Australian Football

Recruited by West Torrens from Wagga Wagga in 1960 (although he had actually been born in Melbourne), Geoff Kingston’s career was repeatedly undermined and ultimately cruelly curtailed by injury but at his peak he was one of the top key position forwards in Australia. This was emphasised at the Brisbane carnival of 1961 when a series of elegantly potent displays at full forward for South Australia netted him 14 goals in three matches and selection at the goalfront in the All Australian team. He also topped the SANFL goalkicking list that same year with 79 goals. 

Unfortunately, persistent niggling injuries prevented Kingston from recapturing that level of performance more than intermittently over the remainder of his nine-season, 130-game, 301-goal career, although he did manage to win the West Torrens best and fairest award in 1965, and was considered good enough to gain selection in the prestigious ‘Advertiser Team of the Year’ every season from 1961 to 1966. His interstate career consisted of 15 games for South Australia, which netted him 47 goals.

With his fast leading, resolute and occasionally spectacular overhead marking, and prodigious (if not always unfailingly accurate) kicking for goal a fully fit Geoff Kingston would be a significant asset to any team. Jeff Pash’s description of him as “elegance in motion”¹ is as appropriate a summation as any, as well perhaps as a gentle reminder of a time when, in South Australia at any rate, football leaned somewhat more heavily toward the art end of the art-science spectrum than it does today.

Author - John Devaney