Australian Football

When Allan ‘Bull’ Reval teamed with Bob Quinn in Port Adelaide’s redoubtable combinations of the 1930s the pair effectively revolutionised certain aspects of how the game was played. After Bob McLean arrived from Norwood in 1939, he was swiftly admitted to an inner circle which, but for the war, must surely have dominated the South Australian game for most of the next decade.

Stoutly built, ‘Bull’ Reval was too hefty for a rover, but not tall enough to engage in ruck contests; however, his supreme fitness, intelligent positioning ability, powerful running, and excellent team skills made him ideally suited to operate as on-baller, as part of the ruck division, which typically comprised a pair of tall followers, or ruckmen, who jointly contested the hit-outs, and a much smaller, nippier player, the rover. Reval, in effect, replaced the second follower with an intermediate player - a ‘ruck-rover’, if you will. Combining the mobility, skill and adroitness of a rover with the strength and some of the aerial prowess of a ruckman, Reval virtually gave Port Adelaide two players for the price of one. He also possessed that acute and unteachable team sense that almost invariably knows not only exactly where each proximate team mate is, but which of them is best placed to receive the ball. 

In concert with fellow Magpies like Quinn, Lew Roberts, Tom Kelleway and Ken Obst, Reval was adept at using handball to manoeuvre the ball out of tight situations in order to facilitate its transmission further downfield. He was also an excellent kick, whether over distance, or in stabbing the ball short “exactly into the next man’s hands”¹. According to Jeff Pash, the Reval stab pass was - with apologies for the limp pun - a ‘revelation’, “having speed, range and direction plus an elegance that you might not have expected in that hot, anxious, hurrying champion”.²

Allan Reval made his league debut with the Magpies in 1932, and went on to play a total of 187 SANFL games over the next 14 seasons, which included 21 games with the Port Adelaide-West Torrens combined team that played between 1942 and 1944. He also played 13 interstate matches for South Australia. A member of premiership teams in 1936-7 and 1939, he won Port Adelaide’s top individual award in 1939. However, his importance stems not so much from personal achievements as from the impact which, in combination with Bob Quinn and Tom Kelleway (and later Bob McLean), he had on South Australian - and indeed Australian - football.

‘Revolutionary’ is an over-used term, but in the case of Port Adelaide’s proto-ruck-rover Allan ‘Bull’ Reval it is an adequate description of the magnitude of his influence.

After his retirement as a player, Reval coached Glenelg for a season in 1949, implementing a number of significant measures which assisted his successor, Johnny Taylor, to steer the Tigers to the 1950 Grand Final.

Author - John Devaney