By: Marc Mathon
Back in the late 1980’s, the powerful Brampton Bears were faced with a number of internal player and coaching issues. Those issues festered and a group developed core of players that split with the Bears to form a new Northern Football Conference club. The group made an expansion bid to the Northern Football Conference and the Brampton Bulldogs were born. The new Brampton Bulldogs team featured an electrifying runningback by the name of Dave Dinall; who gave defenses across the league fits with his signature outside contain breaking moves. Dave went on to play with the Hamilton Ti-Cats and still plays in the Northern Football Conference today.
North Bay native and Vanier Cup winning quarterback, Tim Pendergast, was back in North Bay and expressed an interest in bringing NFC Football back to North Bay. His brother, Jamie Pendergast, played slotback for the North Bay Northmen in the early 1980’s. Richard Begin, also from North Bay and having played on Algonquin’s last NDA championship team in 1981, was living and working in Brampton at the time. Richard had played for both the Bulldogs and the Bears. Despite the strong runningback numbers and good numbers, the Brampton Bulldogs did not win many games and moral suffered. Those instabilities led to a realization that both clubs could not survive in Brampton. The Bulldogs decided to cease operations, while the Bears re-organized.
At the same time, a group was forming in North Bay consisting of Tim Pendergast, Tom Graham, Paul Condon, and several others seeking a way to finance a new Northern Football Conference club in North Bay. A connection between Richard Begin, Tom Graham and Tim Pendergast took place with the suggestion that North Bay could purchase the equipment from the Brampton Bulldogs group, and thus apply for membership into the Northern Football Conference. Richard Begin brokered the meeting of the two organizations in the fall of 1990 and an agreement was struck to acquire the equipment in time to form a team beginning in the 1991 season.
At the Northern Football Conference’s Annual General Meeting in January of 1991, the North Bay Bulldogs were born and welcomed into the league. Although they were welcomed into the league, there were no welcoming parties offered by Northern Football Conference clubs, as the Bulldogs’ first two years were winless. Tim Pendergast worked on developing a young Jason Ferreira and tought him the quarterback position. Soon enough, the hard hits and tough slugging work payed off. The Bulldogs earned their first victory in 1993, defeating the arch rival Sudbury Spartans 36-32. The game, in North Bay, was in front of a home crown; the most exciting NFC football game North Bay fans had seen in decades. The winning didn’t end as they caught other teams off guard and made the playoffs that year.
Over the course of the next few years, the North Bay Bulldogs saw success by developing an effective passing attack behind the arm of Jason Ferreira, and the legs of the Casey Brothers. With the lack of a head coach and troubled player recruitment, the Bulldogs took a leave of absence from Northern Football Conference play in 1996, 1998 and 1999. A club from a smaller centre like North Bay, drawing its players locally should statistically never win a game in a league that features clubs from communities two to fifty times its size. But to the credit of local sponsors, the players, the high school football programs, as well as the coaches that commit to the program, North Bay can and does compete in the Northern Football Conference.
In 2000, the league was suffereing and risked going to a three team league. A group of players led by Ben Bilz, secured the services of a new head coach in Marc Mathon (also the present head coach) and the Bulldogs were alive again. In 2000, the club started late with player shortages, but still competed to a three and five season (losing a close game to Sault Ste Marie in the Semi-Final). Since then, the Bulldogs have managed to have winning seasons in five of seven years following 2000 and continue to work towards winning the championship.
