When Turners Falls High School travels to Veterans Memorial Field in Greenfield on Thursday morning at 10:30 to take on Greenfield High School in the annual Turkey Day football game, it will mark the 90th year the teams have met on Thanksgiving.

That makes the game the longest running Thanksgiving Day game in the state, as the teams have not missed a year since they first met in 1927. There are other current Turkey Day rivalries that date back further than Turners-Greenfield, but none that have played every year on Turkey Day. The Athol-Mahar game goes back to 1894, but there were breaks in that schedule as well as games played on Armistice Day in the past. The Holyoke and Chicopee rivalry dates back to 1908, but that game wasn’t played on Thanksgiving until after World War II, and others like Agawam and West Springfield, which have been played since 1924, also started playing on Turkey Day later down the road. In fact, prior to World War II, there were very few football games played on Turkey Day. Besides the Greenfield-Turners rivalry, you had St. Joseph’s of Pittsfield vs. Pittsfield High School and Palmer vs. Ludlow.

Greenfield-Turners Falls crowds have also fluctuated over the years. In 1927, attendance was 2,500, a number that climbed all the way to 8,000 by the late 1930s and 10,000 in 1941. The numbers backed off to between 6,000 and 8,000 people in the 40s, and between 3,000 and 6,000 in the 50s and 60s. The numbers continued to decline to a point where a big crowd would now be 1,500 to 2,000 people. The number is always bigger when the game is played in Greenfield (as it is this year), because Turners Falls will travel over the mountain to watch the game, while Greenfield fans don’t tend to make the trip to the Powertown.

It’s always fun to take a look back at some of the past games that have taken place on Turkey Day over the years, and it’s become a yearly staple of this column. This year, with it being the 90th anniversary, I thought that rather than focus on one game, let’s jump around to a few different years.

One thing I have never written about was how each of the current coaches fared during their senior season of the rivalry. Greenfield coach Mike Kuchieski was a senior in 1983, when he quarterbacked the Green Wave to a 5-4-0 record coming into Turkey Day. That 1983 team was stacked with eventual coaching talent, as current Green Wave football assistant and head girls’ basketball coach John Hickey was a defensive back and tight end on the team, while current Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute women’s basketball coach John Greene played defensive end.

The only reason the Greenfield team was only 5-4 that season, according to a Turkey Day preview that ran that year, was due to the banner year the Suburban League had that year, with teams such as Minnechaug and Classical High School standing out. In fact, the article, written by former Recorder staffer John (The Swami) Giniusz, suggested that the Green Wave team was good enough to be playing in a Super Bowl, if it weren’t for the strength of the SL that season.

That left the Green Wave as decided favorites over a Turners team entered that game 3-5-0 and never had a chance in the game. The list of names on defense from that team include Ted Bartak, Jeff Brown, Chuck Fortin, Steve Marsher, Mickey Avery, Chris Greene and John Sabin, and they limited the Indians to just 25 net rushing yards and 14 passing yards during Greenfield’s 43-0 rout. Greenfield, led by Dean Blanchard and Ralph Jelly in the backfield, rushed for 238 yards in the game, and Kuchieski threw for 105. Kuchieski completed 90-of-160, for 1,458 yards and 12 touchdowns that season.

Fast forward 15 years and you get to the 1998 season that marked Turners Falls coach Chris Lapointe’s senior year. That year marked one of the more intriguing matchups because Lapointe led the Indians into the game with an unblemished 9-0 record and the Indians were on their way to the Central-West Division III Super Bowl (where they would lose, 41-0, to Northbridge High School). Greenfield was 5-4 but had won five of six entering the game after an 0-3 start. Lapointe entered the game 36-for-66 passing on the season for 799 yards and 12 touchdowns, his numbers dwarfed a bit with Topher Prondecki in the backfield that season. The senior tailback rushed for 1,433 yards on only 130 carries (an 11-yard average) entering Turkey Day.

Turners Falls did take a 12-6 lead in the second quarter of the Turkey Day game but the Green Wave rushed for four consecutive touchdowns, including three by Sam Wilson, and Greenfield went on to a 34-20 victory. Lapointe will probably kill me on the sidelines Thursday for this, but he completed as many passes to Greenfield defenders as he did to Turners Falls receivers that day, as he finished 2-for-10 for 49 yards with one touchdown and two picks.

That leads into another interesting fact that pertains to this season. How have championship teams fared during this rivalry? Things are a bit different now, because most postseason games are played prior to Turkey Day. But if you consider this year’s Turners Falls team a WMass Super Bowl champion, it would be the fifth team from Turners Falls to play in a championship game. The Indians are 2-2 in previous seasons, beating Greenfield in 2012 and 2013 (when they lost and won WMass titles), while the losses came in the aforementioned 1998 game, as well as in 1992.

Greenfield has played in seven championship games and is 6-1 all-time in Turkey Day games during championship seasons. The lone loss came in 1981 and was a game I wrote about a few years ago, as it might be one of the biggest upsets of all time in the rivalry, as Turners Falls beat the Super Bowl-bound Green Wave, 21-14.

How about a little trivia: How many field goals have been kicked on Turkey Day? Bonus points for naming the kickers.

There is no easy way to find the answer, so it’s possible something got missed, but if you guessed three, give yourself a pat on the back.

The first field goal ever kicked on Turkey Day was in 1975 and came off the foot of Dale Welcome, who booted a 33-yarder with 1 minute, 31 seconds left to send the Indians off with a 24-14 victory. That game saw Greenfield take a 14-7 lead into the half before Kevin May rushed for two second-half touchdowns and finished with 224 yards on 16 carries to lead the Indians to the victory. Welcome was a perfect 3-for-3 on extra points, and his late field goal erased any chances of a comeback. The game-clinching field goal was set up when Turners Falls defensive back Rick Miner picked off a pass from Green Wave quarterback Doug Welenc. Miner went on teach and coach tennis in Greenfield.

I would have never known about the second field goal in the history of the game if I had not called Between the Uprights bar owner Lew Collins. I asked Collins, a kicker for Turners Falls during the late 1970s, if he knew the answer, and he said he knew of two, one from Dale Welcome and one from a Greenfield kicker during his junior year. I was impressed and began to tell him about the 1975 kick. He corrected me, explaining that the kick took place in 1976. Turns out we were both right, because Welcome followed his 33-yarder in 1975 with a 30-yarder in 1976 when the Indians rolled to a 36-6 victory. That game saw May rush for four touchdowns as the Indians won for the second straight year.

The third field goal on Turkey Day came in 1978, when Brian Oles connected on a 24-yard field goal for Greenfield during a 19-9 Turners Falls victory. Unlike the Welcome field goal, which was the final score of the 1975 game, the Oles field goal actually opened the scoring in 1978. Greenfield’s opening drive stalled at the 7 and Oles drove a field goal through the uprights to put the Green Wave up, 3-0. Turners Falls scored a touchdown later in the first quarter when Bob Bostley took a handoff 93 yards for a score (Lew Collins kicked the extra point), and the Indians scored 14 more points in the fourth quarter, courtesy of 1-yard touchdown runs from Jeff Koshinsky and quarterback Ed Marvell. Greenfield’s lone touchdown of the game came when quarterback Bill Decker (the former Trinity and current Harvard baseball coach) rushed one in from a yard out.

The moral of this story? Turners Falls is unbeaten in games involving field goals.

While looking through old games I also came across some great finishes worth recalling.

One of those finishes took place in 1991. Turners Falls took a 7-0 lead in the second quarter when quarterback Mark Brown scored from a yard out and Mark Cady converted the kick. That lead held up until the fourth quarter when Greenfield coach Mike Duprey decided to replace quarterback Danny Howe with sophomore back-up David Hughes with under 7 minutes remaining. His reasoning?

“He’s taller and he can see the field better, which enabled us to throw the ball and open up the defense a little bit,” Duprey explained.

Hughes drove Greenfield on a nine-play, 43-yard drive that was he finished off himself when he ran in 1 yard behind center Craig Hansen for a Green Wave touchdown with 3:55 left. Howe went back in for the conversion attempt and pitched the ball to Josh Mason, who ran it in for the go-ahead points.

That’s not the only interesting finish.

How about that 1977 game when Greenfield held on for a 21-19 victory? What made that game exciting was that Turners Falls had a pair of penalties on separate two-point conversion attempts that wound up as the difference in the game. Greenfield led 21-7 entering the fourth quarter as Rick Urkiel, Bill Decker and Ed Scoble each rushed in touchdowns for the Green Wave after David Choleva ran the game’s opening kick back 91 yards for the Indians’ lone touchdown to that point.

In the fourth quarter, Ed Marvel hit Jon Coyne with a 16-yard touchdown pass with 10:09 to play, and the Indians decided to go for two, which didn’t make sense to me, and was why I had called Collins. If they allowed Collins to kick, it would have made it a 21-14 game. The former kicker said he is not really sure why the decision was made to go for two, but it looked like a good choice, as Choleva flipped an option pass to Dan Newton in the end zone. The play was nullified by an illegal-receiver penalty, and the second attempt at two came up short. Marvel scored a touchdown from 1 yard out with 3:55 left to make it 21-19, but again the Indians were penalized on the conversion, this time due to a false start. The retry came up short. Collins said he remembered being told to be ready for a possible game-winning field goal late, but the Indians final possession saw them turn the ball over on downs.

How about another?

The 1997 game saw 20 points scored in all, and every point came in the second quarter.

The scoring started when Green Wave 6-foot, 260-pound lineman Corey Lovett picked off a screen pass to set up a Jeremy Felton touchdown for a 6-0 lead. Turners took the ensuing possession 82 yards and Lapointe ran it in from a yard out and hit Jay Niedbala with the conversion for the 8-6 lead. Greenfield quarterback Jesse Phelps put Greenfield ahead for good when he hit Nick Gilman for a touchdown from 17 yards out.

Defense ruled in the second half and Emerson Stratton picked off a pass with just over a minute left to seal the victory.

One other thing that past prognosticators have put in their column leading up to Turkey Day is some betting odds for the game, because let’s face it, people like to put a friendly little wager on the game. I’ve seen people putting up early lines on social media for the game, and have to say that if you can get Greenfield plus 20, like I’ve seen in a few places, you take those points without a second thought.

I figure the game will be a bit closer because when I’ve thought it was going to be a blowout in the past, it has not been. I would take Greenfield plus 10, truth be told, because I’m thinking a 20-12 Turners Falls win is a safe prediction.

As for some other betting lines?

• Over/under on amount of time gone from the clock before Turners Falls coach Chris Lapointe can be heard yelling, “Is he serious?” — 5 minutes.

• Over/under on number of “Gosh Darnits” coming from Greenfield assistant coach Glenn Wilson? — 5.

• Over/under on number of combined penalties? — 12.

• Over/under on number of combined turnovers? — 5.

• Over/under on percentage of fans to have had at least one adult beverage prior to the game? — 30 percent.

• Over/under on percentage of Turners Falls fans to go home and have adult beverages if the Indians get upset? — 95 percent.

• Over/under on number of tomahawk chops started by Turners Falls fans? — 1.5.

• Odds that the Greenfield Marching Band will play the theme music from Jaws at halftime? — 1 to 2.

Happy Turkey Day!

Jason Butynski is a Greenfield native and Recorder sportswriter. His email address is jbutynski@recorder.com. Like him on Facebook and leave your feedback at www.facebook.com/jaybutynski.