Almanac Footy: An Interview With Bruce McMaster-Smith

 

 

 

 

Paul Harman had a friend with whom he drank at the Clifton Hill hotel back in the ’90s. She told me her father played for Fitzroy.  He had conversations with Bruce over the telephone over the years, and in 2013 he sat down with him with a Dictaphone, (old school), and recorded his memories of his playing days.

 

 

Photo: WikiCommons

 

BRUCE MCMASTER-SMITH

Fitzroy 1960-61, 13 games, 1 goal.

Carlton 1962-64, 26 games, 6 goals.

St. Kilda 1965, 15 games, 7 goals.

 

A diminutive speedster who only weighed nine and a half stone. The tiny winger lost the sight of one eye after an incident early in his career. In his sole year with St. Kilda he was often used as a shock trooper off the interchange bench and played in the losing 1965 grand final side. He was forced out by injury problems. Encyclopaedia of League Footballers, 1992.

 

From the tape…

 

I was born in Kyabram in 1938 into a typical family of the day. I was the third out of six kids, my father ran an orchard farm, but was spooked by the coming outbreak of fruit fly, so sold up and bought a 140-acre dairy farm in Tongala. Dad was right about selling the farm in Kyabram, because in the end there was a fruit fly epidemic that came from Queensland and that’s what brought us to Melbourne where John Cain Senior put Dad in charge of containing the outbreak and was appointed fruit inspector for the agricultural department. He was very proud of coming from a farming background and he used to lecture groups on the best way of getting the most from the land. He was always getting death threats though from all the tree culling that was involved with containing an outbreak, so we moved around a bit. Fruit fly was discovered in Moonee Ponds and Kensington, so we lived in nearby Brunswick for a while. I was a junior clerk for a livestock agent in the city, then I ended up in the sale yards. I was always a mad Carlton supporter, but athletics was my first passion and Lawrie Tennart, with whom I worked, was the president of Brunswick Athletics and he asked me to come for a trial at the athletics club. Lawrie barracked for Carlton too so we got on well and one day he watched me as I had a run around the footy ground. I ran rings around a couple of other trial runners. I jumped 5’8” in the high jump and in the end, I became state record holder in the 100, 220 and the long jump.

 

I played a bit of footy for Brunswick in the Amateurs, but they wouldn’t give me a game at Greensborough, mainly because of my height. I went back the next year when I was 17, and there was this big bloke with a Collingwood jumper standing on his own in the centre of the oval on the first day of training. Frank Londrigan his name was. He was the new coach, ex Collingwood player from the 1950s. At the end of my first full season, he said to me ‘I’ll get you into Collingwood.’ I nearly threw up on the spot. I was a pretty good player. Fast, I could kick with both feet and was pretty accurate too.

 

It was Fitzroy’s club secretary Ward Stuchbury who got me to Fitzroy in 1959. He called me up and asked me for a run. In my first game I was 19th man in the seconds. I didn’t even get out of my dressing gown, I just sat on the bench. I said to myself ‘I don’t need this rubbish,’ so I went back to Greensborough. The club rung me back, apologising and my first full game was in the reserves at Richmond. My opponent was Ray Allsopp, who was coming back from injury. I played the last 8 or 9 games, did alright so I signed for the club. I trained with the seniors while I did my running for Brunswick. Footy wasn’t the be all and end all. My running time over 100 yards was 9.6 and I won the 1958 Moomba sprint. Gregory Peck shook my hand, ‘Well done son,’ he said to me. He was there filming with Ava Gardner. That woman would look good in a wheat bag. Because of the 1956 Olympics, athletics was going through a resurgence.

 

My first senior game was against Carlton at Fitzroy in 1960 and I kicked my only goal for Fitzroy a week later against Geelong in the second quarter. Ruckman Rod Vernon punched the ball from the centre to the half forward line, I managed to be on my own, so I grabbed the ball, turned around and popped it through. Old sportsmen would say that once you hear the roar of the crowd, you hear it for the rest of your life. I heard it when I scored the goal. I had a run on the ball in the first quarter but froze so they sent me back to the forward pocket. The old Fitzroy ground really was a beautiful ground to play on. The twin grandstands looking down at you, people would sit in their balconies in their houses in Brunswick Street, watching the game for free. I was second rover and played against Billy Goggin and Colin Rice. In the end I relaxed and made the best players list which made me pretty happy. I think Wally Clark was out injured so I replaced him. Graeme Campbell was first rover; he could run all day. I remember Butch Gale when we ran out onto the ground through the race before a game would say to us: ‘You keep your eyes on the ball. If anything happens to you, I’ll remove those pricks from the land of the living!’ In the end though, sometimes I did get banged up, and Butch would say to me after the game, ‘Fancy them picking on a tiny prick like you!’

 

One time at Windy Hill I suffered cramps in both my legs and fell face first into a puddle on the wing. I couldn’t breathe and Butch pulled me to safety. I would have been the only player to drown at a football match. I saw him the day he died in 1987. I was doing a sportsmen’s night with Bruce Green and Leon Wiegard at the Sunshine Football Club, and Butch was doing a talk to the Fitzroy players. He didn’t look well, and there was definitely something wrong with him. I told him to go to hospital, he shrugged it off and died three hours later. Dreadful shame. He was a commentator for years and owned the Birmingham Hotel in Collingwood. Ex Royboy Jack McGregor was coaching East Brunswick, and he got on the grog one night after a game with his players and he wanted to show how tough his boys were by coming to Butch’s pub and bluing with all the Fitzroy players. Things could get hectic in those days. Butch used to get upset how we would blow all our money on beer at end of season functions and would try to organise alcohol free events instead. We would just throw food at him. Footballers are footballers. At training I used to jump on his back, put my arms around his neck and try to choke the big prick to death. ‘Let me go,’ he would scream, knowing full well he could throw me ten miles if he wanted to.

 

I went well in the finals of 1960, even though we were thrashed by Melbourne in the second semi-final. We picked a tall side that day and got done. Fitzroy had a fantastically fast side in 1960. The side had champion runners such as Ray Slocum, Ian Aston, Graham Knight. Ward Stutchbury was on the bench with me near three quarter time. We were getting flogged by then. A friend he knew from the crowd and who he’d seen earlier in the day was behind us on the fence. ‘Bring it out!’ Ward yelled to his mate who produced a bottle of whisky. He passed it to Ward who flicked his tie over his shoulder, took some heavy slugs from the bottle, then he passed it along the bench. The following week’s preliminary final was labelled ‘Miracle in the Mud’ because it rained all day. We led all day until some Collingwood mongrel kicked the ball off the ground through a defender’s legs right at the end. I went alright that day. Had to keep my wits about me though, even in the wet.

 

We trained twice a week. Tuesday was the heavy night of training. Len Smith set us 80 quarter miles. Sprint one, then jog one. Players would be vomiting over the fence. I always tried to train harder because of my size. If a little player plays an average game, they ship you off to the twos, so you have to be good every Saturday. The game was different then off course. It was a lot slower, but the ball went down the ground quicker. I could kick drops, torpedoes and stabs. When I was playing for St. Kilda I had the ball near the centre, unleashed a torpedo and it landed in front of the goal square. The secret was to hold on to the ball as long as you can.

 

We used to get a lot of boxers following Fitzroy. Red Maloney, a man who fought over 400 bouts, would pop in now and again after training at Fitzroy Stadium. The boot studder at Fitzroy was Tommy Lasky.  He was a great fighter who was a bantam weight champion of Australia and I think he tried his luck in America. When I walked into St. Kilda, by then he’d left Fitzroy and was with the Saints. I told him ‘You’re at the wrong club.’ ‘Those bastards,’ he replied. Fitzroy will always welcome you. On our Sunday lunches at the club anyone could walk off the street and share some beers with the players. They were great like that. Very friendly, very inviting. But once you’re out, you’re out. But I said a lot of things when I was younger that I regret so maybe it’s just my experience. It might have accounted for why I only played three games in 1961. Fitzroy wrote me a letter. ‘Please don’t come again.’

 

I rang Carlton coach Ken Hands and asked him if I could have a trial at Carlton.  He gave me a go.  I injured my knee in a practice match, so only ended up playing the last eleven games and that’s when I came sixth in the Brownlow. It didn’t rain much in 1962 and the dry grounds suited me. The leading vote winners for every position got picked to play in the ‘Umpires Team’ and I was selected for that, which was quite satisfying. I got paid ten pounds a game because of the League’s ruling known as the ‘Coulter Law.’ But only Carlton paid me if I was injured or dropped to the reserves. They used me off the bench a lot because of my cramps. Ken Hands was the best coach I played under. He was very honest and straight with you. I busted my ribs in the last round of 62, missed the finals, did the pre -season in 63 but only played three games. I hung around till the end of `64, Gordon Collis won the Brownlow, but it was a bad year for Carlton. They had a new philosophy – ‘we will not accept failure’ so they sacked Ken Hands and bought in Ron Barassi. I received a letter to come visit the club. The secretary was my best mate at Carlton, Gerald Burke. He was nearly crying. ‘Sorry fella, we got to let you go,’ he told me.  He asked if I wanted a lift home. ‘Nooo,’ I said back to him.

 

Then I was playing golf with my brother and Roger Dean, and Roger told me there was a rumour going around that St. Kilda wanted me. Sure enough I went to a night match to watch a friend of mine Johnny Dowling play for the Saints, and they wanted to talk to me. I told them everything that was wrong with me, and they told me they’ll fix them which they did, they treated me very well and St. Kilda was the team I ended up barracking for after I finished playing football. I played the one year where I played 15 or 16 games and in the grand final. I got poked in the eye in the first quarter by Ken Fraser who played for John Coleman’s Bombers. It happened when I was running to take a chest mark and that was the end of me. I couldn’t see the ball after that. It was like a fog, but I stayed on and got slaughtered. We were with them for a half and they ran away with it in the end. The best memory of the day was when I ran onto the ground for the Grand Final. It was absolutely electric. I don’t think there were banners back then. We just ran up the race and out onto the ground. The players are a lot closer than they are now when they lined up for the anthems, so the St. Kilda and Essendon players were just sledging each other as we listened to the Queen’s song. Russell Blew was my opponent on the wing but we were doomed from the start. The pressure on St. Kilda after the second semi-final win was enormous. The last time they were in a grand final was 1913. Everyone panicked, off and on the field. I always wore a long-sleeved jumper but the one they gave me for the game was short sleeved and three sizes too small! We had all these functions we had to attend on the morning of the game, we were all so nervous we would just kick the ball down the field, hoping we didn’t muck it up. By the end of the game we only had 16 fit players.

 

Ian Drake was by then the best administrator in the league. He owned Tasmania (really) and the club had some great players through his interstate recruiting. Daryl Baldock told me before he died that the ‘65 side was the one. Before then though St. Kilda were very amateurish. They didn’t even have a club doctor, they had a dentist, so they looked great in the team photos! There was a story that in the 1950s, two players who were debuting for the club against North Melbourne bumped into each other on a tram on Saturday morning – both of them were lost because the club didn’t even give them instructions on how to get to Arden Street! I think St. Kilda recruited heavily that year and didn’t have enough resources to look after all their new players. But I joined them when they were on the rise.

 

I had given athletics away by then because of my cramps. I used to run against Hec Hogan, who won bronze in the Olympics in the 100 metres. Norm Goss approached me at the end of 1965 about playing for Port Melbourne because I was on the outer at St. Kilda. ‘You have to be joking, they’d be king hitting me all over the joint’ I told him. ‘We’ve got people that will take care of that,’ he replied, but I was over it by then. I was a chronic cramper. Sports science, hydration, drinking water during the game was non-existent then. I was short sighted, suffered an eye disease throughout my career and played with two broken wrists. I managed to play over 50 games even though it was with three clubs. There was always a stigma back then when you switched teams, but I made everlasting friendships from three great football clubs.

 

I’m glad there’s money in the game now for the players. That’s one change I’m happy about. The players in my day, working full time and training and playing were stuffed in the end.

 

All my family when I was younger barracked for different teams, and it was always interesting on a Saturday night around the dinner table. Dad was Melbourne and Mum went for Collingwood. Peter followed Collingwood, Noel barracked for Richmond, Brian was South Melbourne, and I was mad for Carlton. Dorothy was Fitzroy and Leonie followed Hawthorn. I used to tell Leonie to have another pick. Hawthorn wasn’t winning much back then.

 

Even though I’m down for playing for three clubs, I actually played for four. I played for the Hawks once in a night game. I was an emergency for Fitzroy and four Hawthorn players didn’t turn up, so they asked Fitzroy if they could loan me. I lined up on Kevin Murray under the name of Sted Hay and kicked four goals on him. I kept telling ‘Bulldog’ he was too slow, which he no doubt appreciated!

 

 

 

Read more from Paul Harman (aussiewombles) HERE

 

 

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About Paul Harman

Paul's earliest memories of sport is listening to the 1973 grand final between Richmond and Carlton and watching with his father the VFA grand final between Port Melbourne and Oakleigh a year later. His first football book was '100 great marks,' a birthday present given to him from his parents when he was six. Now in his sixth decade of life, he writes short stories and novels, and pens a regular column on English Football for the Footy Almanac

Comments

  1. A very enjoyable interview, Paul.
    Bruce McMaster-Smith sounds like he was a ripper bloke and packed a lot into his 3-club, 54-game career.
    With he, his parents and 5 siblings supporting 7 different clubs between them, it would’ve made for an interesting discussion of the Saturday afternoon matches that night.

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