From the beginning of the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championships in 1920, Canada would send a senior amateur club team, usually the previous year's Allan Cup champion, to compete as the Canadian entry. These teams were often university players, or unpaid players playing ice hockey while being employed in some other profession full-time. From the 1920s until the 1950s, Canadian amateur club teams won most of the World Championship and Olympic titles. As a career, Canadian players would play instead in the various professional hockey leagues, the best reaching the NHL. Their professional status made them ineligible to play in the World Championships or Olympic Winter Games under the rules of the time. The last Canadian amateur club to win the world championship was the Trail Smoke Eaters in the 1961 championship.