Fifty years in the blue & black

In the early 1970s rugby had started a comeback at the university level in Nova Scotia, but senior rugby in Halifax was languishing. The Navy teams were on the decline and the Halifax Rugby Football Club was the only side with a solid membership.

In 1974 Eric Kranz, a New Yorker who had become enthralled with the game, quit HRFC and decided to start a new team in the city, seeking out players with high school or university rugby experience, and former football and soccer players. With his peculiar Woody Allen sense of humour, Eric named the new club the Halifax Hamsters.

The Hamsters played only a couple of games in their first season. The following year was more ambitious: a full schedule, team colours and kit purchased for the first time. The Nova Scotia Rugby Football Union had mixed feelings: many members did not seem to know the rules and preferred tackling like football players, the side was often a man or two short, and the club did not pay its league dues. The Hamsters were suspended, and other clubs threatened with fines if they played them.

Eric retreated into the background and the Hamsters’ short-lived existence came to an end. But a meeting of former Hamsters at the Lighthouse Tavern in early 1976 resulted in the birth of the Halifax Tars Rugby Football Club. The new, more traditional name was the idea of new club president George McLellan, a reference to the “Jolly Roving Tar”, the sailor who in olden times would often find himself covered in soot and tar.