‘59-flood-tight-end-left’
Chuck Ealey finally called Tony Gabriel’s number and this play, and the rest is history
It was one of the moments in Hamilton sports. Top two or three on the all-time list of everyone with any kind of local connection.
Ian Sunter, who wouldn’t turn 20 for another two weeks and had arrived with his family in neighbouring Burlington from Dundee, Scotland only six years earlier, took three steps forward toward the ball, which holder Garney Henley was swiftly placing at the Saskatchewan Roughriders’ 34-yard line. The scoreboard at Ivor Wynne Stadium showed a pair of 10s, the number of points for each team and a row of three zeros for the minutes and seconds left in regulation time.
Two Saskatchewan punters waited in the end zone, in case the field goal attempt went wide and they had to hoof it back out to avoid a game-winning single point.
But it did not go wide, so Hamilton’s downfield coverage players stopped running toward a tackle and started leaping toward the heavens. The Ticats had just become the first team to win the national championship on its home field in 20 years.
“I’ve been thinking of that ’72 team and all its characters a lot recently, especially after we lost Ang (Mosca) a couple of weeks ago,” Tony Gabriel recently told The Spectator.
“Ang and Garney with that famous picture, hoisting the Grey Cup. We had Dave Fleming, Tommy Joe
Coffey, so many great players.
“I was just a second-year pro and it was the first Grey Cup for (quarterback) Chuck Ealey and me. I was born in St. Joseph’s Hospital. I grew up in Burlington as a Ticat fan idolizing all the great players, and I felt so honoured to be wearing 77, Hal Patterson’s number.”
Like Sunter, Gabriel would celebrate a birthday (his 24th) a few days later; and like Sunter he had played at Burlington Central High School, but really got his football education with the junior Burlington Braves under the legendary Bernie Custis.
And, like Sunter, he had a profound impact on the final two minutes which led to the Ticats’ 14-10 victory, which culminated a stunning skein of 10 Grey Cup appearances in 16 years. They won five Grey Cups in that stretch, five times as many as they have in the 49 years since.
In a low-scoring game, overtime loomed when the Ticats’ defence forced a punt and Ealey took over at the Hamilton 15-yard-line with just 100 seconds to play. Gabriel, who had 49 receptions during the 14game regular season, hadn’t caught
ball, hadn’t even had one thrown to him, in the Grey Cup game.
“Chuck and I had a good chemistry that year. Honestly, I felt sort of like a sleeper, or left out, for 59 minutes of the game,” Gabriel recalls. “But there we are, and Chuck calls a 59-flood-tight-end-left. That’s to me. I think Saskatchewan was trying to play it safe in a zone, and what that does is put me right through the middle. That’s why I was open. I think the safety had been falling back. They weren’t expecting anything from me. It was a cold day and I hadn’t handled anything yet, but the ball stuck, and I ook it another few yards.” Twenty-seven yards total, clock ticking, excitement mounting. And the Riders switched to man-to-man defence.
“What does Chuck do? He calls the same play again. No one tried to hit me at the line of scrimmage, but because of the man-to-man, I had to break the pattern off which is why it was only a 12-yard gain.”
Ealey, who would be named the game’s MVP, threw a short incompletion to Dave Buchanan and then, on second down, hit Gabriel again, this time on a button hook, and with 51 seconds left, the ball was suddenly at Saskatchewan’s 41-yard line.
Four passes, three of them complete, all to Gabriel, and the Ticats had moved the ball 54 yards in less than a minute.
When the drive started, Sunter had told Hamilton coach Jerry Williams that if the Ticats could get the line of scrimmage to the 40, he’d be within range. So, it became a matter of eating the clock, getting a bit closer and not turning the ball over. Ealey picked up a couple of yards on a quarterback draw, then threw to Henley, but low enough that it couldn’t be intercepted. Henley, who had 119 receiving yards that game, somehow reached back to
tch it. Buchanan was stopped on a pitch left and on second down, with just 13 seconds left, Sunter trotted off the sideline and, subsequently, into Hamilton sports lore.
Gabriel, meanwhile, was hurting. On his third reception, he turned to run upfield and a Roughrider hit him hard with his helmet in a very sensitive area just below the waist. In great pain, he made it back to the huddle, “and I was so glad the next
g play and I could stay in and block because I couldn’t have got to full stride.”
“On the final play, I’m blocking for thing the field to Ian goal. and Garney then it’s said a moment somett in time: a young kid, a fellow Burlington kid, breaks the tie, on our home field.”
What Henley said was, “Keep your head down and follow through.” So Sunter did.
Gabriel was playing that 1972 season as a free agent, gambling on himself for only 90 per cent of his $8,400 per-year contract. He said that GM Ralph Sazio “threw nickels around like manhole covers. I had a job (in chemicals sales) using my degree from Syracuse and I didn’t cash a Ticat cheque all year. I wanted to show Ralph I didn’t need the money.”
He eventually signed a three-year deal, retroactive to the start of 1972, but the Ticats traded him after the 1974 season to Ottawa where he went on to complete his Hall of Fame career. His iconic game-winning catch of Tom Clements’ pass to win in 1976 was one of the best pass patterns in the history of the Grey Cup.
“That championship at Ivor Wynne was the highlight of my four years with the Ticats,” Gabriel says. “A combination of things really came together for us that day. I look back and think, ‘What were the odds of that?’ We were on our 15yard line.”
But three Gabriel catches later, they were within striking distance of one of the city’s greatest sports moments.
That championship at Ivor Wynne was the highlight of my four years with the Ticats. TONY GABRIEL FORMER HAMILTON TIGHT END