PLAYER #103 - ROYAL COPELAND (1945-49, 52-56)

With a name like Royal Copeland, you knew you were dealing with someone special.

As a member of the famed "Gold Dust Twins" with "King" Joe Krol, Copeland's achievements were indeed the stuff of royalty, and if they couldn't earn him the Victoria Cross, they certainly did earn him some Grey Cup rings and selection into the Canadian Football Hall-of-Fame in 1988.

An outstanding student athlete at Humberside Collegiate in Toronto, Copeland played for the Toronto navy team in 1944, a year when they beat the eventual Grey Cup champion navy team from Montreal, but couldn't compete for the Grey Cup themselves because they didn't belong to a league and only played an exhibition schedule.

When the war ended, Copeland's services were in high demand, and as Toronto Indians owner and later CFL commissioner Jake Gaudaur would say of Copeland, he was "a lad who had played in the Navy - a big, good-looking kid who looked like a Greek god with his wavy blond hair."

Signing a one-year contract for $500 with the Argos in 1945, which was the biggest on the team at the time, Copeland had an outstanding rookie season, scoring eight touchdowns in six games. Along with his halfback partner Krol, whom Gord Walker acknowledged that his sportswriter colleague Tony Allan would say, "there was such a rapport between them, each knew precisely where the other would be at any given moment. Between them, they practically owned the football." The two were the catalysts behind three straight Grey Cups for the Argos from 1945-47, games in which Copeland scored at least one touchdown in each.

But after the successes, the team struggled in the next two years, resulting in popular coach Teddy Morris losing his job in 1949. This distressed Copeland, who left the Argos and joined the Calgary Stampeders for two seasons.

"That man had done more for individuals than anyone I know, in personal ways, trying to get them jobs, going out of his way," said Copeland to Walker. "He just had a big heart. I really thought he got a bum rap. In 1948, he wanted to get more players, but Argo management didn't do it...If he had stayed, I would have stayed because I was so close to him, and loyal."

Copeland's two years in Calgary were not very successful from a team standpoint, and in 1952 he rejoined the Double Blue, where he won his fourth Grey Cup title. He played until 1956, and then the man with the "California beach-boy good looks" fittingly moved to California, where he has lived for good ever since. Having spent some time there in high school, Copeland went to the University of California (Northridge) after his playing career ended to earn his education degree, and then became chairman of the phys. ed. department at a high school north of Los Angeles for 22 years.

After his retirement from education, Copeland got into farming avocados on a 115-tree grove in Oxnard, California. He lives with his wife of 39 years, Ann, and they have two daughters, Nola and Cindy-Ann.