CINDERELLA SOUTH MUST FORGET THE FAIRIES
The VFL Clubs, a great series by Jack Dyer. [Truth Newspaper 1967]
The Cinderella Team — that’s a title many League clubs have deserved, but it belongs solely to South Melbourne.
For 22 years the Swans have been promising themselves a ball, only to turn into pumpkins when the clock sounds full time.
Since 1945 South have thrived on fairy tales. They’ve dressed up and tried to bluff their way into winning that prince of prizes – a place in the final four. But they’ve always had too many ugly sisters in the side and only one beauty.
The beauty for the past decade has been Bobby Skilton. Before that it was Ron Clegg.
AND THEY’VE TRIED THEIR DARNDEST TO FIND A FAIR DINKUM FAIRY-GODMOTHER FOR A COACH.
Since 1945, when they poured their good red blood over the turf in that epic grand final brawl with Carlton, they have had no fewer than 10 coaches.
The latest to be handed the magic wand is successful Under 19 coach Alan Miller.
Before him have gone such wizards as Bull Adams, Jack Hale, Whopper Lane, Laurie Nash, Herbie Matthews, Clegg, Bill Faul, Noel McMahen and Skilton.
All couldn’t have been fakes.
The first thing that Miller has to do is to get all that stardust out of the players’ eyes. These boys have believed all the propaganda written about them without ever bothering to prove it.
A team of stars, the critics rave.
In my book there are more pumpkins than stars in the South side. But they’re tremendously promising pumpkins. I think Alan Miller is just the fellow to turn these pumpkins into long-lasting and genuine princes of football.
Once he convinces them that a mere wave of the wand cannot transform them into a wonder team, he’ll have the battle won. This side has as much potential as any in the League. It has class on every line, but there is always something lacking.
IS IT CONSISTENCY? TEAMWORK? BACKING UP? DETERMINATION? FITNESS?
It’s a bit of each, and if Miller is the coach I think he is, this Swan side can push that Cinderella title on to a more slovenly side. South fans are sick to death of listening to the same pledges every year.
And with a side packed with Skilton, Austin Robertson, Magee, John, Papley, Sarich, Way and Priest, it looks like another vintage year for promises.
The big experiment for the Swans this year is Skilton. Miller should go a step further to relieve the pressures on this great player. Skilton can be most valuable to South without the burden of heavy responsibility.
Skilton will be a great player, with or without responsibility. With nothing on his mind but getting the ball he can be fantastic. As coach his game suffered as a result of having to needle umpires and encourage players.
This still is the lot of the captain, but Miller will be well advised to dictate from the bench and allow Skilton to concentrate on his game.
Brilliant deeds more than fiery words will lift a side to great heights, and Skilton is one of the greatest side-lifters the game has produced.
It’s a strange facet of the Swans that they have had magnificent players down through the years. Inspiring team-lifters all of them. Yet for some unaccountable reason they’ve never achieved the full result. South are proof of the old adage that a champion team will beat a team of champions.
Always they have basked in their glorious reputations and forever have tried to impress crowds with their finesse. With the result that South matches usually are filled with all that’s best and most spectacular in football, but with the end result being more glorious defeats than hard fought victories.
Football the modern way is not a glamorous sport. It’s a pro game and the credits are given on results.
South over the past couple of decades, must rate the title as the most unsuccessful club in the history of the game. Much of the blame can be attributed to interfering and non-effective committees – the underlying cause of all football failure.
Whether the South committee has woken up at last remains to be seen. If they can take a word of advice this is it. Mind your own business this year and stay out of Miller’s hair. Whatever he wants, give it to him.
Let him take the bull by the horns. If he brings glory to the club you all can bask in it. Because by non-interference you will prove yourself the shrewdest and most valuable of committees.
The Swans have always had stars in their eyes, even back in those grand old Foreign Legion days of 1933-34-35. And they’ve proved, countless times, that stars are not enough. Even the greatest ever, Laurie Nash, couldn’t lift them to a string of premierships.
What a team they had in those days. Surely South should have won every premiership for a decade. They were unable to blend as a team.
The fantastic Bob Pratt was the spearhead of the side and I doubt if any full-forward will ever get within cooee of his mammoth 150 goals in one season. Conditions were different than but his feat was the greatest individual one-season performance by any player. [
pictured: Pratt marking over Maurie Sheahan, 1934]
The Swans won only one premiership in that period – in 1933, and even then it should have been a Tiger premiership. We had them cold in the second semi-final when we made the tactical error of easing up and make sure we didn’t suffer any injuries. Pratt went mad, rained goals on us and instead of having the week’s rest we found South going into the grand final while we had to win our way the hard way. With the rest South won the flag easily. It should have been a different story.
I have no doubt that Nash was the greatest footballer I have seen. The old Queen of the Air was courageous, fast, shrewd, brilliant, and possessed uncanny spring and anticipation. What a great sportsman he was. But for that kink that made him a champion footballer he could have been a Test cricket immortal.
He was called into Test cricket to combat the menace of the Larwood bodyline, but Australia didn’t persevere with retaliation. Laurie didn’t win any friends in the English team in that match.
There was another time when the interstate police cricket team met a combined country XI. Laurie and I were in the police team and it was a three-day match at Warrnambool. Laurie never lacked confidence in himself. “I’ll give you a two-day holiday,” he declared. “I’ll have it all over in a day.”
No sooner said than done. He took 6/13 in the first innings, 7/14 in the second, and we won by an innings on the first day. He clean bowled the lot. “I had to hit the dollies,” he explained. “I couldn’t trust you fellows to hold the catches.”
It was against South that Jack McMurray established himself as the greatest in my book. The two sides were locked together in the dying moments of the match. Richmond were a point or two in front when fullback Maurie Sheahan took a mark over Pratt.
Slowly and deliberately he studied the turf and then decided on a time-wasting place kick. He kicked up a piece of turf and started to dig a hole to place the ball. McMurray got furious as Sheahan dug and dug. Finally, McMurray took the ball and gave a free kick to Pratt who dobbed a goal to give the Swans the lead.
We swung back into attack, kicked a goal and won the match, but the Richmond officials were ropable with McMurray. They were going to report him. They argued that as he had signalled time-on Sheahan couldn’t be wasting time. McMurray stopped all arguments by walking straight into the Tiger’s den.
“You had no right to do that,” the Tigers snarled. “I had a perfect right,” he countered . “Under the first rule of the game, the umpire is in sole charge. Now shut up and give me a beer.”
A lot of people claim that Bob Pratt was too slow to be rated the best full-forward. Shows you how little some people know. Jack Regan, undisputed King of all full backs, was pretty nifty on his feet. He ran at Stawell. Yet once he confided to me that Pratt could beat him in the run to the ball any time he liked.
What a freak was Pratt. A couple of inches under six feet he could soar into the air higher than any man I have seen. His breath-taking marks still live in the minds of every player and spectator of that era. Great as he was, he had a great player in Nash seeing he was given the opportunities. The season Pratt kicked 150 goals, Nash booted 80 of his own from centre half-forward.
Another of Pratt’s unforgettable performances was against Essendon. He was very ill with the flu, but decided to play. Laurie Nash was on ‘Narcissus’ Rippon at centre half-forward. That might have been the day Ted lost his hair because Nash took marks standing on his head. With the gate wide open at centre half-forward, Pratt kicked 15.3.
Jim Cleary was another of South’s great players. One of his favourite stories comes from a match against North Melbourne when he was minding Sel Murray. Murray’s rovers were inclined to be goal hungry and rarely bothered to look for him when shooting towards goal. Murray made two perfect breaks from Cleary and led perfectly for the ball only to be ignored by the rovers who shot over his head.
“Well, that’s it for the day,” Sell said to Cleary. “No point in trying to get a kick with that mob.” Murray went back and leaned against the goal post. Jim thought he was trying to get him in.
“Do you follow the horses, Jim?” Murray called out. “No,” said Cleary.
“Well, you’d better today. I’ve had a few quid on a 20/1 shot and it will win.” Still Cleary was suspicious. “No, I don’t bet.”
A few minutes later Murray ran at him and thumped him on the back, yelling: “I told you to be with me. It just won!” The goal umpire reported him for striking Cleary. The tribunal took a lot of convincing.
Another time Herbie Matthews was addressing the South players and they had a couple of VIPs in the room – a monsignor and a judge. Herbie, a great player and a forthright speaker told Clearey: “If I look like getting a bit too worked up, just tug my knicks and I’ll stop.”
Herbie blasted off. Cleary says Herbie got so worked up, and he had to tug his knicks so often that he finally pulled them right off.
South are most famous for their blood bath Grand Final in 1945. Although Jack (Basher) Williams and his fellow Swans are given much of the credit for that encounter, I think Carlton really started it. The week before, Carlton gave Collingwood much the same treatment. South were hot favourites for the flag and brawn looked the only weapon to beat them.
I could never comprehend all the reports from that Grand Final and the subsequent heavy sentences. The umpires had to rely on memory and there was so much to remember it’s beyond me how anybody could have been suspended. It looked like the trial at Nuremberg when 11 players faced the tribunal.
That was the match when Ken Hands was knocked unconscious and the only fellow within many yards was Jack Williams. “Poor chap, it’s been too hot,” he confided to the umpire. “He just fainted right away.”
A good look at Basher in his heyday was enough to make anybody faint.
Ron Clegg also fainted that day, and Bert Deacon, always a gentleman, picked him up. Clegg was facing the wrong way when he was handed the ball. He didn’t know where he was. Deacon turned him around and faced him in the right direction and said: “Now kick it.” No wonder Deacon won a Brownlow. I would have pointed him toward my goals.
Something happened to the Swans that day. They’d had such gory names as the Bloods and the Bloodstained Angels. That’s enough to lift any side. But since 1945 they’ve become the graceful Swans. And they’ve shown as much tenacity as a batch of cygnets. I could never understand why South repeatedly failed to make the finals from ’45 onwards.
Around the early fifties they had a crackerjack side. I remember one of their visits to Richmond. It was a humiliating experience. Mopsy Fraser was in his prime. Bill Morris, Ray Poulter, Billy Wilson and many other stars, were playing at their top.
At three-quarter time we hadn’t scored a solitary point. No Richmond side has ever been given such a drubbing in modern times. One paper summed up the game neatly in their best players:
South: All of them.
Richmond: None of them.
At the time I had a newsagency and lolly shop – in South Melbourne. When I got home there were 200 outside – all South supporters, allegedly waiting for the papers. They were waiting for me. I went into the shop, picked up the papers and hurled them into the street, then went upstairs to sulk.
Two hours later, Ron Clegg marched into the shop through a back door, followed by a complete brass band, trumpets, trombones, cymbals, the works. They certainly took their victories well.
They haven’t been able to gloat since.
[
note from Growl: In my records, I can only find a game in 1951, Round 13, where we kicked 3 behinds in first quarter and added another one in the second. However, we finished with a score of 8.8 – 13.17. Still, why spoil a good story!]
..great work and it's cool your sharing with the Tiger loving world :fing32.
