Fifty Saintly Dons
Shaun McKernan became a Saint during this year's AFL trade period, the 30-year-old being picked up by St Kilda as a delisted free agent. Assuming he plays a senior game in the red, white and blue jumper at some stage in 2021 (he is likely to be used as 'insurance' for fellow talls Paddy Ryder and Rowan Marshall), he will become the 31st former Essendon player to move to the Saints.
When he debuts for St Kilda, McKernan will become the 51st footballer to play for both the Bombers and Saints in the V/AFL, 122 years after Harold Brown became the first. Brown played with Essendon in 1897 and 1898 before joining St Kilda. He played his first senior game in the red, white and black in Round 3 of the 1899 season. Five weeks later, Brown was joined in the team by Jim Park, with whom he had also played at the Dons in 1897, Park thus becoming the second 'Saintly' Don.
It would be another decade before the first former St Kilda player took the field for the Dons, by which time the number of former Essendon players who had moved to the Saints had grown to five. That number included Alec Hall, Mick O'Loughlin and the magnificently named Newhaven Jackson.
Fred Whelpton had the honour of being the first ex-Saint to play VFL footy for Essendon. He played two games for St Kilda in 1904 before turning up to play with the 'Same Old' six years later, in 1910. Whelpton played 10 games for the Dons before rounding out his career at a third club, Melbourne.
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Mind the gap
Whelpton is one of several players who had as year or more out of senior football before moving from Essendon to St Kilda or the opposite way. But his six-year gap is not the largest. The honour of having gone the longest between playing for the two clubs (with no other V/AFL club in between) belongs to George McLeod.
McLeod actually had two lengthy gaps in his VFL career. He played nine games for St Kilda in the inaugural VFL season of 1897 and then three more games for the Seasiders in 1902-03.
Seven years later, McLeod turned up at Essendon, where he established himself as a regular, playing 56 games from 1910 to 1913. His years between the two VFL clubs were spent playing with the Railway club in Tasmania’s Lyell District Football Association.
Other "gap-minded" Saints/Dons have included Adrian Burns, Jake Carlisle (who had to sit out a season due to the Essendon supplements saga), Doug Cox, Daved Dick, Brian Gilmore, Newhaven Jackson, Dale Kickett, Hugh Morris, Basil Nehill, Mick O'Loughlin Len Phillips and Ted Rippon, who was bestowed the outstanding nickname of "Autumn Leaves" because of his tendency to fall to the ground rather easily.
Milestone moves
Two players who moved between the two clubs celebrated milestone matches in their first match playing for their adopted club. Fred Green played 49 games for Essendon between 1939 and 1946 before switching to the Saints, where he first game in red, white and black in 1947 was his 50th overall. He went on to play 67 games for St Kilda, taking his league tally to 116.
Three decades later Neil Besanko went the other way, and his first game for Essendon in 1978 was his 150th overall, after he had spent 10 seasons with St Kilda. Besanko played 35 games at Windy Hill to take his career games total to 184.
Better than 50-50
Had Fred Green managed one more game for the Bombers before making his move to St Kilda he would have joined an elite group. Only two footballers have played 50 or more games for both the Saints and the Dons. They are Jake Carlisle (85 games for Essendon and 62 — so far — for St Kilda) and Brendon Goddard (St Kilda 205 games, Essendon 129 games).
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If the Saints can get two more seasons out of Paddy Ryder, he could well become the third. In fact, if that does happen, Ryder would become just the third player in V/AFL history to play 50 games for three clubs. He played 170 games for Essendon and 73 for Port Adelaide before joining St Kilda, where he has played 14 games so far.
In the beginning...
Of course St Kilda and Essendon are clubs that both predate the VFL era, and there are several footballers who appeared for both clubs before the league was formed in 1897. One such player was George Watson.
Watson's playing days predate even the formation of the VFA in 1877. He played for South Yarra in 1871-72, Melbourne in 1873-75, during which time he also played with St Kilda! When the VFA was formed in 1877, Watson joined Geelong, where he played from 1877 to 1880 before spending the 1881 season with Essendon. He rounded out his playing days with two final seasons at Geelong in 1882-83.
Morgan 'Molly' Abrahams was another early 'Saintly Don'. He began his VFA career with North Melbourne, spending four seasons with the Shinboners from 1887 through 1890. Abrahams then had five seasons with St Kilda, playing 67 games, before he played a final three matches for Essendon in 1896, the year before the Same old joined the VFL.
A premiership move
The list of 50 players who have been both Saints and Dons includes several premiership winners, but only one of them found success after making the move between clubs. Vernon Hazel played three games for St Kilda in 1909-10, another four for Melbourne in 1910 and then moved to Essendon in 1911 where he found success in his first season, playing in the Dons' six-point win over Collingwood in the Grand Final. Hazel played only one further game in his VFL career, a loss against his old club in Round 8, 1912.
Via the cape
Vernon Hazel is one eight players who played for another club in between their time at St Kilda and Essendon. The others were Steven Clark (Essendon-Melbourne-St Kilda). Tony Delaney (Ess-Fremantle-StK), Dick Harris (Ess-Carlton-StK), Allan Davis (StK-Melbourne-Ess, Percy Martyn (StK-Richmond-Ess) and Lew Sharpe (StK-Footscray-Fitzroy-Ess).
Mid-Season Movers
Several of the 50 Saintly Dons played for both clubs in the same season. Alan Dale, who was a member of Essendon's 1950 premiership side, played his last game for the Dons in Round 3, 1956, before bobbing up for St Kilda in Round 6.
Other mid-season movers include the two 'BDs', Bill Dinsmore and Bobby Donald, who went in opposite directions between the Saints and the Dons in 1915.
Anagrammatically speaking...
TOM REYNOLDS (left), who played for Essendon and St Kilda, was the brother of Essendon legend Dick Reynolds, and a fine player in his own right. As Dick's younger sibling, though, he probably had to make a bit of noise to get noticed, and it's quite plausible that he did so by yelling out his own anagram: "LO! TRY ME, DONS!"
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