Coleman - Profile of a champion
He knows where he wants to go
CHAMPION goal-kicker John Coleman is a young man who knows where he wants to go — but he has not yet quite worked out the route he intends to follow in reaching his objective.
To Coleman football is only secondary. His business future is what most concerns him. If football and business cannot get along amicably, then football will have to go.
Coleman plays from season to season. The game could lose him at any time. He does not think there is much future for him in football. After Essendon refused to clear Bill Hutchison to North Melbourne to a £25 a week coaching job, after 12 years with Essendon, Coleman could see that he too probably was tied to Essendon for his football lifetime. He realised that the better you are the harder it is for you to get away.
Dynamic
At 25, Coleman is the most discussed footballer in Victoria, and for two reasons: He is the most brilliant player in the State, the number one crowd-pleaser and, on the field, one of football's most dynamic personalities. To have seen Coleman play is to have seen football at its best.
Off the field Coleman is quiet, placid and easy-going, with a ready smile. On the field he is not nearly so friendly. There it is business all the time. Every opponent is an enemy, conspiring to flatten him or even worse keep the ball from him. Unsympathetic, timid umpiring could drive Coleman out of football. If he went, he would take with him much of the color of the game.
Reported
Judged by their decisions, umpires dislike Coleman; in fact they dislike all full-forwards. They rarely award full-forwards the free kicks they award to other players well away from goals. For some inexplicable reason what is a free kick in the centre of the ground is not one 10 yards from goal. Coleman resents this umpiring oddity. He rightly believes that free kicks should be awarded on the same basis all over the ground. The rules say this too.
Coleman has twice been reported for exchanging unpleasantries with umpires. With him injustices, inflicted in the white heat of a game, loom much larger than when examined in retrospect. Champion full-forwards are born; no amount of training or coaching makes them. Perhaps that is why one appears only [rarely].
Courageous
Once South Melbourne's Bob Pratt was called the incomparable. Now the claims of Coleman and Pratt are hotly debated for the title of best-ever full-forward.
Coleman has all football's gifts. He is fast, courageous, a fine kick, a cool, shrewd football brain and above all a magnificently thrilling high mark. Coleman, flying high above a pack for a mark, provides football's greatest spectacle.
When Coleman first came into football he accepted opponents' challenges. Now he issues them. He is a hard-bumping, white faced, six-foot, jack-in-the-box.
In 1934 Pratt kicked 150 goals. It is a record that Coleman may not break. Coleman has not such an insatiable lust for goals.
Relaxes
He does not care who kicks Essendon's goals as long as they are on the board. Coleman is fit and tough. He has to be to withstand his weekly tumbles. His paleness and habit of squatting almost on the ground, head between his knees, gives the impression of weakness, almost illness. But Coleman is relaxing. After strenuous exertion he finds that with his diaphragm pressed down hard he can regain his breath quicker.
Coleman is a key man in a big suburban hotel. His keen brain and his aptitude for figures — he was a commerce student at Melbourne University, but could not keep up football and studies — have quickly made him an invaluable employee. One day Coleman will have his own hotel. He has promised himself this. But he will not take anything. He knows the hotel business and is always looking for a likely hotel. When he sees one he will act fast; so fast, it may take quite a few people's breath away.
Coleman can talk beer at length. He knows his subject, but is not keen on it — as a drink. He is a sipper — a glass lasts him a long time. He is not a connoisseur. I discovered this at North Melbourne last year.
After the game Coleman was drinking in North's room with two of his toughest and most relentless opponents— Pat Kelly and Ted Jarrard. Coleman had a glass of beer in one hand; an orange in the other. He sipped and sucked alternately. Kelly and Jarrad were obviously disturbed by such alcoholic blasphemy.
Matchwinner
Coleman is no gambler. He insists on personal assurances from owner, trainer, and jockey before he will invest 10/ — and then he puts it on each way. Which is fortunate for Coleman. Too many footballers punt big to keep up with their rich friends of the moment. Many will have nothing when big football is finished with them.
For Essendon, Coleman is more than a matchwinner. He is a premiership winner. In 1947 and again the next year Essendon lost grand finals, because of bad kicking. In 1949 along came Coleman and they won the premiership. Next year Coleman was on the job again, kicked 120 goals, and Essendon were premiers again. In 1951 Coleman was out of Essendon's grand final side and they lost.
Coleman may not break Pratt's record of 150 goals, but in his first year he performed feats that are unlikely to be equalled. Great goalkicker like Pratt, Gordon Coventry, Ron Todd arrived slowly. It was years before they headed the goalkicking lists.
Records . . .
Coleman was a meteor One year he was playing with the team from the quiet little fishing village of Hastings, on the shores of Westernport Bay. Next year he was with Essendon, kicking 12 goals in his first league game. That year Coleman, who was 20, also:
Became the first player to head the goalkicklng list in his first season;
Broke Essendon's goal-kicking record;
Equalled a league record by kicking 12 goals in an opening game;
Kicked 100 goals in his first season;
Won selection in two Victorian teams; and
Won Essendon's best-and-fairest trophy.
Success, the adulation of thousands, the fact that the name John Coleman is known even to those who have no interest in football, has not changed Coleman. He has never had a big head. He is still the modest, unassuming player I have always known, although a little cynical now, perhaps.
Footnotes
Title: COLEMAN, A 6 FT. "JACK-IN-THE-BOX" Publisher: The Mail (Adelaide, SA: 1912 - 1954) Author: Alf Brown (The Herald) Date: Saturday, 17 April, 1954, p.31 (Article) Web: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article57952639
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