St. Francis Xavier University is celebrating 50 years of Canadian football in 2003. Former player, coach and athletic director, John “Packy” McFarland, remembers that first game well. “We had to borrow sweaters from Harvard University to complement those that the rugby players had”. Fr. Andy Hogan agreed to coach that first team, using a contact at the university in Cambridge, Mass., to provide sweaters. Hogan’s team was made up of a number of Americans and upper Canadians who had played high school football before coming to X. Most Nova Scotians had yet to embrace the Canadian game, retaining their roots in rugby. 

The X-men won that first game. A new era had begun. There have been great St. F.X. football teams but the 1963 Xaverian footballers, entering the Nova Scotia Sport Hall of Fame in 2003, provided Nova Scotia fans with some of the most exciting football seen in the region. The X-men won one-sided games, but fans knew they would see outstanding individual and team efforts from this aggregation of New Englanders, upper Canadians and the many Nova Scotians who were discovering the gridiron sport.

Legendary coach Don Loney, elected to the Hall of Fame on three occasions, as a builder in 1980, and with his St. F. X. football teams of 1963 and 1966, was asked to name the best team he ever coached at X. He reflected for some time, then responded, “the 1963 team was the ‘greatest’ overall team”. The 1963 X-men went undefeated in eight games, scoring 405 points while allowing only 21. They won an interlock exhibition, 14-7 over the highly-touted McGill Redmen, who had Cornell graduate Tom Skypeck at Quarterback. In 1963, there was no national championship. The only post-season game was the Atlantic Bowl at Wanderers

Grounds in Halifax where St. F. X. defeated University of Toronto Blues 15-9 to complete their season at 10-0. Lineman Phil Hughes, in his second season, fondly remembers the men in the trenches. “The line, on both offense and defense, was the biggest and fastest the Maritimes had ever seen. We dominated on both sides of the ball”. Coach Loney looks back on that exceptional team with pride, tinged with sadness for those players who passed away at young ages – Tom “The Bomb” Delaney, Eddie Amaral, Roger “Red” Sevigny and Bill Crean. Packy McFarland, the only assistant coach, recalls “that with only two coaches, we were able to get the most out our players. There was a pride, a commitment to excellence and a will to win. We were big on the line, fast in the backfield, and mean on defense”.

Members of the team were: Carl Alguire, Eddie Amaral, Doug Billing, Jim Bowes, Mike Brosseau, Jim Burke, Ken Bussey, Howie Carty, Gary Ceppetelli, Steve Connolly, Ronald Chisholm, Bill Crean, Tom Delaney, Bob Doherty, Joe Franciose, Terry Gilead, Paul Girard, Terry Gorman, John Herold, Phil Hughes, Ben Kuzmic, Wayne Long, Chuck Lyons, Dan McCarthy, Tom McGowan, Jerome MacDonald, Dave Merry, Pat McMenamin, Richard Moloy, Jim Muska, Gord Pranschke, Jon Purcell, Paul Rusyniak, Bruce Racicot, Terry Ryan, Guy Roy, Todd Scott, Roger Sevigny, John Shaw, Phil St. John, Gerald Strong, Pete Travis, Jim Ward, Peter White, Dick White (coaches) Packy McFarland, and Don Loney

Bio courtesy of  Bill Kiely