Australian Football

South Melbourne - as seen by Jack Dyer

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The Swans are the best illustration of the shortcomings of a side having too many individuals and not enough team men. Their story has been the story of brilliant individualists, and it is not a success story. The greatest collection of stars I have ever seen gathered in a side was the South Melbourne Foreign Legion squad of 1933-4-5. They had more brilliant players than the other 11 clubs could compile between them.

Yet I say the Richmond side of the same period was a far greater team, because we were a team and won two Premierships and should have won the three. Look at some of the South stars in that period-—Bob Pratt, Laurie Nash, Herbie Matthews, Jack Bissett, Brighton Diggins, Ron Hillis, Terry Brain, Bill Faul, Len Thomas, Austin Robertson, Johnny Leonard, I could go on and on. With players like that they should never have been in doubt for a string of Premierships.

Where did they slip up? It could have been the coach was too frightened to upset their natural brilliance by forcing them to conform the requirements of teamwork, but there is no doubt if they had been coached in the rudiments of teamwork they would have swept all before them. They were not so coached and so they failed to fulfil their football destiny and can never be rated a great team even though some so-called experts rate them the greatest team ever. Greatest side - yes, but team, never.

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South Melbourne are a side that has promised much and delivered precious little. They have been riddled with stars since their bloodbath Grand Final against Carlton in 1945, but have missed the four for 19 successive years. Laurie Nash was South’s greatest player by far, but Jack ‘Basher’ Williams was their most ruthless. He was strong, rugged, but also a grand footballer. He made interstate football and you don't do that by being a basher.

He was at his peak during the war years and I encountered him at South. He decided to test my strength, that was his caper. If you went to water he piled on the heat and had you beaten for the day. I had also decided to give him a bit of a try-out. We both slammed in, shoulders hunched and the old fist coming up. We threw identical punches and unfortunately mine hit the ball, but it must have distracted Basher, because his punch whistled past my ear.

The umpire hadn’t missed it and rushed in with a caution. ‘You’ll both hit the jackpot if you try that again.’ The wind of both our punches frightened us both off and from that day on our League battles were all verbal, the tongue being mightier than the punch, and safer. Still, Basher dashed off a few threats about what he intended to do to me after the match and how my wife wouldn’t recognize me and that he was going to feed me through a sausage machine, and I wasn’t backward with the menaces I threw at him.

Somehow we didn’t meet after the match, but on the Monday morning I went to a Turkish bath for a massage to get some of the bruises out of my body. My mouth sagged when I recognized the masseur, Basher Williams. I’d seen films where the gangsters accounted for their victims in the steam-shrouded Turkish baths. The atmosphere was the same.

‘Hop on the table,’ he ordered.

‘This is it,’ I thought, every muscle tensed to leap off the table at the first sign of treachery. But he gave me the best rubdown l'd ever had. We talked and talked, but in friendlier vein than on the Saturday, and although we were still bitter enemies on the field, we became firm friends off the field, and we still are.

Basher was a gloater when he won. Another time we clashed with South I had a shop in South Melbourne and was writing for the Melbourne Sun. In the morning I predicted a big Richmond win over South, declaring, ‘It’s just a matter of the horse going round.’ South played the best football I’d ever seen and we didn't kick it goal in the first half and we didn’t kick a point either.

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Big Don Scott (right) killed Mopsy Fraser, Kevin Hilet was unbeatable on the half-back flank and Ron Clegg was impassable. Our first score came up in the final quarter. Dejected we filed into our dressing-room, only to find Basher had broken in, entertained himself on our refreshments and scrawled a large message on our walls in charcoal. A censored version: ‘-—-—-- -—-—-- now gloat -——-- -—-—--’.

As if that wasn’t enough, I went back to my shop after the match to sell the evening papers. There was a crowd of 200 South fans waiting outside. You can imagine what I had to put up with. I walked in, locked the shop and threw the Sporting Globes and Heralds out of a window, yelling, ‘Take the blasted lot and get.’ The free papers for the South fans must have cost me a tenner and I’d had enough, but it still wasn’t over.

After hurling the papers to the peasants I went inside and sulked for hours. At 10.30 that night there was a terrific hullabaloo in the street: yells, band music, drums and heavy hammering on my doors. I flung the doors open in a rage and Ron Clegg, leading half the South Melbourne side and almost the complete South Melbourne City band, marched right on in. They were carrying kegs of beer and set up a party. There was no time for sulking then and the party raged until 5 a.m. I resumed my sulking at noon the next day with a throbbing hangover.

One of the hardest battlers for South was Jock McKenzie on the half-back flank. He was a tough, straight-ahead player with a stutter worse than Senator Pat Kennelly’s. I struck trouble with him when I ripped through a pack and saw Jock dead in front, clutching the ball. There was nothing for it but to keep going right through him. I couldn’t miss and he couldn’t see me. But somehow all class players have an uncanny instinct for self-preservation.

He couldn’t get out of the way-—--but he did, by slewing and and sliding from under me at the last moment. Nothing hurts more than the one who gets away and I frothed at him, ‘You rotten red-headed squib.’ He threw the ball away and spun back at me. The last thing he was, was a squib. ‘Yayayayyou bblllll...’ he spluttered and stuttered at me. I waited as politely as I could for him to finish and then got impatient and said, ‘Sorry, Mack, I can’t wait for you to finish,’ and I ran off. He never spoke to me on a football field again.

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Austin Robertson was the fastest footballer I have seen. Bluey Adams, the fastest of modern-day footballers, would be struggling to match paces with Occa, who was world professional sprint champion. It was eerie to hear Robertson thunder down the field. He thumped his feet into the ground like a horse galloping. But unlike modern speedsters he had beautiful anticipation, combined with his pace and deadly disposal. He would have been even better but for poor sight in one eye. He took a lot of knocks because he couldn’t see them coming.

When you talk of South champions, Bob Skilton is one who stands up with Laurie Nash and Ron Clegg as their greatest. He is a football immortal in his own time and before he bows out of the game he could take his place on the triple Brownlow pedestal. Skilton has personality and it is impossible to find a weakness in his football make-up. He is God’s gift to coaches and as an ex-coach I often wonder what you could do with two Bobby Skiltons in your side. He is clearly the best post-war rover. I rate him a better footballer than Bunton because he has all that player’s skill and plays 100 per cent for his side.

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But don’t think in my criticism of Bunton I am overlooking his greatness. I’d love to have had him in a Richmond guernsey but I have always preferred great players who play for their team. I never thought I would see the equal of Dick Reynolds again - but I was wrong. Skilton is. When he retires, that’s when his full immortality will come. Like a painter, true recognition comes at the end of your career.

One thing I like about Skilton, as he has matured he has brought something to South that has not been seen in the side in the last 20 years - teamwork. In that regard he is South’s greatest and another thing for South to be proud of, he’s a local boy. South have poor territory for recruiting but they have dragged some tremendous players from these barren areas. Clegg, Matthews, Thomas, Cleary and Hillis were all locals.

I don’t think anybody would begrudge South a Premiership. They have the best bunch of supporters in the business and the supporters should be called the ‘Bloods’, not the players, because they have stuck to the side like blood relations. With strong supporters like that South are coming back into power.