A special home opener: Tiger-Cats retire Garney Henley’s No. 26—honouring a giant their current team stands on

Everyone will wear it—then no one.

On Saturday night, every single Tiger-Cat player will have number 26 attached to their uniform.

But after the home opener against the Saskatchewan Roughriders finishes, no Hamilton Tiger-Cat will ever wear that number again—number 26. Garney Henley’s number.

At halftime, one of the most versatile players in both the Ticats franchise and CFL history will have his jersey number—the one he made synonymous with play-to-play excellence—officially retired.

He’ll join the only other two Ticats ever accorded the honour: his iconic teammates, quarterback Bernie Faloney (No. 10) and defensive lineman Angelo Mosca (No. 68).

During Saturday’s game, Ticat players will wear black and gold No. 26 decals on the back right side of their helmets in his honour.  

“I met him last year and got to shake his hand,” said weak side defensive halfback Destin Talbert who now becomes the final Ticat to wear No. 26. In the off-season the Ticats informed him that they wouldn’t be assigning the number, even in training camp, because of its pending retirement, and asked him to choose another set of digits, so he now sports No. 25.

“We’ve got to remember the people who paved the way.”

Pointing to a framed Henley jersey near the Ticat locker room, Talbert said it was “hard to miss” Henley’s Ticat legacy, and he did some research and knew “he led the franchise in career interceptions. It’s amazing.”

Head coach Scott Milanovich emphasizes the importance of heritage in the team’s preparation, including showing players a historical montage during training camp. It highlights the city’s grittiness and some of its great players.

“How many people here have their number retired?” he asked rhetorically. “I think that says it all. [Henley] was a ball hawk, obviously, and fans and Ticats supporters have been clamouring for this.”

Fans in Henley jerseys still fill the stands in Hamilton—and expect even more this Saturday.

Milanovich was stunned when he heard of Henley’s career statistics: 59 career interceptions, a club record, and 23 more than runner-up Rob Hitchcock. At age 40, in his final season, he caught 31 passes and made four interceptions, despite two-way players being rare by then. 

The rare Ticat number retirement coincides with the 50th anniversary of the final season of Henley’s glittering 16-year career, all of those years spent only in the Black and Gold. In 10 of those years, he was on the CFL all-star team. He was an all-Canadian defensive back for nine consecutive years, from 1963 to 1971, and then an all-Canadian flanker—the old designation for wide receiver—and the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player in 1972, the last time a Hamilton team won a Grey Cup at home. In that Grey Cup, he was the holder for Ian Sunter’s winning field goal.

A player should transcend the game and the team to have their number retired, because a jersey is more about the colours and the collective it represents. Additionally, but far less importantly, the modern CFL’s larger playing rosters and the sets of specific numbers reserved for ineligible and eligible receivers mean there isn’t much wiggle room to take numbers out of circulation.

Of the seven CFL teams to retire numbers—Edmonton and Winnipeg honour famous players’ numbers in displays but don’t retire them—the Tiger-Cats have the fewest, with only Mosca, Faloney, and now Henley being honoured. Their arch-rival, the Toronto Argonauts, have only four retired numbers. The Montreal Alouettes have pulled 11 jerseys out of their rotation, while the Calgary Stampeders and the Ottawa Redblacks—and their many iterations— have permanently hung up 10 each.

The only other No. 26 retired by the CFL was Whit Tucker’s Ottawa Rough Riders jersey. He was a flanker too and started in the CFL two years after Henley. A Canadian from Windsor, he would have been well aware of Henley and his number by then.

Henley deserves to be celebrated, set apart from all but his two former teammates among the hundreds of men who have worn Ticat colours since the old Tigers and Wildcats merged to form the modern franchise 75 years ago.

He came out of a high school in Hayti, South Dakota, so small that it didn’t have a football team, forcing Henley to play basketball and track. It wasn’t hard for Henley to stick out from a school with only 50 children. He didn’t play football—had never even seen a game—until the coach at Huron College in South Dakota noticed his athletic ability and convinced him to try the gridiron at receiver and defensive back. 

He was good enough to make Huron College’s Hall of Fame and be drafted as a defensive back by both the NFL’s Green Bay Packers and the New York Titans of the fledgling AFL. At Green Bay’s training camp, he kept catching everything future Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr threw at him, helping him become a receiver there, too.

The Packers then traded his rights to the Ticats, and he came north in 1960.

Though legend says Coach Jim Trimble mistook the slim, quiet Henley for a water boy when he arrived at practice, that’s not quite accurate. He did look so slender and studious that Trimble told assistant coach Ralph Sazio to give him a quick, perfunctory tryout and then send him home. But during that tryout, no one—not even the legendary tight end Paul Dekker—could catch a pass against Henley, so he made the team. And stayed on that team through a career that seems almost unbelievable by today’s standards.

He was a nine‑time All-Star as a defensive back, then earned All-Star honours on offence after making the full-time switch to receiver in 1972. But he frequently played on both sides of the ball in the same game before that. When he came onto the field as a receiver, Ticats fans knew the team needed a big play, which he often made. He also returned 370 punts during his career, a feat made possible at a time when blocking was not allowed on punts. In 1962, he rushed for nearly 300 yards.

He was also one of the best open-field tacklers in the game, rarely using his hands, instead throwing his body at the runner’s shoe tops and usually bringing him down.

He played in seven Grey Cup Games and won four of them, but it was one his Ticats lost—the almost mythical 1962 Fog Bowl, which was spread out over two days—that he once said was his favourite memory and after which he famously quipped, “you could see the players but only their bottom half.”

Henley played every minute of that Fog Bowl against the Blue Bombers, scoring two touchdowns, making an interception and recovering a fumble. And he played every minute of the following year’s Grey Cup, which the Ticats won over the BC Lions.

Did we mention he was versatile?

When he retired, Henley owned club records for most touchdowns, receiving touchdowns, receiving yards, combined yards and punt return yards. He is still the all-time franchise leader in defensive takeaways, interceptions, interceptions for touchdowns, and interception return yards. He was nominated as the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player six times and won it in 1972.

While still playing for the Ticats, he served as Athletic Director and Head Basketball Coach at the University of Guelph, where in 1974 he led the Guelph Gryphons to their first national title. Later, he worked and coached at Mount Allison and Brock University, returned to coach the Ticats’ defence in the late 1980s, and served as the Ottawa Rough Riders’ Director of Football Operations for two seasons in the mid-1990s. After 36 years in Canada, he and his family moved back to South Dakota.

He is a member of the Canadian Football Hall of Fame, the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame, and the South Dakota Hall of Fame, and is an inductee on the prestigious Tiger-Cats Wall of Honour.

As for his number, Henley had joined the Ticats partway through the 1960 season and didn’t request a number. He was handed ‘26’, not a particularly distinguished number in sport at the time, but he turned it into one. Halfback Dick Young had worn it earlier that season, and linemen Jack Rogers and Pete Woolley of the Tiger-Cats’ early ‘50s teams are also listed by the Ticats Alumni Association as part-time bearers of No. 26.

Long after Henley’s retirement, NFL stars Saquon Barkley, Adrian Peterson and Rod Woodson wore 26, and so did Wade Boggs in baseball.

However, prior to Henley donning it, 26 had made an impression only through early baseball legends Jimmie Foxx, Billy Williams, and Early Wynn.

In an interesting twist, Talbert—the last Ticat to ever wear 26, aside from the decals Saturday night—was also assigned No. 26 during a tryout with the NFL Chicago Bears two years ago.

“I’m ready to live up to that legacy,” he said Thursday.

Sophomore Ticat receiver Shemar Bridges has spent some time digging into Ticats history and says this about his franchise forebears, such as Henley: “We’ve got to remember the people who paved the way.”

Saturday night, a packed stadium and a national TV audience will do precisely that as they salute Garney Henley.