By Stampeders.com staff
Identifying the most memorable field goal in Calgary Stampeders history likely depends on the Red and White fan’s age.
The youngest of Stamps supporters might pick the Rene Paredes field goal in Winnipeg last season that allowed El Matador to establish a new CFL record for most consecutive successful kicks.
Slightly more mature fans will quickly point to Mark McLoughlin’s last-second, game-winning boot in the 1998 Grey Cup, a game also played in Winnipeg coincidentally enough.
And for those veteran Stamps diehards who are likely to be bouncing grandkids on their knee these days, the year 1970 immediately comes to mind.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders’ home field — called Mosaic Stadium in modern times but more fondly remembered as Taylor Field — will soon be replaced by a new structure in Regina but even when the old barn is gone, Calgarians will fondly remember Larry Robinson’s improbable footwork in the 1970 Western final.
In the third game of a best-of-three series — yep, that’s right kids; they played series in those days — with Calgary and Saskatchewan owning a win apiece, the teams got together in a bitterly cold, wind-blasted Taylor Field to determine who would go to the Grey Cup.
Calgary was down 14-12 in the dying seconds when Robinson was called upon to kick a 32-yard field goal. Sounds manageable enough, except that the wind — estimated as strong as 40 miles per hour — was blowing directly in the kicker’s face.
The wind was so strong in fact that there was immediate second-guessing about Stamps coach Jim Duncan’s decision to go for a kick instead of trying his luck with a play from scrimmage.
One of the guys scratching his head was the man being asked to make the kick.
“I was going, ‘What is this?’ ” recalls Robinson. “I’d warmed up before the game in just about the same place, 30 yards out, and I hadn’t gotten one to the goal-line. I thought, ‘Well, here we go.’ I just tried to play the wind. I knew how much it drifted so I just hoped I got it to the goal-line. But it went through.”
After a moment, Robinson admitted: “I don’t know how.”
The strong wind wasn’t the only reason Robinson’s kick caused surprise. The Roughriders, after all, had finished the season 14-2 and were huge favourites against the 9-7 Stamps.
But Calgary had great players such as Herm Harrison, Wayne Harris, Jerry Keeling and Hugh McKinnis and the Stamps were just one year away from capturing a Grey Cup championship.
Though the Stamps went on to lose the 1970 Grey Cup to Montreal, the deciding game in the West final may well have been an important step to that 1971 championship. Robinson still shivers at the thought of the conditions that memorable day at Taylor Field.
“During the game,” Robinson recalled, “you just about froze to death. There were a bunch of guys that came out with frostbite in their hands.
“In those days, they didn’t have the kinds of gloves and stuff to wear under your gear like they do now. It was just an extra T-shirt and away you went. The field was quite frozen and snow-blown. It was just miserable.”
Robinson remained in Calgary after his career and still gets asked about his game-winner on a regular basis. In 14 seasons with the Stamps, Robinson was a West all-star three times (1965, 1971, and 1972). He was inducted into the CFL Hall Of Fame in 1998 and the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 2009.