‘Ang, Thanks and Goodbye’: What a way to go
In his final game, before his hometown fans, Angelo Mosca walks off into the Grey Cup sunset
Hamilton had not played host to a Grey Cup since 1944, six years before the Hamilton Tigers and Hamilton Wildcats amalgamated to create the Tiger-Cats, but in 1972, the game came to Ivor Wynne Stadium, which had been substantially rebuilt over the previous two years to become the largest (34,500 capacity) stadium in the CFL at the time. The Tiger-Cats started 1-3 that season, but installed rookie Chuck Ealey at quarterback, won their final 10 games of the regular season and beat the Ottawa Rough Riders 30-27 in the two-game total-point Eastern Final.
A three-point margin would come up big again in the 60th Grey Cup, which Angelo Mosca had already let everyone know would be his last football game. In his 2011 autobiography “Tell Me To My Face,” Mosca describes what would be the last Grey Cup played in Hamilton for 24 years.
Big Ang died on Nov. 6, just five weeks before the 2021 Grey Cup game in Hamilton.
“The Grey Cup by then had been moved to Sunday as opposed to Saturday, and the night before the game the noise in downtown Hamilton was un-be-lieve-able. We had a rally in front of the Connaught Hotel and there were about 25,000 people there to support us. The city was pumped.
I’ll never forget the day of the game. It was December 3, 1972, the last time a Grey Cup was scheduled for December (until this year). The day was cool, but good enough for football.
We started out really well. Al Brenner picked off a Lancaster pass in Saskatchewan’s end and that set up Chuck Ealey’s 16-yard touchdown pass to Dave Fleming on the sideline. TV replays showed he was out of bounds, but the officials missed it. Tom Shepherd, who was a big executive with Saskatchewan was really upset about that play, and every time I see him I hold out my Grey Cup ring, make a smacking sound and say, “kiss the ring.” He always answers, “I’ll kiss you, Mosca.”
Ian Sunter kicked a field goal for us in the first quarter and we were up 10-0.
With a little less than two minutes to go and the game tied at 10, we had the ball on our own 15 yard line. Tony Gabriel hadn’t caught a pass all game, but he sure picked a good time to start. Chuck hit him for 27 yards on first down, then hit him twice more and just like that we’re at their 41-yard line. The crowd
ould taste it, and they were screaming as we ran off a couple of plays to move us closer.
On the final play of the game, we lined up to kick a field goal from Saskatchewan’s 34-yard line. They were ready to kick it out of the end zone if it went wide. I played the right guard spot that year on the point-after team, which was also the field goal team, so I was on the field. Sunter was kicking from the left hash mark, and the hash marks were a few feet closer to the sidelines than they are today, so it was a harder kick than it would be now. After the ball was snapped and he stepped into it, I was leaning to the side trying to follow the flight of the ball and I could see that it went right between the uprights! In the last 58 years a team has won the Grey Cup on its home field only three times, and one of those teams was us: the team that back in August no one, including us, thought would win anything that year. It
was like some kind of novel: we had won the Grey Cup on the very last play of my career!
I had tears in my eyes and we all started rolling around on the turf, hugging each other. The crowd was going crazy, but on the field it was just us guys. I remember that it was about 45 minutes before we got off the field. The TV cameras were all over me and I was pretty emotional. I said on camera, “I’m gonna leave a winner, along with these 32 other guys.” I always wanted to be a good teammate.
It’s funny how you remember certain things. I don’t think it really hit me that this was the last time I’d be playing football until the moment I was walking off the field. As I headed into the archway that led to the dressing room, I looked up and saw a white sheet that some fans had painted with a message for me. It read, “Ang, Thanks and Goodbye.” I started crying my eyes out. I started looking for my three kids. They were running around on the field and I just grabbed them and hugged them. Then I went into the dressing room, and it was just bedlam: players, coaches, families, friends, media — all celebrating. I got pictures of Dave Fleming and I kissing each other in the middle of it.”
The front-page picture, taken from behind, of Ticats legends Garney Henley and Angelo Mosca presenting the Grey Cup to the celebrating Ivor Wynne crowd — accompanied by the large headline PURRR-FECT — is probably the most iconic photo in the history of The Hamilton Spectator. Chuck Ealey was named game MVP and Ian Sunter the Most Valuable Canadian. Mosca missed only one game in his CFL career. Since that day only one other (1996) Grey Cup has been played in Hamilton, but that changes with the 2021 and 2023 games both set for Tim Hortons Field.