Australian Football

Remembered today as one of the most ferocious and relentlessly aggressive players ever to don a football jumper, 'Mopsy' Fraser was actually much more than a simple thug; he was, in the view of some, one of the finest centre half backs ever to play the game. Ironically, it was only after Richmond coach Jack Dyer took Fraser to one side early in his career and suggested that he seemed "a bit frightened" that Fraser adopted his trademark 'take no prisoners' style. Some of his finest performances came for the VFL at the rain-soaked 1950 Brisbane carnival when his failure to win the Tassie Medal seemed, to many observers, inexplicable. Fraser was actually a key position forward during his early time with the Tigers but his woefully wayward kicking for goal earned him both the ire of his coach, and 'demotion' to the backlines. The move to centre half back re-kindled his career, and there were few if any players able to challenge his supremacy in the position.

After 124 VFL games and 125 goals for Richmond between 1945 and 1952 Fraser accepted the captain-coach's role at Port Melbourne. In his first season at the helm the Borough overcame Yarraville by 60 points in the Grand Final, the culmination to a sensational year which had brought just two losses, and yielded an incredible percentage of 195.9. Fraser's own performance in the Grand Final was superb as he did more or less as he pleased, beating three different opponents, and kicking seven goals. Fraser played a total of 33 games in three seasons for Port Melbourne before crossing to Prahran as captain-coach in 1957, where he ended up being rubbed out for more than half the season after being found guilty of abusing an umpire after a match. He then transferred to Tasmanian side East Launceston where he ended his career, but not before he had made a brief return to interstate football as a late emergency inclusion in Tasmania's 1958 Melbourne carnival team.

Don Fraser's memorable nickname of 'Mopsy' allegedly derived from cartoonist Wells, who invariably depicted Fraser as a long broomstick with a mop of hair on top.

Author - John Devaney