Australian Football

One of South Adelaide’s finest players during a generally dire time for the club, Ray Linke played a total of 159 SANFL games between 1947 and 1956. A joint runner-up (with West Adelaide’s Colin Brown) to Len Fitzgerald for the 1954 Magarey Medal, he won his club’s premier individual award, the Knuckey Cup, on three occasions, was the recipient of the 1954 Advertiser Trophy, and was a South Australian state representative on half a dozen occasions. Early in the 21st century he was selected as one of the interchange players in South Adelaide’s official ‘Greatest Team’. 

Playing chiefly on the half back line, he possessed admirable qualities of concentration and determination, and was one of his team’s quickest players - attributes which, in the modern game, would doubtless have enabled him to perform tagging duties to perfection. As it was, he helped provide a much needed element of solidity to a backline that was frequently under intense and almost unremitting duress.

Author - John Devaney