Old Guard's Day - Fun at Perry Park - Australian code veterans
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The rain drizzled down on the Perry Park playing oval, and the last of the youngsters scuttled with grimy legs for the dressing-room shower and washed off the sweat and the mud of the last sizzling charge of the last quarter. They were making way for the Old Guard! Snuggling up in their raincoats, crouching under umbrellas, the crowd on the hillside waited expectantly for the star attraction that would mark the conclusion of the 1932 playing season of the Australian Rules football code.
For the veterans were playing to-day, the men of the Old Guard, the Old Guard that never retreats, the captains and the kings of the leather sphere and the sleeveless jersey who had made the stands rock with a gale of cheers in the far-off yesterdays when the Australian Game was the premier football code in Queensland.
Memories came in crowding battalions to the "old timers" present—reminiscences that swept up and down the huddled groups like a sighing wind while the rain pattered down in a grey monotone. 'Member George Paget? Good ol' scout, George. The best rover of his time, and one of Nature's gentlemen. Always played the game flat out from the first quarter to the final bell. Now he was farming at Tallebudgera. Must be 62 if he was a day. Well, he was playing to-day, and he'd show these youngsters how to take a mark!
Then there was Merce Hicks, who had "repped" for Queensland at the 1908 Melbourne Carnival, and A. M'Gregor and Harold Coates, who had had the crowd on their toes in the spring of a vanished year, the idols of frenzied fans, and a dozen other stars who had been "big timers" in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth, 10, 20, 30 years ago.
There was a red-letter day
'Way back in the vanished years,
When the crash and surge of their play
Had rocked the stands with cheers.
AVOIRDUPOIS AND AGE.
It was a Homeric struggle of avoirdupois and age to turn back the hands of the clock. While the tongues of memory wagged, bald-headed men, tall, thin, spindly-legged men, and short, stout men with the girth of comfortable years, were struggling into shorts and jerseys and trying to make adjectival belts meet round their squirming middles. The oldest was 62, and he looked as fit as the youngster of 42.
They bounded into the game like frisky antelopes when the ball bounced for the first quarter, the teams—18 a side—being captained by H. Coates and A. McGregor. The years fell away from them, and they handled the greasy ball with surprising adroitness, considering that some of them have not played for 20 years, time and again giving glimpses of the play that made them "headliners" in their day. But at the end of the first quarter wounded veterans were staggering for the liniment bottle and sending out SOS calls for shin-plasters.
UNREHEARSED ACROBATICS.
For the onlookers it was great fun, and the veterans enjoyed it, too, although their muscles must have ached with the unaccustomed exercise. A middle-aged man, whose barrel-shaped middle made picking up the ball a perilous adventure, would walk with stately dignity towards the ball, only to burst into a frenzied four yards' spurt, and then wilt like a pricked balloon.
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After 20 years of driving a pen some of them found the ball as hard to grasp as the inebriate who chased the soap all over the bathroom floor, and time and again their judgment in marking and kicking was astray. Others moved slowly and cautiously, like a cow in a slack tide, and with arms clasping the air in a wide embrace missed the ball by feet, and kissed the turf with a mighty smack. They cannoned into one another, rolled over one another, skated on their faces and chest on the slippery grass, and stood on their heads, their unrehearsed acrobatics recalling Alice's recitation to the caterpillar:
"You are old, Father William,"
The young man said.
"And your hair has become very white,
And yet you incessantly stand on your
head,
Do you think, at your age, it is right?"
But it was all part of the game, and the veterans retained surprising pace, so much so that Referee Mitchell, who handled the whistle from 1908 to 1910, was almost run off his legs trying to keep up with them. When the second quarter ended M'Gregor's team was leading by one goal two behinds—one of the veterans growled that the other side had rung in a couple of "dark horses."
DESERTED THE RANKS.
There was one deserter when the game recommenced. "—— ! ! —— the match," he snarled. "I'm goin' under the shower. I gotta work on Monday! I only got the ball once, and then the referee took it offa me. He don't know the rules, anyhow. When I said I wuz goin' to play today, the wife said, 'By crlpes, you're gettin' sillier every day.' She's right, all right."
In the last quarter Coates's 18 revelled in the greasy ground, and Claude Beales in a pretty canary-coloured jersey and open-work stockings simply flew over the rest of the mudlarks, whose wings were sagging badly when the final bell rang with Coates's team the victors by 6 goals 8 behlnds (44 points) to 3 goals 4 behlnds (22 points). The star performers were Alf. Braddy, M. Pedrazzinl, Bruce Pie, T. Fogarty, R. Diddams, and Alex. M'Gregor.
The teams were:
COATES'S EIGHTEEN:
BACKS: | H. Newburn | H. Dingle (played South Melbourne 1910) | J. Barker |
HALF-BACKS: | W. Anderson (Sydney, 1910) | L. Walsh (Brisbane, 1926) | J. Bigelow (Valley, 1926) |
CENTRES: | A. Lean | Bruce Pie (VC, Queensland at Hobart carnival, 1924) | M. McCann (Queensland, 1904-5) |
HALF-FORWARDS: | C. Beales (Brisbane, 1927) | M. Pedrazzini (Queensland, 1920-24) | L. Hunter (Victoria, 1898) |
FORWARDS: | T. Fogarty (1922-25) | A Nichols (Tasmania, 1926) | A. Alexander (South Australia, 1928) |
FOLLOWERS: | H. Coates (Queensland, 1908, captain) | A. Finnen (Queensland, 1908-09) | S. Johnston (Queensland, 1922) |
McGREGOR'S EIGHTEEN:
BACKS: | H. Fordham (Queensland, 1908-09) | W. Muller (1910) | G. Paget (Queensland, 1908-1910) |
HALF-BACKS: | V. Turner (Victoria, 1912) | G. Bauer (Melbourne, 1912) | |
CENTRES: | G. Bock (Queensland, 1924) | N. Kearsley (South Australia) | A. Braddy (Queensland, 1924) |
HALF-FORWARDS: | T. Wightman (Western Australia, 1912) | S. Pritchard (Tasmania, 1910) | |
FORWARDS: | R. Diddams (Brisbane, 1914) | R. Henry (Tasmania, 1912) | |
FOLLOWERS: | W. Clarke (Queensland, 1925) | A. McGregor (Queensland, 1907-1910) |
Liberal embrocation internal and external made the veterans forget their bruises and their aches, and they were so pleased with themselves that they are going to have another match next year. But many a one vowed to spend Sunday in bed.
Footnotes
Title: Old Guard's Day - Fun at Perry Park - Australian code veterans
Author: Clem Lack
Publisher: Brisbane Courier (Qld. : 1864 - 1933)
Date: Monday 5 September 1932, page 7
Web: http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/21993348
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