Australian Football

Two-Way Traffic: University enrolees, graduates and dropouts

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Jack Brake

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For seven short seasons more than a century ago, the VFL was a 10-team competition, after Richmond and University joined the eight sides that had broken away from the VFA to form the league in 1897. While Richmond went on to become a league powerhouse within a dozen years of joining, University spluttered its way through its seven years in the 'big time'. The Students' best season produced 10 wins from 18 games for a sixth-placed finish in 1910, but after just one win in each of 1911 and 1912, the club failed to claim victory in either 1913 or 1914.

A strict policy of players being both students and amateurs had condemned University to failure almost from the start. The club withdrew from the league at season 1914's end, with several of their number joining Melbourne, and a sprinkling of players going to other clubs.

Fibonacci's footballers*

In its seven seasons, 112 players ran out for University, and almost a third of them — 34 in total — either came from another VFL club or later played with another team. Twenty-three players came from other clubs to join the club, 15 of those in its inaugural 1908 season.

Another 11, who had started their VFL careers with the Students, later went to other teams, most of those after the club withdrew from the league.

*University was the 10th VFL club and 34 is the 10th Fibonacci number.

From premiership to scholarship

Two of the players who were part of University's very first VFL match had been premiership players at Fitzroy. Edgar Kneen and Gilbert Barker both spent three seasons — 1904 to 1906 — with the Maroons, who won premierships in the second and third of those seasons. Kneen was part of the first of those Grand Final wins, while Barker played in the 1905 premiership team.

From students to service

While University was doomed to fail eventually, the outbreak of Word War I probably hastened its demise. More than a few of the club's players enlisted, and some did not return. Of the 34 two-club (or three-club) University players, half a dozen lost their lives while in service. The six were:

• Jack Doubleday who died of spinal meningitis in 1918, while on his way to the Western Front.
• George Elliott, killed in action in the Battle of the Menin Road Ridge in Belgium in 1917.
• Chris Fogarty, who died at Gallipoli in 1915
• Fred McIntosh, injured in battle at Polygon Wood in Belgium and died two days later.
• Alick Ogilvie, who sustained a gunshot wound in the Battle of Lone Pine and died in a hospital in Malta 11 days later.
• Percy Rodriguez, killed in action at the Battle of the Somme in 1917.

Carl Willis, who played 46 games for University before joining South Melbourne in 1915, played in the famous AIF exhibition match in London in 1916. He later rejoined the Bloods, playing three games late in 1920 and 12 in 1921.

Almost 50 — twice

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Edgar Kneen (pictured right in 1910) is the only one of the multi-club University footballers to have played more than 40 games for two clubs. The Fitzroy premiership player appeared in 48 games wearing the maroon before playing 46 more for the Students.

Shamelessly reinforcing the stereotype

Of the nine other VFL clubs extant during University's time in the league, all but two had players who came from and/or went to other clubs. Coincidentally or otherwise, the two teams that never included University players were the working class ones, Collingwood and Richmond.

The toothless Collingwood players (aren't they all?) might have benefited from joining the Students and making the acquaintances of Carl Willis and Jack Doubleday, both of whom were studying dentistry while playing footy at University.

Anagrammatically speaking

CLAUDE BRYAN played seven games for University in the club's final year, 1914, while he was studying medicine. While definitive proof of his preferred medicinal drink has not yet been established, the anagram of his name provides a possible hint: A CLUE — BRANDY.