What Robin envisioned as a two or three-page story in the sports section on the history of the club morphed into something much, much larger. While I felt a comprehensive look at the history of the Battalion would make a great multi-page section in the paper, I began to see bigger things for the project (and hoped the rest would find a home on The Guardian website), and felt I should profile every captain in club history as well as notable players and others who were important, longtime contributors both on and off the ice in order to provide as worthy a chronicle of the history the Battalion made in Brampton as possible.
I spent many weeks conducting interviews with those involved with the club, from owner Scott Abbott, general manager and head coach Stan Butler and president Mike Griffin to every team captain and many others from all eras of Battalion history.
The end result was a 28-part, 45,000+-word project that saw the light of day on March 29 (also the day of the final game in club history) when The Guardian ran a special eight-page section featuring a history of the club. It was very well-received and I was hoping The Guardian would be able to run the rest online, but due to a number of issues, including a new website for the paper, that plan was unable to come to fruition.
Doug Anderson, Rogers play-by-play man extraordinaire, suggested I create a blog of my own to run it and after getting Robin's go-ahead to do that I have created what you are looking at now.
What will follow on this site will be every word of the project as it was submitted to The Guardian in February, beginning with the feature story that ran in the paper. After that will be much, much more including profiles of every captain and notable alumni such as Brent Burns, Matt Duchene, Jay Harrison and Jason Spezza.
I am hoping to add photos and videos to the stories and might even look to add to this project as well, touching base with some significant players from Battalion history that I was unable to talk to the first time.
Thanks to all those who took the time to make this project possible and thanks for reading!
Stuart McComish
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| Photo courtesy of sportingmoments.com |
