A Tavistock Football Team Was Once the Ontario Champions!

At this time, when the focus of the sporting world is on the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, it would be timely to remember and celebrate the 1912 Tavistock junior team that won the All-Ontario football championship.

Football (or “soccer” as it is called in North America today) was the favourite sport played in Tavistock at the turn of the last century. In the Lemp Studio Collection of photographs are found many “football” team pictures, ranging from the Glasgow Warehouse team of 1880 to the Tavistock Oxford County championship team of 1928.

The most successful of the Tavistock football teams was undoubtedly the Tavistock Junior team of 1912, the Marlboros. They went undefeated that year and ended the season winning a two game series against a Toronto Parkview team to win the Ontario championship.

The Tavistock Junior Marlboros of 1912 included: goal Bert Wettlaufer; full backs Dave McIntosh and Carl Loth; half backs Roy Pearson, H. W. Gerhardt, and Kas. Morgenroth; forwards Harvey Kruspe, Stan McDermott, Charlie Borthwick, Wilbert Croft, and Charlie Kaufmann; and spares Elroy Duval and Will Ratz.

The first step on their way to the Ontario Football Associations of Ontario title was a home-and-home series against Seaforth. The first game played in Seaforth ended in a 1-1 draw. The Gazette reported that “the Marlboros looked pretty nifty in their new green sweaters!” The second game in the series also ended in a 1-1 draw but Tavistock protested the game stating that Seaforth had used two ineligible players. Tavistock won the protest and hoped that they would be awarded the victory but instead the decision was that the game be replayed. In the end it didn’t matter as Tavistock scored on a penalty kick in overtime and won 2-1.

The Marlboros then met a team from Atwood (with players drawn from Listowel and Milverton) in another home-and-home series. That series would decide the Western Football Association championship. A large crowd of supporters travelled to Atwood by special train, picking up passengers at intermediate stations along the way. The Gazette reported that the crowd was treated to the fastest game of football seen that year. The Marlboros “seemed to work with a machine-like precision that not only surprised their own supporters but drew forth praise from the spectators generally.”

The Tavistock Junior club defeated Atwood quite handily 6-1 on the round and thereby claimed the WFA title. That win meant that they could play in a series with the winners of the Central League (Little York) and the Toronto League (Parkview) for the Ontario championship.

While waiting to find out who they would meet in the Ontario finals, the Juniors played two exhibition games against a Senior team from Stratford who had just won the WFA Seniors title. Tavistock won that series too by a 3-2 total score.

The Toronto Parkview team pulled a bit of a surprise on the Little York team by coming back after a 2-0 loss in game one to turn the tables and win game two 5-2 to take the round by one goal. So it was Parkview that the Marlboros would play for the championship and the Tavistock team and their fans jumped on the train to Toronto to play the first game of a home-and-home series.

The Gazette had little to say about that first game in Toronto, won 3-2 by Tavistock, because the Toronto papers were “sphinx-like” about the game. “Not a line appeared in any of them,” said the Gazette, “where a couple of days before they were boasting of the strong gait the Parkviews were going. But that was before the advent of the ‘Flying Dutchmen’ of Tavistock.”

While still in Toronto after the win, the Marlboros played a friendly against Little York, the winners of the Central League, who had been put out by Parkview. “The Tavistock ‘broncos’ showed the stuff they were made of by holding their opponents down to a 1-1 score.”

Later that week, the Parkview team came to Tavistock. They had been met at the train station in Shakespeare and brought to Tavistock for the final game of the season. The game started slowly with each team trying to feel the other out. “Finally the boys in green let into it and the Toronto boys were played completely off their feet. After some nice combination in front of the visitor’s goal, Charlie Borthwick turned loose one of his cannonball shots and Tavistock had a goal.” The Marlboro defence was “impregnable” after that and Tavistock claimed the Ontario title, 4-2 on the round.

“Har! Har!!,” wrote the paper. “The agony is over. We have a great team. We have a great record. And the silverware is ours.” Three months later, the trophies won by the Tavistock Junior Marlboros were on display in the drug store window for all to see.