The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • 18

18 The GAZETTE, Montreal, Feb. 20. 1979 am Senior 'building a curling crown By Randy Phillips Archie Bevington of Fort Smith in the Territories, 6-4. Block won his fifth round game against New Brunswick's Fredericton rink, skipped by Laurie Menzies, 7-4. Tied for second with five wins and a loss each are prairie rinks skipped by defending champion Art Knut-son of Elbow.

and Cliff NORANDA, Que. (CP) Jake Block is a general contractor and seems to be building himself a curling crown after six straight wins in the Canadian senior men's curling championship. The unbeaten Abbotsford, B.C., skip had his closest call of the event yesterday when he needed a triple takeout in the final end to squeeze past Ursel expects tough Brier fight despite nine newcomers to field Forry agrees that his rink is making a pretty good move now and has a good chance at top spot. Getting better "Yes I think we are curling better each game," said the retired highway builder from southern Alberta after whipping Quebec 15-4 in the event's most lopsided score so far. And the defending champions have no intention of giving the trophy away without a battle.

After trimming New Brunswick 11-3 in the sixth round, Knutson, a grain farmer who owns 2,000 acres outside the community of Elbow, feels his rink has steadied down after its fourth round defeat tothe Quebec rink. The round-robin event is scheduled to wind up took a 7-6 win over Newfoundland for its first victory. Block was quick to admit that he and his rink almost blew it in their game with the Territories. "We felt too confident and were not as keyed up as we should have been," he said after his sixth-round squeaker. Several times during the game the B.C.

rink members had differences of opinion on strategy. But Block had the final say when his last rock took out three Territories stones to count two. Bevington, manager of the airport in his community half a mile north of the Alberta border, was almost as happy as if he had won. "We played a good game I thought," he said. "I was a little heavy on my last two rocks.

We still aren't quite used to the fast ice here." Forry of Lethbridge, Alta. Knutson took Eldon McLean of Brandon, 10-3 in the fifth and then beat Menzies 11-3 in the sixth. Forry won 9-2 over the Prince Edward Island entry of Dr. Lloyd Cox of Char-lottetown in the fifth and took Quebec's Maurice Sears, from St. Lambert, 15-4 in the sixth.

Fifth round In other fifth-round games Bevington beat Newfoundland's Ralph Atwill of St. John's, 7-5; Northern Ontario's Gordon Peterson of Kenora, dropped the Nova Scotia foursome of John Pertus of Halifax, 8-7, and Sears beat Ontario's Kingston rink, skipped by Bill Lewis, 7-6. In other sixth-round games Ontario beat Manitoba, 6-3; Northern Ontario dropped P.E.I. 14-3 and Nova Scotia I DINK CARROLL hi 44 i Hodgson not alone in CFL Halifax bid Bill Hodgson, who recently sold his 60 per cent interest in the Toronto Argonauts, wants to get back into the Canadian Football League as the owner of a new franchise to be located in Halifax. That announcement was made by Jake Gaudaur, commissioner of the CFL, after an executive committee meeting of the league in Toronto last week.

He revealed that Hodgson had written a letter to the league expressing his desire to establish a franchise in Halifax. "We will encourage him to pursue it." said Gaudaur. but I wouldn't want to say that a Halifax team is imminent." It won't happen next S. season, but it could happen in the length of time it takes to construct a suitable stadium. The commissioner is being cautious in any public statements he makes because he is all to aware of the number of new franchises that have failed in professional leagues in hockey, baseball, football and basketball in the last half-dozen years.

Some of those new teams have gone bankrupt The dash to the wire for provinces to determine their respective entrants for the Canadian Brier Championship is over finally. Though some exceeded the Feb. 12 deadline to declare representatives, the field for the 50th Brier at Ottawa's Civic Centre is, at the least, interesting. Nine teams will be making their first-ever appearance in the 12-rink tournament, which includes a double entry from Ontario and one from the Northwest Territories. The lineup follows: Jeff Thomas, St.

John's, Wayne Matheson, Charlotte-town, P.E.I. Richard Belyea, Saint John, N.B.; Bob Fedosa, Bramalea, (southern) Larry Pineau, Thunder Bay, (north-em) Barry Fry, Winnipeg, Paul Devlin, Edmonton, Glen Pierce, Vancouver, B.C.; and Don Strang, Yellowknife, N.W.T. Quebec's Jim Ursel, of St. Laurent; Alan Darragh, Dartmouth, N.S. and Rick Folk.

Regina, are the only skips with Brier experience. But Ursel, the 1977 Brier champion, is the veteran of veterans. Sixth Brier outing This will be his sixth appearance and fifth in the last six years. Ursel, third Don Aitken, second Warren Wallace and lead Malcolm Turner earned their Brier berth by winning the Quebec championship over Andre Desjardins, of Kenogami, 5-4 in an extra end Feb. 3.

Quite competitive "Despite so many new faces the field would seem to be quite competitive," said Ursel yesterday. Ursel's first appearance was in 1962 as skip of Manitoba's entry. For Darragh and Folk, the '79 edition will be their second in as many years. The Paul Devlin foursome's defeat of defending Canadian champion Ed Lukowich in the final of the Alberta curling championship is among the noteworthy pre-Brier news. Devlin beat Lukowich 7-4 in the sudden-death final which had been forced by Lukowich who defeated Devlin in the final of the competition's A and sections.

Both rinks had two losses going into the triple-knockout final. But along with the Alberta title. Devlin was forced to give up his job. Made the decision "My employer told me during our Alberta playdowns that I ws going to have to decide between my work or curling," said the 32-year-old car salesman. "I figured I wasn't going to be in the business all my life, so I quit the job." The '79 Brier will be the eighth straight year the competition's defending champion will have been absent.

Manitoba's Don Du-guid, who won twice in 1970 and 1971, was test defending champion to make it a following year. Correction i The Macdonald Lassie begins Feb. 25 at the Town of Mount Royal Arena and not the Town of Mount Royal Curling Club was previously reported Curling on TV Beginning with the Lassie, CBC Television Sports starts coverage of four major curling championships with Don Chevrier, Don Duguid, and Don Wittman commentating. CBC will televise final round play of Lassie, Saturday Mar. 3 from 2 to 5 p.m.

For the Brier, the network will air nightly J.I.ALBRECHT Had idea first k3 1 A CP laivrpNoto Sweeeeeeep! tion at the Canada Winter Games in Brandon yesterday. It worked. His Saskatchewan rink swamped Quebec 10-3. Skip Bob Delparte of Regina gets right down to basics as he hollers instructions to his sweepers in first round curling ac JIM URSEL He't Brier veteran reports from Monday, Mar. 5 through Friday, Mar.

9 at 11:45 p.m. In addition, final round action will be shown Saturday, Mar 10, 2-5 p.m. Saturday, Mar. 17, from 2-5 p.m., will the World Junior championship in Moose Jaw, Sask. CBC winds up its curling season with final action in the Silver Broom World Championship from Berne, Switzerland, Mar.

31, from 2-5 p.m. Competition, bonspiel results Etta Bicknell, of Ste. Anne's, Cathy Sly, of TMR. Olive O'Brien, of Laval-sCr-le-Lac and Mary Kuntz, of Mt. Bruno emerged as District 1 winners in the Ladjes Curling Association 75th anniversary competition.

Some 118 teams took part in the District 1 playdowns held last week and representative for District 2 and 3 will be decide this week The event final will be held Mar. 24-25 at the Royal Montreal Curling Club. 1 Skip Rosa MacKay. with third Bill AcK-hurat, second Bob Allen and lead Jerry Bolen, won Pointe Claire'i men's mid-season bonspiel held last week. Pointe Claire's ladies's team skipped In Elly Meyer, with third Isabel Quayle, second Jean McNicoll and lead Audrey Avon won the Campeau Trophy in the Crystal, Pebble bonspiel held recently in Ottawa.

1 Happenings District 1 playdowns in the Colt's modified double knockout event gets under way Sunday. It will continue until Mar. 3. West Point meet attracts Soviets INDIANAPOLIS (APj Nikolay Ai-lov, the 1972 Olympic champion, heads a Soviet track team that will compete at West Point. N.Y., on March 1-2, the Amateur Athletic Union announced yesterday.

Men's and women's teams from the. United States and Soviet Union, along will) a women's team from Canada also will Cancellations Weather most unsporting which announced that its program of events for the day, including the Harlem Globetrotters, professional wrestling and the Bugs Bunny Show would be held as scheduled The weather problems spread across the Atlantic to London where all scheduled English Cup soccer games were postponed because of ice and snow. In Scotland, the Scottish Cup game between Inverness Thistle and Falkirk was also called off for the 27th time. (AtMdated Prits) The semi-finals of a national indoor junior tennis classic at the Port Washington, N.Y., Academy was postponed until today. Some of the participants couldn get to the arena in Long Island because of the road conditions.

The tourney involves teen-agers in six divisions. A press conference for World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Larry Holmes scheduled for today at the Waldorf Astoria was moved back to Friday. The snow did not interfere with Madison Square Garden and ceased to operate or had to be t-iken over by the league while others were transferred to different cities. Understandably Gaudaur is anxious to avoid anything like that happening in the CFL. The history of new teams in any sport is that they don't attract solid support until they become competitive.

Too many of the people who were awarded franchises that failed in the recent past thought there was a lot of money to be made in professional sport and were in it to make a fast buck. They lost their shirts and embarrassed the league when they couldn't raise the money to continue operating the teams. That is not likely to happen in Halifax, if it is included in the CFL. Bill Hodgson appears to have sufficient money, if he gets the green light from the CFL. But he would find Halifax a lot different from Toronto.

Halifax true testing ground It seems nobody can lose money with a football team in Toronto, no matter how poorly it performs on the field. Hodgson had that experience in Toronto and his staying power wasn't really tested. It could be in Halifax. But he many not even get the Halifax franchise, if the league decides that it is the best site for another team. There are other people with even more money who are interested in putting a team in Halifax, although they haven't taken any action as yet.

The league is off balance now with four teams in the Eastern Football Conference and five in the WFC. Gaudaur acknowledges that it is "highly desirable for the Eastern Conference to acquire a fifth franchise wherever it is located, but particularly Halifax becausethen we would be sea to sea." A group in London wanted to put a team in the EFC several years ago, but ran into opposition from the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Teams in the CFL have the rights to college draft choices in certain areas and the Tiger-Cats would have been forced to lose some of theirs to a new team in London. It was also felt that with teams in Ottawa, Toronto and Hamilton, another city in Ontario wasn't the ideal site for a new EFC team. Halifax was much to be preferred.

Albreacht had idea in 1860 J. I. Albrecht was the first person we ever heard suggesting that the CFL should consider Halifax as the site for a new franchise. That was in the early 1960s when Perry Moss was head coach of the Alouettes and he was the team's director of personnel. He scouted the college teams in the Maritimes year after year and brought Jim Foley and Tony Proudfoot to the Alouettes.

Others to come out of there and make it with teams in the CFL include Wayne Smith, Rick Black. Angelo Santucci and Ken Clark. The team that has the best Canadian-born personnel invariably winds up a winner in the CFL. J.I. argued that Halifax would be a great place for a CFL team because it would have exclusive rights to the college players in the Maritimes.

which would give it a solid foundation. Premier John Buchanan of Nova Scotia reported a few days ago that Prime Minister Trudeau has expressed great interest in a Halifax franchise and indicated that the federal government would contribute some money to build a suitable stadium to house a CFL team. The semi-annual meeting of the CFL takes place here in May and you should hear a lot more then about the Halifax situation and who gets the franchise, if the CFL decides it should have a team there. A winter storm which dropped up to a foot of snow along the Eastern seaboard caused cancellation of several sports events yesterday. Aqueduct, Bowie, Keystone, Penn National and Waterford Park race tracks all cancelled their cards early in the day.

Bowie and Keystone called off racing today, too, and will resume tomorrow. The Monday night program at Roosevelt Raceway harness racing track in West-bury, N.Y., also was cancelled by the bad weather. The Metropolitan Intercollegiate Track and Field Championships, scheduled for Princeton University, were postponed until today. The American Hockey League called off the game between the Hershey Bears and Maine Mariners, scheduled for Monday night for Portland, Maine. The Bears were stranded by the snowstorm in Pennsylvania.

A league spokesman said the game will be made up April 2 in Portland. The Philadelphia Fever of the Major Indoor Soccer League postponed its game last night with the New York Arrows because of the storm. Basketball games canceled included Furman-Virginia Military, South Alabama-Campbell, Central Wesleyan-Limestone and Presbyterian at Winthrop. i.innpiiHimiiMiiH wwii imii iiiiiii mm inwnwnmiii mr 1 mi rwirnii i -n i i I i i i mwiwi miiMwwwe ii ml in Hi mm i' mini iniiiiiirin i mi inn mni "i im iui iiiit in -r J- -1 FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY IWf MADE-TO-MEASURE Wkn harryyloid I' IjM i Ht TAILORED MAN Jj -lh to size 46 I i.f 474 St. Catherine West at Phillips Square- Rockland Centre T.M.R.

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