YORKTON - Before Nathan Rourke captured the imagination of CFL fans last season, and Tre Ford took the torch this year, Andrew Buckley was a Canadian quarterback tossing passes in this country’s pro league.
Buckley played as a back-up quarterback for the Stampeders in the 2016 Grey Cup and scored a rushing touchdown in the third quarter. He was the first Canadian quarterback to score a touchdown in a Grey Cup since Russ Jackson in 1969.
While Buckley’s CFL career was short, announcing his retirement from professional football on May 7, 2018 after being accepted into medical school at the University of Calgary, he is remembered.
That includes being among the 2023 inductees to the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame. It was an honour Buckley said he was ecstatic to hear about.
“Oh my gosh yes. When I heard the news . . . It was pretty special,” he told Yorkton This Week.
Of course, Buckley is remembered in terms of football for more than his pro career.
Buckley played CIS football for the University of Calgary, where he won two consecutive Hec Crighton Trophy awards in 2014 and 2015. The Hec Crighton Trophy goes to the country's top college football player.
Buckley said the two Crighton awards were obviously huge in terms of career highlights, and a reason for his induction.
“I was part of some special teams with amazing talent supporting me a long the way,” he said.
In fact, Buckley said he finds it sometimes difficult to reconcile having won the two Hec Crighton awards which goes to an individual, yet football is so much a team sport where a single player cannot shone without the efforts of teammates contributing.
In that regard the induction into the Sports Hall of Fame is also largely because teammates allowed the quarterback to shine, he observed.
After his huge years with the Dinos in 2014 and 2015 Buckley was drafted in the seventh round of the 2015 CFL Draft, and he didn’t have to travel far, having been selected by the Stampeders.
Buckley said he realized his selection was somewhat outside the norm at the time.
“Being drafted as a Canadian quarterback wasn’t really a thing at the time,” he said. “I thought no way would they pick me.”
In fact Buckley was at a party in support of Dino teammates expecting to be called, when he learned he had been chosen.
“I thought what a weird thing for them, (the Stampeders),” he said.
Buckley said back in 2015 too many in the CFL “looked at your passport not who you were as a player,” deciding Canadians couldn’t play quarterback.
But the Stampeders, which had been the Buckley family’s favourite team, gave him a chance. He said he gives Dave Dickinson huge credit for the opportunity to play on a team he had always followed.
Today of course Canadian quarterbacks aren’t facing quite the same hurdles, in part thanks to the monster season Rourke had with B.C. in 2022.
“You can’t help but be a fan,” offered Buckley, adding his performance said a lot about what a Canadian can do at the position if given the chance. “. . . He proved what Canadian guys can do.”
So does Buckley ever wonder about whether he should have played longer?
“You can’t help but wonder what would have happened,” he said, but added there was future job security in being a doctor that did not exist with football, and added he had dreamed of a career in medicine even before football.
And now he is Dr. Buckley, just having passed his board exams which he termed “a nice milestone.”
With an eye to sports medicine, Dr. Buckley might well go full circle. He said he would definitely be interested in working with the Stampeders in his new capacity one day.
“Certainly that would be a cool option for me career, going full circle,” he said.
