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Until the mid-1930s, the Western provincial unions usually maintained separate regular season schedules. However, they soon set out to create a unified Western Canadian playoff structure involving the respective provincial champions, with the view that the Western champion ought to be allowed to challenge for the Canadian Rugby Union's new championship trophy, the [[Grey Cup]]. To this end, the Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta unions formed the '''Western Canada Rugby Football Union''' in 1911, with the [[Calgary Rugby Foot-ball Club|Calgary Tigers]] winning the first Western championship later that year. The format often changed from year to year, in large part because provincial champions often declined to participate in the Western playoffs while during the latter years of [[World War I]] the competition was suspended altogether. In the years following the establishment of the BCRFU, the Western playoffs usually took the form of a four-team bracket – on these occasions, to reduce travel costs the BCRFU champion usually played the ARFU champion while the SRFU champion played the MRFU champion, with the winners of those games competing in the Western Final.
Initially, Western champions were not permitted to compete for the Grey Cup, because the CRU believed the calibre of the Western clubs to be inferior to those in the East. Such perceptions were reinforced in [[1913 in Canadian football|1913]] when the [[Hamilton Tigers (football)|Hamilton Tigers]] toured Western Canada for a series of exhibition games, as Hamilton easily defeated all four Western opponents they faced. It was not until 1921 that a Western team was finally allowed to compete in the Grey Cup game, when the [[Edmonton Rugby Foot-ball Club|Edmonton Eskimos]] lost 23–0 to the [[Toronto Argonauts]]. Initial challenges for the trophy met with futility – a large factor in this lack of success was the requirement that the Western champion travel to the East to compete in the championship game, but the main reason was that clubs in the larger Eastern markets were able to make the transition from amateur to professional status more quickly.
The first attempt to create a unified Western circuit came in 1928 when Regina, Moose Jaw and two Winnipeg sides formed the '''Tri-City Rugby Football League.''' This experiment was abandoned after one year due to travel expenses. However, the league notably introduced the concept (then established in hockey, but unheard of in gridiron football) of an automatic end-of-season playoff between the regular season winner and runner-up. This postseason format would later be adopted when the western unions merged permanently.
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