When did Dale West feel certain the Saskatchewan Roughriders were going to win their first Grey Cup?
If you guessed with around six-and-a-half minutes to play in the fourth quarter of the Canadian Football League’s 1966 championship game, you are correct.
That was the point where West’s teammate George Reed scored on a 31-yard touchdown run to put the “west Riders” up by 13 points on the Ottawa Rough Riders. A successful point-after convert and a punt single later, and Saskatchewan was celebrating its first CFL title.
“I think Ottawa was the prohibitive favourite to win it and I think George’s touchdown really sealed the deal for us, and then we started to relax a little bit,” West said in a 2021 interview with SportsCage managing editor Brad Brown, then of the Quad Town Forum newspaper.
The Roughriders announced Tuesday that West had died earlier that day at the age of 84 after a battle with cancer.
In a memoriam posted to Riderville.com, the team said West joined the Riders in 1962 and set a then-team record in 1963 with 10 interceptions. The 226 yards he returned those picks for remain the club’s single-season standard.
Born in Cabri and raised in Saskatoon, West was the Western Conference’s most outstanding Canadian in 1963 and a conference all-star for three consecutive seasons (1963-65). He retired ahead of the 1969 season with 106 regular-season games to his name.
All of that not to mention a first-quarter interception in that ’66 Grey Cup win that set up the Roughriders’ first touchdown of the game.
Many years later, in that 2021 interview, West still expressed relief over that specific play while pleading guilty – rightly or wrongly – for the two long-bomb touchdowns Ottawa quarterback Russ Jackson threw to Whit Tucker in the first half.
“I was really, really pleased about the interception,” he said. “It was kind of a fortunate thing. I’d been kind of responsible for the two Ottawa touchdowns so that was a bit of make-up time, and as a result I was really I guess mostly pleased with that. Everybody had a really strong game and I felt that maybe I’d let the team down a little bit.”
The strongest teams in sports though often talk about winning or losing as a group, and West said the ’66 Roughriders were no exception.
“There (were) only 32 on the roster and everybody really, really contributed,” he said, saving special praise for that year’s offensive line.
“I think probably the key as it was throughout the year was the fact that our offensive line was so strong. We had some fantastic offensive linemen – Ted Urness, Al Benesick – and others that really contributed to that win. It was an all-out team effort.”
Among countless changes to the on-field product in the 50-plus years after his retirement – West specifically noted the increased size of modern linemen as he laughed about outweighing Urness during their time as teammates at the University of Arizona – he recalled it was also a very different time off the field, but one he was glad to be a part of all the same.
“There wasn’t a sea of green at that time. The fans I think were not quite as wild about the game as they are now and … we just basically were the people that lived in the same neighbourhood as everybody,” he said. “It was kind of different in that regard. It wasn’t that you were held to a high standard by your neighbours or anything. You were a neighbour.”
West was inducted into the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame in 1988, the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame in 1989 and the Roughriders' Plaza of Honour in 1997.
