Australian Football

Once described by Geelong great Reg Hickey as “the greatest centre half forward I have ever seen”¹, Harold ‘Dribbler’ Hawke would almost certainly have achieved a lot more in the game had he played league football more than just sporadically over the course of the fourteen years between his debut for North Adelaide in 1927 and his last game for the club in 1940. He played in eleven of those seasons, but often for only just a few [of the most important games] in each, hence the paltry tally of just 70 games in total. On the one occasion that he managed to make himself available for the entire year, 1937, he won both the Magarey Medal and the North Adelaide best and fairest award and was a member of the South Australian carnival team in Perth.

Adelaide-born Hawke made his debut for the red and whites in a semi final victory over West Torrens in 1927, but the following year he accepted a job on a farm at Curramulka on the Yorke Peninsula, where he eventually bought property and settled. Given the immense distances involved, it is small wonder that he preferred to devote most Saturday afternoons to playing locally for Curramulka, rather than travelling to Adelaide to play for a pittance in the SANFL². On the rare occasions that he did venture to the ‘Big Smoke’, however, it was clear that he was a unique and special talent. 

Tall and thin, he possessed wonderful ball handling skills combined with tremendous aerial ability. Moreover, he was extremely agile and quick, and could drop kick the ball prodigious distances. In both 1930 and ‘31 he was brought back to the city by North specifically to play in the finals, and his combination with legendary full forward Ken Farmer was a major contributory factor in the club’s going on to win premierships in those years.

A South Australian carnival representative in both 1933 and, as previously mentioned, 1937, Harold Hawke retired from the SANFL in 1940 but continued to play for Curramulka until he was 45 years of age.

In 2001, Harold Hawke was selected on a half forward flank in North Adelaide’s official ‘Team of the Twentieth Century’.

Author - John Devaney