ON THE FIELD AND READY TO PLAY
Redblacks lineman Zack Evans takes the field with a ‘teammate’ — toddler son Zander — at TD Place Friday, as the team prepares for Sunday’s big Eastern Division showdown with the Ticats.
When Canadian Football League commissioner Jeffrey Orridge spoke at a breakfast meeting at Ottawa City Hall in October, he said that two of the 99 things he had learned since taking office on April were that the north side sucked and the south side sucked.
Hmmm … now where might he have heard THAT?
It might seem like this rude chant has always echoed across the field at Lansdowne Park. Perhaps it — or an earlier version — goes back to the very beginnings of football in Ottawa.
“You there on the far side are rascals and scoundrels!” fans of the home team could have shouted across Jacques-Cartier Square on Sept. 23, 1876 — to which supporters of Ottawa’s opponents, the Aylmer club, might have responded with cries of “Shame! Shame!” and perhaps cannon fire.
Those who have delved into the subject, however, suggest the exchange didn’t begin until the late 1970s, and coincided with the addition of an upper deck of south bleachers. These were, it seems, a dismal place.
In a Victor Hugoesque account published on apt613.ca, Josh Lemoine writes of the deprivations for the poor souls relegated to this perch, as related by Southsiders fan club founder Bryon Smith. Cold food. Warm beer. No roof to shield them from rain or snow or pigeon poop. Anthem singers and halftime acts that always faced north, playing to the privileged fans in their comfortable seats under the great sweeping northern roof.
Finally, the underclass rose as one to yell “Liberté!” “Egalité!” “Fraternité!”
Nahh. You know what they said.
To which the bourgeois northsiders, after a moment of shock, supplied a lusty if derivative retort, and the battle was on.
Randy Burgess has long been involved in Ottawa sports and works for Ottawa Sports and Entertainment Group, the organization that brought football back to the capital as the Redblacks. He has a kinder recollection of the chant being spurred by the era’s backlash against disco music, mixed in with some good-natured derision of that north-side roof.
“What happens was, ‘disco sucks’ became part of the language at the time,” Burgess says. “So somebody, or some group, took that ‘disco sucks’ and modified it to become ‘north side sucks’.”
The chants continued through the 1980s and became still louder in the early 2000s, fanned by an Ottawa Renegades management not known for being overly highbrow.
And when the renovated stadium — its northern roof now smaller, its southern seats more lavish — opened for the first Redblacks game, the chants quite naturally resumed. Say what you like about the north and south sides, they know the value of tradition.
STRIKE UP THE SNOWBLOWERS?
Except for the Grey Cup game, television broadcasts don’t show halftime entertainment — so unless you’ve been to a CFL game in recent years, you might not know that they’ve moved on from the traditional marching bands and drill teams.
Today’s mid-game fare is more like National Hockey League between-period entertainment, with fan competitions, activities for children and perhaps demonstrations of other sports. Sunday’s halftime will include an appearance by two lacrosse teams to promote an upcoming exhibition game at the TD Place Arena.
Fortunately, there should be no need for an appearance by a precision snowblower team. The weather forecast is for a 40-percent chance of rain showers or flurries and a high of 5 C.
BRING SOMETHING WARM — AND NOT JUST FOR YOU
As fans with tickets for the game dress for the weather, the Redblacks player with a magnificent name, SirVincent Rogers, hopes they’ll also pick out some clothing items to donate to the less-fortunate. The garments will be collected by Sun Life Canada, sponsor of the CFL’s Kick Diabetes campaign, and one donor will win a Redblacks jersey signed by the offensive lineman.
Rogers threw his considerable (319 pounds) weight behind the diabetes campaign after witnessing his mother, Alfreida, struggle with the disease for years until her death in 2011. His brother, Corderro, and father, Vincent, also are diabetic, and both are on dialysis.
“Any toughness I have, I got from her,” Rogers says his mother.
Also his unusual moniker. “My Mom got creative,” he explains.
For a long time, he was the only known SirVincent — but now there’s a SirVincent Jr.