Australian Football

AustralianFootball.com Celebrating the history of the great Australian game

 

Key Facts

Full name
Charles Pearson

Known as
Charlie Pearson

Nickname
Commotion

Charlie Pearson


Described as a 'human meteor', Essendon's champion of the 1880s Charlie 'Commotion' Pearson was alleged to have developed a new style of marking, whereby he "would sail over the heads of his earth-bound opponents, arms outstretched in great feats of aerobatics, to the dismay of old timers, and the fears of the public"¹. Prior to this, players had typically marked the ball either on the chest, or with arms stretched out in front of the body. Pearson's new method soon caught on, both among team mates and opponents, and so the most distinctively spectacular feature of the Australian game was born.

Pearson, who worked on an outback sheep station in Queensland, only played intermittently for the Same Old, and never trained. Despite this, his performances in 1886 were so consistently brilliant that he was widely regarded as the player of the season. There was much more to Pearson's game than just high marking, and former Essendon player Alf Young, writing in the 1920s, described him as the best all round player he had seen, better even than Albert Thurgood.

Author - John Devaney

Footnotes

1. Flying Higher by Michael Maplestone, page 31.

Sources

Full Points Footy Publications

Footnotes

* Behinds calculated from the 1965 season on.
+ Score at the end of extra time.