by Jim Blake for the Sarnia Gazette
(1978) “We played for the fun of it and we played the full 60 minutes per game. The only way you got off the field was if you got your neck broken, your arm broken, or your brains kicked out.”
So says 74 year-old Frank Burwell, one of the players on the scene during Sarnia’s football heydays of the 1920s and 1930s.
Frank, who has owned and operated Burwell’s Variety on on the corner of Sheppard and Confederation for the past 44 years, was a fast, hard-hitting 160 pound end during his playing days and his teammates included the legendary Norm Perry and Hugh “Bummer” Stirling, both members of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame
Frank’s career began at Sarnia Collegiate during the early 1920s and after graduation he received an offer to play for the Sarnia Wanderers, then a junior team.
“In those days Sarnia was divided into the north ward and the south ward and the boundary was London Road,” Frank said. “There was quite a rivalry and it was understood that if you lived in the south you played in the south, so when Ike Lampel and myself were asked to play for the north ward Wanderers instead of the south ward Bearcats, we were almost afraid to go. We finally accepted and when the Bearcats left us alone after the first practice we knew we were all right.”
Frank played for the Wanderers during 1926 and 1927 and then left to play for the Sarnia Imperials which had just made the jump from intermediate classification to become a senior team in the Ontario Rugby Football Union.
The Imperials played in what was then known as Athletic Park and has been renamed Norm Perry Park. Frank recalled these long-ago struggles as fierce hard-hitting encounters.
“I remember early in one game I injured my arm making a tackle and by half time it was hurting pretty bad so I had the trainer take a look at it,” Frank said. “The trainer said it wasn’t hurt seriously so I played the second half. I was just lucky the bone didn’t splinter.”
Frank played on the period’s Senior ORFU Champions of 1928and returned to the Wanderers where he played for championship teams in 1930 and 1935. Frank retired from football following the 1936 season, his mind made up because of an injury suffered by Norm Perry.
“Norm broke his leg in a game played out west and it got me to thinking,” Frank said. “I was 32 years old at the time and I was playing against kids that were 19 and 20. I never had any serious injuries except the broken arm and some torn ligaments si I just decided it was time to get out while I was in one piece.”
Football was a different game when Frank was a player with touchdowns counting only five points instead of six. “The forward pass was just becoming popular when I was ready to quit,” Frank recalled. He said the kicking game was an important part of a team’s offense with long kicks across the opposing team’s deadline being used to build up a lead.
In Frank’s opinion teams of his era displayed greater teamwork because the squad played together for a number of years. “We got to know each other pretty well and we could tell what our teammates were going to do almost before they did it,” he said.
One of Frank’s most pleasant memories is of the Wanderers Championship team of 1935. “We beat the Toronto Westwards 14-1 in a game played in a driving snowstorm,” he said. “We played the game in a neutral field in Woodstock and there must have been four inches of snow on the field. That was the only time we got any money,” Frank said. “The city of Woodstock gave us $350 to cover expenses and it sure helped out.”
“It was up to each player to whatever equipment he could,” Frank said. “The club supplied only sweaters and socks. If you got hurt, the team would pay for medical expenses but that was about it. We didn’t care though, we only played for the fun of it.”