Almanac Book Extract – Footy History: John Craven’s profile of footballer-athlete Jack Grant

 

 

This story of Jack Grant comes from John Craven’s book…

 

 

 

 

 

The Conquerors is a tour de force which traces the careers of 100 local Geelong and district sports stars who competed in a total of 33 different sports over the past 150 years.

 

 

JACK GRANT: THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS

 

Jack Grant was fast asleep when a barrage of rocks crashed on to the corrugated iron roof of the boarding house where he was staying in the Western Victoria goldfields town of Stawell. It was just before midnight on Easter Saturday, April 16, 1938.

He stirred restlessly. The rain was beating down. Car horns blared incessantly in the street outside. An hour later, bells clanged crazily as fire carts dashed up-and-down the road in response to a false alarm.

Grant’s nerves were jangled. His mentor Sam Barmby arranged for two bodyguards to stealthily escort him from the home to a hiding place at another residence. On Sunday night, he shielded his face with a cap, strode cautiously into the darkness, and jogged through Stawell’s back streets with his trainer.

On Monday morning, he moved again, this time to a bodyguard’s private room opposite Central Park, venue for the 61^st running of the world’s most celebrated professional footrace, the Stawell Gift. His “stable” stood to win a staggering 4000 pounds in bets if he triumphed – plus 500 pounds’ prizemoney. It was phenomenal money.

Grant, the distinguished Aussie rules footballer from Geelong, had about five hours to steady himself for the semi-finals. Then another 100 minutes or so to take his place in the five-man, 130-yard final – provided he won his semi.

The hordes of bookmakers fielding at the three-day carnival were desperate to see him beaten. He’d knocked them off their pedestals on the Saturday afternoon two days’ earlier when he scored an unprecedented, thumping six-yard win in his heat in the record time of 11-and-a-half seconds – a whopping three-and-a-half yards inside even time in pro running parlance.

There’d been 25 heats to sort out the 136 starters from all Australian states and New Zealand. Grant was rated a 16/1 chance to win the Gift. His first round victory was so decisive, however, that most of the stunned bookies ran a pencil through his name on their boards and refused to take any more bets on him.

Their fears were aroused even further when the rangy half-back flanker easily disposed of his panting rivals by two yards in the first of five semi-finals. Betting was stifled on the final. Same brave bookies offered a miserly 7/1 on for Grant. Only a sprinkling of hardy souls in the jam-packed 20,000-strong crowd were prepared to risk a seven-pound outlay for a one-pound return. The disenchanted bookies’ bags were virtually empty, despite the undoubted quality of his four opponents and their seemingly-lucrative odds.

The grassed uphill track was rain-sodden when the starter, George Cox, instructed the contestants, some nerve-wracked, to take their marks for the decider. Many a hot favourite over the past 60 years had buckled to the excruciating 11^th hour pressure of winning this romance-filled Australian sports icon, first held in the Stawell gold-rush era of 1878.

That inaugural carnival was staged on the town’s Botantical Reserve. It was attended by 2000 eager spectators. There were 11 events, offering a total prizemoney of 110 pounds. The Gift was worth 24 pounds, with the winner – Condah farmer William J. Millard – receiving 20 quid. There was even an Old Men’s Race, offering a pig each for the first two placegetters, and a sheep for third.

Millard, who raced off the tight handicap of three yards, earned a celebrated place in athletics history with his narrow victory. Gift winners were subsequently more revered than Olympic Games sprinters in Australia. The first modern Olympics was held 18 years after Stawell’s foundation. There was a magnetic aura about the Stawell Gift. Fortunes could be made, they could also be fractured.

Jack Grant, the 22-year-old textile worker, broke his opponents’ hearts in an otherwise intriguing final. He was handicapped to race off 11-1/2 yards. Three rivals – Ballarat policeman G.M. Willis, Moonee Ponds wool-classer A.W. Dalton, and Albert Park salesman G.R.J. Wilson, all started a quarter-of-a-yard ahead of him and resembled a blockade

The former Ivanhoe amateur, engineer Jack Whiffen, was the backmarker on 10-1/4 yards. The bookies rated him an 8/1 chance.

The crowd cheered excitedly when Grant blasted uneasily out of his starting holes and at the 50-yard mark was inches from Willis’ shoulder. At 75 yards, he was half-a-yard in front of Wiffen who had powered past the other three.

Whiffen launched into overdrive at 100 yards and courageously tried to overtake the Geelong ace, who also found another gear. He lurched ahead and then, to the roar of a large section of anguished spectators, he dramatically lost his balance and stumbled slightly. Somehow, though, he  recovered and was a yard clear of the tiring backmarker at the tape, stitching-up 4500 pounds and a personal place in Australian sports history. He had won the world’s richest footrace. The Saturday night rock-throwers and bell-clangers were vanquished. Jack had clocked 11-11/16secs, one of the fastest-ever Stawell Gift winning times.

 

 

The Geelong Football Club’s livewire secretary Ivo Gibson and treasurer Jimmy D’Helin could not contain their excitement and leapt on to the Central Park arena to hoist the conqueror on to their shoulders. Two of his greatest admirers, his mother Mary and fiancé Dulcie Ellis, stood happily among the heaving crowd and soaked-up the joyous atmosphere.

The ebullient Sam Barmby brimmed with pride. He turned to the crowd and yelled: “I knew Jack would do it. He had to fall over to get beaten.”

Jack Grant, who stood 5ft 11-3/4ins (182cms) and weighed 12st 12lbs (81.5kg), was by far the most powerfully-built sprinter in the final, but he was a popularly-modest and respectful winner. He thanked a range of people for their support and confidence in him, before stating that he would not have triumphed without Barmby’s guidance.

“Sam set it all up and I went along with it,” he stated. “I actually enjoyed it all. I’m so glad I won. It is not so much the money, but the honour.”

Grant’s praise for his trainer was not misdirected. Without Barmby’s initial persuasion, shrewd planning and intimate knowledge of athletics, it is highly probable that Jack would never have stepped on to a professional running track.

John William Grant was born in Geelong on September 24, 1915. His father, also John William, of English heritage, worked at the Wheat Silos in North Shore. The Grants lived in the inner-city suburb of Chilwell and Jack attended Matthew Flinders State School. He had a sister, Ivy.

Young Jack displayed tremendous aptitude as an all-round athlete at Matthew Flinders. He was fast and versatile, and starred at football and cricket. He was feared as a right-arm fast bowler.

Jack got a job at the Soldiers’ Mill after leaving school and played junior football with Chilwell. The Eagles, founded in 1874, amalgamated with fierce rivals Newtown in 1933 to become Newtown and Chilwell in the Geelong District Football League.

Jack’s on-field speed and tenacity were so impressive at the merged outfit that he was signed by the Geelong Football Club in 1935 and made his VFL debut as a 19-year-old in the Cats’ final round 28-point loss to Essendon. He scored a goal from the half-forward flank. It was a disappointing season for the Percy Parratt-coached blue-and-whites who won only six of 18 games and finished ninth on the ladder.

It was different in 1936. Grant established a permanent berth in the team, played 16 games, booted five goals, and the Cats climbed to fifth after the indomitable Reg Hickey replaced the ill-fated former Magpie Charlie Dibbs as captain-coach after Round 7 in mid-June.

For the next three years, Jack Grant – as humble as he was – must have felt that the heavens were designed to rain constant torrents of success upon his broad shoulders. After losing three of their opening six matches in 1937, the Cats were undefeated over the next 12 rounds and finished on top. They disposed of Melbourne in the second semi-final, with full-forward Jack Metherell booting eight goals, and lined-up against Collingwood in the Grand Final at the MCG on Saturday, September 25.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground had never seen anything like it. Tickets were sold at the gate on a first-in-first-served basis, and a record 88,540 spectators for any Australian sports event crammed into the stadium. There weren’t enough seats or standing room and thousands scaled the picket fence and spilled over the boundary line, within touching distance of the players. Another frustrated 10,000 fans were locked-out.

Geelong conquered the Magpies in a slashing encounter which was widely labelled as the greatest exhibition of Australian rules football ever played. The scores were nerve-rackingly level at 80 points apiece at three-quarter time but the Cats rammed home six goals to Collingwood’s one in the final stanza to triumph by 32 points.

The dual Melbourne Brownlow medallist from the 1920s, Ivor Warne-Smith, a columnist in The Argus newspaper, was effusive in his praise of the match. He wrote: “This Grand Final will never be forgotten. To be one of that record crowd and to feel their intense excitement was in itself an experience.”

Grant, playing his 17^th game of the season, was selected on a half-back flank and used his blistering pace to deliver a stirling display of attacking football out of defence, amassing 17 kicks and six telling marks. He was named best afield in several media reports.

Then a teetotaller, Jack was indeed a worthy recipient of probably the most stirring reception ever given to a Geelong sports team when the victorious players and officials arrived back in Catland. The Geelong Advertiser, in its Monday, September 27 edition, best summed it up:

“To the accompaniment of cheers from thousands of people, the hooting of motor car horns, the whistles of three railway engines, the explosions of detonators on the lines and the strains of music played by the St. Augustine’s Boys’ Band, the Geelong Football team which won the 1937 League premiership by defeating Collingwood at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, returned to Geelong by train on Saturday night.”

Little did Jack Grant know that he was about to be branded with a train-related nickname, the “Midnight Express.” Its origins were shaped during Geelong’s 39-point Round 4 victory against South Melbourne at Corio Oval in 1937. Grant grabbed the ball in defence and sprinted downfield into the Cats’ scoring zone. In hot pursuit was the Swans’ world professional sprint champion Austin Robertson. “Ocker” couldn’t catch the local lad.

Standing in the crowd was a Geelong postman and keen middle distance runner named Sam Barmby. He was awestruck by Grant’s scintillating speed display and his mind began to tick over. J.W. Grant was a potential Stawell Gift winner, and S.G. Barmby decided that he wanted to train him.

Sam was still mulling over the prospect a few weeks later as he walked  Geelong’s streets on his deliveries with his mail-bag slung over his shoulder. A passing milkman in a clip-clopping horse and cart yelled-out:

“Hey, Sam, why don’t you train Jack Grant?”

That did it: “I will,” the postie vowed.

Barmby lunged into action. In October, just a couple of weeks after the Grand Final conquest, Grant slipped into a pair of spikes and, under Sam’s supervision, trialled over 100 yards for the first time. He clocked an impressive 10.2 seconds: “I was stunned,” Sam later declared. “I realised then that Jack could win Geelong its first Stawell Gift.”

So focused was Barmby on steering his protégé towards pro running’s ultimate goal that he chose to terminate his own 17-year competitive career in athletics. Sam had been a handy performer, starting out with the Christ Church Harriers, where he was twice club champion, before stepping-up to the Glenhuntly and East Melbourne Harriers’ Clubs.

Sam switched to professional ranks in 1924 and accumulated a string of successes over the sprint, middle distance and longer journeys. He netted 400 pounds prizemoney and a wealth of wisdom. Rather than restrain Grant for a couple of years and run him “dead” in order to improve his handicap, he cut him loose and the results were instantaneous.

Jack won the 220 yards at the Maryborough Highland Gathering Carnival on New Year’s Day, 1938. He kept improving and followed with victories in the Koroit, Frankston and Belmont Gifts. He also won the 75 yards handicap event at Frankston.

Such a flood of success was unheard of for any newcomer to pro ranks. Barmby needed no further convincing – the Stawell Gift on April 18 was the target. It was full steam ahead. Sam worked methodically to refine Grant’s tardiness out of the starting blocks and, in a master stroke, enlisted the assistance of two amateur sprinters from the Geelong Guild Athletic Club to run secret trials with him, under the blanket of darkness.

Sam was becoming concerned that Jack’s training routine at Kardinia Park was being closely observed by stop watch-bearing punters keen to get accurate inside mail for early betting plunges on the Gift. He didn’t want the Grant-Barmby market stolen.

In an interview with the respected Sporting Globe journalist J.J. Maher after the Stawell triumph, Barmby revealed the details: “You can imagine that Jack’s Stawell preparation had to be carried out with the greatest of concealment,” Sam confided.

“Certain people had to be taken into our confidence, and were almost sworn to secrecy. We chose the sacred golf links at Barwon Heads, about 13 miles out of Geelong, for some of Grant’s trials, which consisted of  breaking out of his holes and ‘running through.’

“Then there were the Queen’s Park golf links, on which he did some amazing trials.

“Two well-known Geelong sprinters, whose names it would not be fair to disclose, came to our aid. They wanted to give us every possible assistance, but never sought any publicity. They regarded it as an honour, and also a duty, to try to advance the prospects of Grant for the Stawell Gift.

“As discharging firearms at night is an offence, we used an improvised gun – a piece of galvanised iron bent up under the foot, with a stout stick to clout the iron for the report.”

Once Maher’s headline-grabbing revelations hit the streets in The Globe’s Wednesday, April 20 edition, pro running aficionados dubbed Grant the “Midnight Express.” Even Jack, who originally believed that taking-up pro running would be an anti-climax after the euphoria of the 1937 Grand Final, revelled in the triumphant atmosphere.

He told J.J. Maher: “Training for the Stawell Gift has been a pleasure and a novel experience for me. It was great fun being whisked away in a motor car to do a trial by moonlight on the golf links at Barwon Heads and Queen’s Park. Those two amateur runners at Geelong were jolly fine fellows to come along and assist in my trials.”

Jack Grant was finished as a pro runner, but not as a superb all-round sportsman. On the Saturday afternoon following his victory, he was presented to the crowd at Geelong’s season-opening encounter against Melbourne at Corio Oval and received a standing ovation as he ran a lap of honour in his winning sash.

He missed the first two matches, then played in 18 games straight, including the Cats’ losing second semi-final and preliminary final skirmishes against Carlton and Collingwood respectively. Upon Summer’s arrival, it was back to cricket. With his sizzling fast bowling, he was a leading contributor in Geelong’s success at the 1937 annual Country Week competition.

Like most Australians, Grant’s life was thrown into turmoil towards the end of 1939 with the outbreak of World War II, but he’d managed to string together some important milestones before the full impact struck him.

He married Dulcie May Ellis in Geelong on Saturday, April 29, gained selection in the Victorian team for two interstate matches, and tied for first place with nippy little wingman Leo Dean in Geelong’s best and fairest award. He polled five Brownlow Medal votes.

He lined-up for the Cats again in 1940 and was the club’s leading goal-scorer with 47, including six each in Rounds 2 and 3, after playing all 19 games. In 1941, the warning sirens sounded for Geelong when the players objected to a committee ruling to slash match payments from three pounds to one pound 10 shillings. By August, all pay was scrapped. It was a crippling setback. Geelong did not play another VFL game until 1944.

Jack Grant enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force in February, 1942. He played two seasons for Fitzroy, kicking  58 goals over 26 games before being posted to Dutch New Guinea as a leading aircraftman, taking his discharge on compassionate grounds in June, 1945.

The Midnight Express was appointed the Cats’ captain in 1946. He retired at the end of the season after representing the blue-and-white hoops 119 times and scoring 99 goals. His skill as a footballer and prowess as a professional runner guaranteed him a unique and elevated position in the annals of the Geelong Football Club.

Grant, who frequently devoured six pies after a tough match, busied himself with a variety of interests upon his departure from football. He moved his employment from the Soldiers’ Mill to the Wheat Silos in North Shore before he and Dulcie operated a mixed  business for many years on the corner of Shannon Avenue and Skene Street, Newtown. Then he returned to the silos.

He continued to make a contribution to the footy club. He was made a GFC life member in 1946 and served on the Cats’ selection committee in ’46 and 1948. He thoroughly enjoyed the camaraderie of his former team-mates and was frequently seen in the Gold Diggers’ Hotel in the convivial company of Lindsay White and Russell “Hooker” Renfrey.  He was made a life member of the Past Players and Officials’ Association in 1976 and elected president in ’77.

Cricket remained important to him and he captained the Geelong Footballers’ team which won a GCA premiership in 1947. He also dabbled in training professional runners – dual Cats premiership wingman Terry Fulton was briefly in his “stable.”

In the early 1950s, Jack introduced his sister-in-law Joyce Ellis to the Geelong defender Norm Scott who played 101 games in blue-and-white from 1946-52. They later married and had two children. It was common for several Cats players and their families to gather happily near Breamlea  for net-fishing excursions, with fires lit on the beach and children frolicking happily in the surf and sand.

On the night of February17, 1957, 35-year-old  Scott was caught in deep water while attending to a net. A strong current washed him into the open sea and he disappeared. Jack, aided by his football mates, searched frantically for his brother-in-law without success. He returned to the site every day for the next week until Norm’s body was located close to shore. It was a sledge-hammer blow for the entire Grant family.

In 1955, a promising Swan Hill track cyclist named Barry Coster moved to Geelong with his mother. He was able to seek specialist coaching and more intense competition in his dream to represent Australia at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games. He found an enthusiastic advisor in the effusive Jack Baker, mentor of dual Olympic gold medallist Russell Mockridge, and got all the tough racing he needed at jam-packed Friday night Summer carnivals at the Geelong West velodrome.

Coster and his Geelong Amateur Cycling Club team-mate Frank Arkell narrowly missed selection in the tandem event at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics when they were beaten in a pre-Games trial by the eventual gold medallists Ian Browne and Tony Marchant.

The Swan Hill boy won the 1958 Australian amateur sprint championship in Sydney and rode for Australia a few months’ later at the Empire and Commonwealth Games in Cardiff, Wales. He finished a creditable fifth in the sprint and fourth in the 10-mile scratch race. Three weeks later at the world titles in Paris, he was fourth in the sprint. He retained his Aussie sprint title in 1959.

As an amateur cyclist, Coster rode for no pay. He secured a job as a bus driver and became acquainted with one of his regular passengers, Jack and Dulcie Grant’s eldest daughter Dawn.

Barry Coster married Dawn Grant in Geelong in 1961. They have two daughters, Tracey and Michelle, and a son Brad who exhibited enormous talent as a junior golfer. The Costers live in contented retirement in Marshall.

Jack Grant died of a heart attack in his sleep on December 1, 1983, aged 68. He is buried alongside Norm Scott and his beloved Dulcie at Mt. Duneed cemetery.

 

 

John’s book can be purchased via email HERE

 

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