Australian Football

War on the states

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I’VE been put on the spot often, but the time I swore my head off in front of the Governor of Victoria, Sir Dallas Brooks (right), was the toughest situation I have ever faced. It was even more embarrassing because his wife Lady Brooks and daughter Jeanette were also present. Sir Dallas has been one of Richmond’s staunchest supporters and for a number of years held the No. 1 membership ticket. The crisis came one day when I was giving the boys a pre-match warm-up before going out to play Footscray.

‘I want to have you going in. Thrash the ———. Kick their ——— heads off if necessary. This is one ——— game I want to win. You can take these ———. Go out and ———’ ...and so the oratory flowed on. I knew I was having a tremendous impact on the players. Their faces were white and tensed. They kept staring at me with expressions of agony. I had them so scared they couldn’t say anything. Their mouths were hanging open. As I wound up this speech, which must rank as one of my most fiery, I realized their eyes were focused behind me. I turned and saw the Vice-Regal trio. They had heard the lot in stunned silence.

What do you do in a situation like that? There was so much silence it hurt. I took the bull by the horns and crossed to Sir Dallas. ‘I’m sorry, Your Excellency. I was just using a few typical Australian adjectives to get them going.’ Sir Dallas was the master of the situation. ‘Don’t worry Jack,’ he comforted me, ‘I know what you meant and if the women don’t I’ll tell them when we get home tonight. Good luck. Go out and kill them.’

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Sir Dallas has been a wonderful sportsman and took Australian Rules right to his heart. I can remember him at a Richmond-St. Kilda clash. Our full-forward, Jack O’Rourke (left), had taken a spectacular mark, but there was some argument over whether he had interfered with his opponent to take it. Sir Dallas jumped to his feet and roared like any other fan, ‘That, sir, was clearly a mark.’ He sat down a bit surprised at his own vehemence. The Richmond supporters gave him a cheer.

Another day I faced a nerve-racking incident. It was a vital match in 1946 against Footscray. I took a mark in the last few seconds. I had to get a goal and I was about 20 yards from goal. I decided to play on and as I spun round to run into goal and make a certainty of it, there was a sudden hissing and I felt the ball collapsing in my hand. Thoughts churned through my mind. If I stopped play would I still get my kick, or would he decide to bounce the new ball?

It was too big a risk with the game at stake I decided to have a shot for goal. I was within 10 yards of goal and knew I had to kick or be penalized for holding the ball. It was completely flat as I took a pot shot. For a split second it looked to be going straight, but there was no control and it slewed through for a point and we lost the game. I still don’t know what decision the umpire would have made, but I suspect it would have been a bounce-up.

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One of the most enjoyable games I ever played was in that season against Collingwood when annoying Magpie rover Lou Richards (right) got his desserts. Lou and Bob Rose were roving against Billy Wilson. Right on half-time Wilson copped a heavy blow from a Collingwood player but he didn’t see who it was. Wilson used to report little incidents like this to me and I did a bit of squaring off.

As we walked off I was only a few yards behind Richards and I overheard him gloat to Rose, ‘I just got that Wilson a beauty.’ Wilson was nearby and I said, ‘Go up and whack him and I’ll look after the rest.’ No worries about a report, the umpires had left the field. Richards was still boasting about the incident when Wilson raced up, flattened him with a haymaker and kept going. Richards got up groggy and I said, ‘That’s for Wilson and when I come out again I’m going to go on with it.’ Wilson didn’t experience any more trouble after that.

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Lou came another tumble in a match when he and his brother Ron decided to set up Max Oppy (left), as tough a player as ever pulled on a boot for the Tigers. Oppy was a bit too rugged for Lou and he was always a bit nervous about what Oppy would hand out to him. Oppy seemed to be conducting a personal vendetta against the Magpie star. So brother Ron offered to help put Max out of the game.

As Oppy grabbed the ball they crashed in from either side at 40 m.p.h. Somehow Oppy back-pedalled out of trouble and the brothers crashed in a bone-jarring collision that could be heard in the grandstand. They were more than somewhat peeved and humiliated and later Ron tried to even accounts by doing something nasty to Oppy, so Oppy settled the whole business with a mighty punch. The umpire saw it and he was reported. The Richards brothers had started the whole affair and didn’t even get reported, but they did the right thing at the tribunal.

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Ron Richards

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Ron was a gibberish talker. If he wanted to he could talk so fast nobody could follow him. At the tribunal hearing he put on his best performance. ‘Iwasstandinginthemiddleofthefieldandsomethinghappened,’ he blurred words at them. No matter how hard they tried they couldn’t get any sense out of him and Oppy was cleared.

Lou gave me a bit of a blast in his book Boots and All but I’ve always felt he was a bit jealous of me. He claims that I broke many collarbones in my career, but my victims would have qualified for a pygmy side. If ever I wanted to iron out a pygmy, Lou was it. The nuggety little ankle-tapper was one of my pet hates and he played for that side, Collingwood.

I never hit him, you couldn’t. You just run right over the top of players like Lou and they are too close to the ground to be hurt by the fall. There was one time I tried to get him. It was a mud bath at Richmond and he has described it this way in his fables:

‘On one occasion at Richmond, Dyer charged me. He came through a pack with typical gusto and as he cut a swathe with his iron hard frame he bowled four Collingwood players over and I was next in line.’ That much might be true, but then Lou claims he alertly side-stepped and I fell in the mud. The truth is Lou was stuck in the mud, I couldn’t have missed him and there was no question of sidestepping. Tragically, I slipped at the crucial stage and went face first into the mud. I was blinded for most of the game, but the umpire still gave a free kick against me.

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But Lou wasn’t a gentleman on the football field, there’s many a bruised ankle to say that, and he is the one and only player I have seen stir Gentleman Dick Reynolds (left) into throwing a punch. He must have done something shocking to provoke Reynolds.

The Richmond players called Lou the thoughtful kicker. He was the only little man at Collingwood who had the decency to put iodine on his boots before going out to kick somebody. Still, I’d like to have had him in a Richmond guernsey. He’s one of the few Magpies I finished up liking. I would like to pay a tribute to the Collingwood player who made Richards. Phonse Kyne, later their coach. He must have worn corns on his hands pushing the ball out to Lou.

Gentleman Dick Reynolds is reputed never to have done the wrong thing in his football life. I beg to disagree. Even the most gentle of players becomes frustrated from time to time and Dick was no exception. I don’t blame him. In every match from the time he started football he was dogged by players with one assignment: to keep him quiet by fair means or foul. Pretty often they were foul.

We were both veterans in one brawling match between Essendon and Richmond in the middle forties. I was opposed to a great mate of mine in ruckman Hugh Torney. He always used to have a bottle of beer planted for the two of us to knock off together after the match. It was a pretty scarce commodity.

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Friendship comes second in football and I gave Torney a softener in the pack. ‘Aw, you didn’t need to do that, Jack,’ he complained. ‘Anyway I’ve got the bottle for afterwards.’ But Reynolds wasn’t happy and when a few seconds later I tripped over in the pack I thought a herd of elephants had trampled over the top of me, but it was Reynolds and Griggs. I was cut from rear to head with stop marks.

A few minutes later I saw Reynolds hopping in agony way up the field. He explained later: ‘I’d just had enough. I trampled you and made off for my life. I thought I’d got away with it, but Dick Harris chased me all the way up the ground and squared up with me.’ I used to look after the Richmond players, but sometimes they looked after me.

I always enjoyed interstate trips with Dick Reynolds and there are some tremendous stories and matches in my memories. Although South and West Australia have become threats to Victoria’s supremacy I feel the Vics will continue to have that slight edge unless the rival states alter their tactics. Both are reasonably progressive, but their set-up is wrong. They are fighting too hard against recruits coming to Victoria.

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They should negotiate with the V.F.L. and send their star players to the V.F.L. for two or three seasons on the contract they will return to their home states and develop the latest Victorian techniques with their own clubs. There is still too much emphasis on pace, high marking and long kicking. They don’t understand vigour and its proper application. Most of them think vigour is a punch in the ear or a kick in the leg and they apply plenty of that against Victoria. But vigour is an art. South and West Australians hit you and stop to fight, the Victorian hits hard and keeps going with the ball. That’s the difference.

When W.A. and S.A. lose a star player they lose him for good. They sell him to V.F.L. clubs for £1000 or £2000, or in the cases of Polly Farmer (left) and Denis Marshall more than £3000. The players seldom return and their ability and know-how is lost to the state for good. The only players Victoria ever clear are washed up, has-beens or never-beens. It’s hardly a fair deal and one they should protect themselves against.

On flying to Sydney on a trip after the war we found there had been a lot of advance publicity. The publicity boys were determined to try to launch the game on a big scale in N.S.W. I was pictured as the Iron Man, the Ned Kelly of Football, Captain Blood. But it was a rough passage and I ended up being the only passenger on the plane airsick. When we stepped from the plane at Mascot Airport the reception committee must have been appalled to see the man reputed to be the toughest man in the business. I was white-faced and shaking.

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The side I took to Sydney was a top-notcher. I was getting a bit long in the tooth, but because of the ballyhoo they put their star player on me, a keen youngster. I positioned myself on a half- forward flank. Everywhere I went he followed me. I told the Victorians to keep me right out of the game and I parked on the fence while they played straight down the centre.

After a while he started to itch. ‘What do you do when somebody does this to you?’ he asked me. ‘Look, I’m at the end of my tether, son. I’m just here to rest and won’t get many kicks. Why don’t you go and get yourself some kicks, because you won’t make a name for yourself cooling off here.’ Off he went, the Victorians switched their attack and I kicked three goals in three minutes. It was a hard lesson for him. Fitzroy’s Eddie Hart (right) kicked another nine and it turned into a massacre.