Former Victoria Shamrocks general manager Lloyd Robbie not only helped rescue the Western Lacrosse Association club from near extinction financially, he turned its fortunes around on the floor.
Robbie died on Tuesday. He was 71.
He was GM for 11 seasons, building a Victoria team that won eight WLA championships and four Mann Cup Canadian Senior A titles with eight trips to the national final between 1996 and 2006.
Robbie was named WLA executive of the year in 1997 and 2001 and WLA general manager of the year in 2003.
“[Robbie] was part of the group that pulled the Shamrocks from the brink of dissolution and saved it,” said current team GM Chris Welch.
“Then he, and the likes of [former team executive] Doug Jones, took it go great heights as one of the flagship organizations in lacrosse. That is the legacy we try to hold onto and maintain each season. Credit for that goes to Lloyd Robbie.”
The franchise had not been to the Mann Cup since 1984 when Robbie’s re-engineered Shamrocks finally made it in 1996, losing in four games to the Ontario-champion Six Nations Chiefs. That was just the prelude. The following year, in 1997, the Shamrocks defeated the Niagara Falls Gamblers in five games at the old Memorial Arena on Blanshard Street to capture Victoria’s first Mann Cup since 1983. That was followed by national titles in 1999, 2003 and 2005.
Robbie’s Shamrocks were led in the early part of the era by the legendary Gait twins with Gary named Mann Cup MVP in 1997 and Gary and Paul co-winners in 1999. Other notable players Robbie later brought in — a potent mix of locally-produced players and off-Island recruits that meshed seamlessly — included Lewis Ratcliff, Anthony Cosmo, Andrew Turner, Ryan Ward, Kaleb Toth, Dan Dawson, Ted Jenner, Tyler Heavenor and Ryder Bateman. Robbie was also a key executive with the Gait-led 1988 Minto Cup national Junior A champion Esquimalt Legion and carried through to 1991 at the junior level before resurrecting the Shamrocks at the senior level.
cdheensaw@timescolonist.com
