Australian Football

×

Right ▼

One of the first of the game's truly great full forwards, Walter 'Dick' Lee's VFL career spanned 230 games over 17 seasons and spawned 707 goals. The last of those 707 goals came with Lee's final kick in League football, in Collingwood's losing 1922 Challenge Final against Fitzroy.

Small (175cm) and lightweight (76kg) by the standards of modern full forwards Lee was nevertheless a commanding figure on the ground, and "matched spectacular, high-flying aerobatics with superb ground-level skills and unerring accuracy in front of goal, whether by punt or place kick".¹ Testimony to this accuracy is afforded by the tale that Lee was a frequent visitor to an amusement hall which had a game which required participants to kick at a target from various difficult angles; in the end, the proprietors allegedly had to bar Lee from participating owing to his near faultless proficiency.²

Perhaps more than any other leading club, Collingwood has a tradition of producing full forwards of the highest quality - a tradition which originated almost a century ago with a lightweight place kicking genius whose exploits arguably did more than those of any one else to transform full forward into the glamorous, distinctive position it remains to this day.

Author - John Devaney