-of-three Western Final was at Winnipeg Stadium. The visitors were the Eskimos, and all three games were played in eight days! Edmonton tied the series three days earlier, 10-5. The clinching game was even more thrilling, 4-2. This was football, folks, not soccer.
In fact, the score was 2-0 with a minute left. Again, still not soccer. That’s when Edmonton’s Tommy-Joe Coffey missed a 12-yard field goal and the single cut Winnipeg’s lead in half. After a fake kick and a Winnipeg fumble, by Ploen, Coffey had another chance with the ball at the five-yard-line. His field goal came with 10 seconds left.
Bud Grant, the coaching legend, was later quoted as saying of the five 1958-1962 teams — and of all his Bombers teams — the 1960 edition that didn’t get to the Grey Cup was the best. It won 14 games. It scored 61 touchdowns, but in the two home playoff games, zero touchdowns. James, a running back who kicked, missed a five-yard field goal. The two Winnipeg points were on punts through the end zone, from 28 and 35 yards!
From 1958 to 1962, Grant used just 58 players. Today, teams have that many at training camp each season. Nineteen players were on all five teams, meaning that every year only 11 roster spots were available. The best were Ploen, James, Leo Lewis, Ernie Pitts and Charlie Shepard on offence; Herb Gray, Gar Warren and Dave Burkholder on defence. With Ploen and James gone, only three of the 19 are still alive: Ron Latourelle, Nick Miller, Rick Potter.
From 1978 to 1982, Edmonton’s Hugh Campbell used 75 players, with rosters slightly larger. Campbell had 21 players who won all five Grey Cups. The stars were Dave Fennell, David Boone, Ron Estay, Dan Kepley on their Alberta Crude defence; Warren Moon, Jim Germany, Waddell Smith and Tom Scott on on offence. A generation younger, only three of the 21 are gone: Boone, Larry Highbaugh and Bill Stevenson.
Imagine a game between those Bombers and those Eskimos…a toss-up.
