Australian Football

Born in England, Johnny Leonard was a prodigiously talented rover for Subiaco during the 1920s. In 1926 he won a Sandover Medal, and was later awarded a retrospective Medal for the 1929 season after having initially finished second on a countback to East Perth’s ‘Billy’ Thomas. Quick, intelligent and highly skilled, he was an automatic choice for Western Australia for much of his career, making a club record 25 interstate appearances, which was 1 more than the tally of champion ruckman Tom Outridge.

After playing a total of 141 games for Subiaco between 1922 and 1930, Johnny Leonard was enticed east to Ballarat, where he commenced what was to become an equally successful coaching career. His achievement in steering Maryborough to the 1931 Ballarat Football League premiership caught the attention of the powers-that-were at South Melbourne, and the 1932 season saw him replacing Paddy Scanlan as coach of the forward-thinking, ambitious Bloodstained Angels.

Leonard’s acute inside knowledge of the Western Australian football scene was a key factor in his success with South. By recruiting players of the calibre of former Subiaco team mates Brighton Diggins and Billy Faul, and former South Fremantle follower Bert Beard, Leonard - who remained no mean player himself - was able to bolster South Melbourne’s playing ranks sufficiently to propel the club to its first finals campaign in almost a decade. In doing so, he laid the foundations for arguably South’s greatest era of the 20th century - the so called ‘foreign legion years’ - but Leonard’s direct involvement with the team was limited to that single, 1932 season. The 1930s witnessed a severe economic depression and in 1933 Johnny Leonard, lured by the prospect of secure employment with Ross Faulkner Limited, returned home to Perth. His impact at the Lake Oval had, however, been significant.

His legacy had been to lift the spirit at the Lake Oval and to forge a belief that success could be achieved despite the disappointments of the recent past. He had sensed the awesome potential of (Bob) Pratt, giving him space and responsibility up forward as well as providing opportunities and recognition to the skills of (Herbie) Matthews.¹

Perhaps even more importantly, however, that legacy was destined to endure, for:

Leonard played his part in settling the interstate newcomers into the passionate football environment of Melbourne, bringing the best out of Diggins and Faul almost immediately. Significantly, he discouraged his Western Australian colleagues from following him back home and ensured that his departure did not unsettle the development of the club. As a sign of his affection for South Melbourne, he continued to publicly support the club in its interstate trading activities.²

It may be a platitude, but loyalty of this nature tends to breed loyalty, and it may in small part help to explain Leonard’s substantial success as a non-playing coach over the ensuing decade.

If the seeds of that success were sown on Victorian soil, they germinated and grew in Western Australia. In 1934 and 1935, Leonard steered West Perth to an overall success rate of 71.1% and successive premierships. Always quintessentially a ‘players’ coach’, Leonard “believed that training throughout the season should be enjoyable, brisk, and involve as much ball-handling as possible”,³ a regime to which his charges responded with great energy and enthusiasm, both at the Cardinals, who Leonard coached for a third season in 1937, and even more so at Claremont, where he was to eke out a reputation for himself which placed him squarely and irrefutably amongst the immortals.

Prior to Leonard’s arrival at Claremont Oval in 1938 the Monts had failed to secure a single flag. During his first three seasons there they were indefatigable, managing an overall success rate of 72.6%, and winning every premiership on offer. Admittedly, Claremont had reached the 1936 and 1937 Grand Finals under Leonard’s predecessor Dick Lawn, but there can be little doubt that Leonard’s arrival constituted that final, elusive ingredient necessary to catapult the team across the often insurmountable divide between being a promising challenger and a fully fledged, bona fide champion. In doing so - much as Tom Hafey did at Richmond, or Haydn Bunton junior at Swan Districts, or Fos Williams at Port Adelaide - Leonard effectively heralded a new era for the club, in the process imbuing it with aspects of his own essential character.

John Leonard’s career as a league football coach was comparatively brief - fewer than 200 games spread over just nine seasons - but his strike rate of better than a premiership every other year was outstanding. Moreover, the fact that three of those premierships were attained with a club which had never previously enjoyed such eminent status makes his achievements all the more meritorious, and makes John Leonard arguably Australian football’s ‘greatest Pommy’.

Author - John Devaney