I’ve been spoiled.

Throughout the better part of the twenty years since I first launched SudburySports.com and completely immersed myself into the local sports scene, high-school boys football has enjoyed a nice solid run of annual competitiveness.

Even though the SDSSAA senior ranks were down to just five teams this fall, the parity between those squads created a season that was one of the most evenly-matched ever - and a Lasalle junior team that captured a city championship certainly gives rise to hope of one more future entry in the older division.

This kind of optimism has clearly waned, at times.

In the mid-1980s, the senior/varsity league had dropped to just three entries, not enough to offer a meaningful fall schedule in the condensed stretch of time that runs between the middle of September and the start of November.

The most unfortunate part of the whole situation was that there was no debating that there were football kids who were both talented and craving the game they loved, who just happened to be attending one of the majority of schools that did not offer the sport to their senior athletes.

"When I registered at Lockerby and found out there was no football, I was devastated," said Todd Herold, a wide receiver/slotback who had just returned from spending three years at Lakefield Academy outside of Peterborough, developing a base on the gridiron prior to his return to Lockerby Composite.

"I found out the Paris Street project was being put together and immediately jumped aboard."

Legendary Sudbury Spartans coach Sid Forster had recognized the obvious disconnect, one which seemed void of a solution that had been attempted before. Such was the genesis behind the creation of the Paris Street Blues.

The Bad News Bears, they were not. Though unable to pursue a NOSSA banner because of the multi-school aspect of the SDSSAA entry, the Blues would lay claim to city championship banners in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1988.

Still, the collection of talent that came together, primarily from schools such as Lo-Ellen, Lockerby, Lasalle and Lively was not without challenges.

“Sid made it very clear that he did not want us thinking of ourselves as an all-star team,” suggested Todd Herold, a wide receiver/slotback .

“We were a group of misfits who were put together for the love of the game; we didn’t want to lose our opportunity to play. It was harder for us to practice because we all came from different areas.”

And then there was that small matter of accommodating the man who was making this all happen.

The lads would gather around 5:00 p.m. at the fieldhouse of what was then the Lily Creek Sports Complex, since renamed in honour of James Jerome. “We waited until Sid was done at Inco and could make it to the field,” Herold noted. “We would have our practices and then go home. It made time for guys from the Valley to come in, for guys from Lasalle to come over.”

That melting pot of assorted talent offered plenty of potential. It also offered plenty in the way of previous history.

“When I walked into the dressing room that first day and was handed my equipment, I looked around and thought: don’t know you, don’t know you,” said Herold. “There were a couple of guys from Copper Cliff that I recognized, but we didn’t necessarily get along the best.”

Something about a summer pit party gone array, apparently.

"I went to Lo-Ellen and we didn't like guys at Lockerby and guys at Lockerby didn't like Lo-Ellen," said Cooper.

Apparently teenage boys from Copper Cliff and the South End and New Sudbury and Lively did not spend summers together celebrating a fall return to school while singing Kumbaya.

Who knew?

“I think that’s where Sid shined,” offered 53 year-old Neil Cooper, a graduate of the Kinsmen Football League who had flowed through to a couple of years of junior ball at Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School. “Sid knew the kids coming in; he knew who everybody was.”

“The big thing was that we all had to mesh together, we all had to put our rivalries aside.”

Forster knew more than just a thing or two about football. One does not ascend to the pinnacle of being enshrined in the Canadian Football Hall of Fame without such acumen. But he was also a leader of boys and men, a charasmatic gent who could garner the respect of one and all in the room, understanding just enough about human psychology to create an environment where everyone was pulling in the same direction.

“The friendship and camaraderie that was developed, on an inter-school basis, by Sid was really unique,” said Herold. “Many of the friendships that evolved still survive to this day.”

It would be naive to think that Forster did not have an eye on the bigger picture. Without a feeder system of high-school talent, the likelihood of survival for his beloved Sudbury Spartans was understandably much more limited.

Much as we had seen in recent years, pre-pandemically speaking, the collaboration of the summer NFC program with all levels of youth football in Sudbury is an integral component of maintaining rivalries with the Oakville Longhorns and Sault Ste Marie Steelers of the world.

"We wore their colours, borrowed their equipment, that sort of thing," noted Cooper. "And Sid coached. Sid was the man. He would just take the reins and just do it all."

Cooper would end up spedning eight years as a member of the Spartans, am NFC career stretched over parts of four different decades. Herold played at his side in the summers of 1987 and 1988.

The latter had been programmed for this moment for quite some time, the son of a footballer who played at St Francis Xavier and was drafted by an outfit known as the Toronto Rifles.

"My dad brought me to a lot of Spartans games as a young boy, watching guys like Scott Spurgeon and the gang," said Herold, still visible at the occasional high-school game and having just celebrated his 54th birthday earlier this fall.

"It was very early in my youth that the silver and blue of the Spartans had put a real shine in my eyes," he added. "This is what I want to be some day."

And so the path was created, with an introduction to the culture via the Paris Street Blues and then on to join the men, months later, on the cherished grounds of Queen's Athletic Field.

"It was a natural fit," said Herold. "Given that we were that dedicated to getting a team together to play high-school ball, it showed that we had the ambition and the drive and the want to be there."

Perhaps this still happens, with or without the Paris Street Blues. Neil Cooper is thankful that he will never know, even as he tries to recall the names and faces of the young men who shared in the experience.

"We had about 40 guys on the team and they all came from somewhere," he said with a laugh. "It's hard to remember them all."

Familiar Lo-Ellen teammates like Terry Huhtala, Darren Gilbert and Ian Symington. The Vikings brigade led by the likes of Dan Davidson and Randy Thompson and Eddie Lee.

And the worthy adversaries on the other side of the ball, as well: quarterback Rob Doran of the Sudbury Secondary School North Stars - "and Dave St Amour was Mr Everything for Nickel District, even back then", suggested Cooper.

"All these years later, I still have contact with the guys I played football with. Sudbury is not a very big place and everybody knows everybody, especially when it comes to sports."

For Cooper and Herold and hundreds of others, the connecting rod in the middle of it all was Sid Forster, the man who championed the concept of the Paris Street Blues.

"I developed a pretty neat relationship with Sid over the years," said Herold. "I always had a soft spot for him and what he brought to Sudbury football."

The fact is that the Paris Street Blues, while quite memorable, were but a small piece of what Forster would bring to that scene, building a legacy that thankfully lives on to this day.