There’s just something about those Thanksgiving Day football rivalries, even if they’re played — as they are this year — in April.
It’s certainly odd to be talking about Thanksgiving football in April. In fact, it’s incongruous, counterintuitive, and any other of those complicated words that end up as Jeopardy! clues. But we all know why, so there’s no use dwelling on it.
But do you know what else is odd? This game has never been a battle of unbeatens. We’ll finally get one Friday night (6) when the two teams play each other at Blocksidge Field in Swampscott.
There have been battles for the league championship. There have been stunning upsets. Each team has pulled a victory out of thin air that kept the other from winning a title and having a chance at going to a Super Bowl.
Marblehead won a game with a field goal — with no time left on the clock — that just about tore the heart out of then-coach Bill Bush. The Magicians also won a game in a blizzard when Ray Forbes, whose father played for coach Stan Bondelevitch and the Big Blue, caught a pass that it’s a good bet only he could see. Because those of us watching certainly couldn’t.
A year later, Marblehead, with Chris McGrath leading the way, was on its way to a Northeastern Conference championship until it ran into a motivated Swampscott. The Big Blue were just itching to get back at the Magicians for spoiling their championship season in 1984.
It has gone that way forever. Back and forth. Somehow, with all those great teams Swampscott had in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, Marblehead — at the moment — has a pretty healthy lead in the overall series (59-50-7). And one reason the Magicians seem to be running away with the overall series is that Swampscott hasn’t won on Thanksgiving since 2012. Marblehead has won seven in a row (there was no game last year, remember; this game is it, actually).
A win on Thanksgiving can make your whole season. Only two teams per division go to the Super Bowl, so, for everyone else, you have to take your victories where they lie. And for most schools, a win on Thanksgiving is right up there on the priority list.
Conversely, a loss can leave a sour taste in your mouth for, well, two years. Case in point: in 2019, Swampscott dominated Amherst-Pelham to win the Division 5 Super Bowl. The score was 21-0, and it could have been 42-0 with a few more fortunate bounces. Amherst-Pelham could have had the ball for a month and a half and wouldn’t have scored. It was about as thorough a performance as you’ll ever see.
Swampscott should have been thrilled (and I’m sure the players were). But in the back of their minds was the reality that the team had lost on Thanksgiving to Marblehead. As great as that Super Bowl win felt, that’s how terrible everyone felt about the loss — a defeat compounded by its improbability.
The Big Blue’s Thomas Friscoli kicked a field goal with 46 seconds to go to give the Big Blue a 16-14 lead. But Marblehead quarterback Josh Robertson brought the Magicians right downfield and hit AJ Russo with the game-winning score with seven seconds left.
For many years, the coaches would meet the Monday after Thanksgiving to pick the Item All-Star football team. Many times, when the coaches would come into the old Porthole, the look on their faces still told the Thanksgiving tale. Those games linger.
Some of the key participants from that game are still on their respective teams, including Robertson — now a junior — for Marblehead, and wideout Andrew Augustin who may be one of the best in the area.
Marblehead comes into the game at 6-0 and has won its ninth Northeastern Conference North title in 11 years. But only in 2011, a season that saw them make the Super Bowl, did the Magicians finish up undefeated (11-0). Their only other unbeaten season was 1942.
Swampscott had to deal with a COVID-19 hiccup earlier in the season and only got to play three games. But the Big Blue won them all. And even though Swampscott has had nine unbeaten seasons, one of them wasn’t in 1942. Hence, we have what we never had before: both teams going into their rivalry game undefeated.
Where the game is usually a show, this year it’ll be a really big show. And it won’t matter if it’s April and not November. It’s Swampscott-Marblehead. Let’s lace ’em up and go!
Steve Krause can be reached at [email protected].