Almanac Footy: Jeff Farmer – The original ‘Wizard’

                          

  

  THE WIZARD

 

Watching Hawthorn take on Geelong on the traditional Easter Monday clash I was listening intently to the commentary and the now standard reference to the Hawthorn excitement machine that is Nick ‘The Wizard’ Watson. Now I have no qualms with the modern-day commentators dubbing him the Wizard, but it made me reflect on the original Wizard – Jeffrey Farmer.

 

It prompted me to recall the circumstances of his arrival at the Melbourne Football Club and his remarkable journey in the AFL.

 

I first met Bernie Dunn way back in 1979. I was studying teaching at Toorak Teachers College, Melbourne and Bernie who started his teaching diploma at Rusden transferred to Toorak in that year. Bernie and I became mates through the Physical Education classes where it became evident to me that he was a gifted sportsman, particularly ball sports.

 

Very early on in the piece I asked Bernie if he played footy. Bernie was a very humble guy who never pumped his tyres up. As it turned out he was playing in the VFA at the Oakleigh Football Club under former Melbourne Premiership hero Neil ‘Froggy’ Crompton and later Billy Barrott. Bernie grew up in the Geelong area, was a passionate Cats fan and like me loved footy. We had an instant connection.

 

In between classes we would play sets of tennis on the College tennis courts, kick the footy on the manicured lawns and occasionally head to the local for a few cold pots of beer. We played in the College footy team on Wednesday afternoons then after the match meet up with the netball girls for some post-game frivolity at a nearby establishment.

 

Somehow in 1980 we were both granted permission to play for Swinburne at the Australian University Games in Adelaide – a weeklong carnival of sport and heavy drinking! It was a great week of footy and fun and we made our way to the Grand Final only to be defeated by a disciplined Footscray Institute who were nicely tucked away in bed by 10pm the night before the big clash. Meanwhile the Swinburne boys were plotting its game plan at a very stylish hotel in North Adelaide till the wee hours of the morning.

 

That team had some very handy players including Richmond’s Darryl Freame and Essendon’s Merv Harbinson. I’m not sure Tony Jewell or Kevin Sheedy knew of the whereabouts of their charges that week in July but as fate would have it Freame would make his way into the Tigers’ Premiership winning team only a few short months later. Now, that’s a complete other story in its own right!

 

 

Richard Griffiths (centre) with  Bernie Dunn and Darryl Freame

 

 

Bernie, Darryl and I became good mates over the next few years and when Freame decided his VFL days were over due to continual hamstring injuries we concocted an idea to drive from Melbourne to Perth in search of a footy club and a new life. It was 1982 and we jumped in Bernie’s blue Holden ’71 HD complete with three gear manual column shaft and made our way to Adelaide. We had lunch with Norwood coach Neil Balme who Freame had played with at Richmond and discussed the prospect of joining the SANFL Redlegs. Who would have thought some ten years later I would be Balmey’s football manager at the AFL’s Redlegs!

 

We left the City of Churches for the long haul across the Nullarbor and headed to Perth. It was the most arduous, drawn out trip in history not helped by the fact that Bernie’s beloved Holden would overheat if it exceeded 90 kilometres an hour. We eventually reached our destination and checked into a hotel for a few nights to survey the landscape. Within days of arriving I was offered a teaching job back in Melbourne – which I accepted. I said goodbye to my best mates, wished them all the best and jumped on the next plane back to Melbourne.

 

That was 1982 and thirty years later both Bernie and Darryl are still in Perth, retired and with young families.

 

I joined the Melbourne Football Club in 1988 and by 1992 I was the National Recruiting Manager. One of my roles was to set up a network of recruiting officers across the country. Bernie had finished his playing and coaching days at the West Coast Amateur Football Club in the Sunday League, and I asked if he would be my Perth based scout. Despite his love of the Cats he was more than happy to take on the role with the Demons.

 

In the same year we attended the Under 15 Australian Schoolboy Championships in Sydney – a weeklong carnival featuring the best junior talent from across the country.

 

It was at a game at the small Sydney University oval that we first laid eyes on a diminutive, wiry indigenous boy playing for Western Australia. Jeff Farmer started that game on the interchange bench that day. I still have a vivid recollection of him sprinting onto the ground and making his way to the forward line. Within moments the ball entered his area and somehow, he gathered a ground ball, side stepped an oncoming opponent and then another to slot through a magical goal. I put an asterisk next to his name in the footy record with one word – clever.

 

Then the ball came down again. This time Farmer was further up the ground between the wing and half forward flank. Again, he gathered the ball and headed towards goal. One bounce followed by a baulk and another bounce then a running shot at goal for his second major. He did a few more very exciting and clever things on the field that day and I wrote another comment in the record – monitor progress.

 

The draft age was eighteen back in those days and Jeff was three years away from being eligible to be drafted so from a recruiting perspective the task was to track his development over the coming years.

 

Bernie returned to Perth the following week and we agreed he would do some follow up on the young forward from a place called Tambellup.

 

The following year the Teal Cup Under 17 Championships were held in Adelaide. Again, the best young talent from across the land was on display. Jeff was representing his home state as he had done 12 months earlier. Again, we witnessed the same skills and cheekiness from the year before. He was everything the Demons needed – a clever, quick, cheeky small forward who had a penchant for booting uncanny goals.

 

Dunn was providing written reports on the Teal Cup Carnival of that year for the Melbourne Match Committee.  One report Bernie outlined Jeff’s strengths and weaknesses. He was quick over the ground, had excellent evasive skills, had great awareness and was an exceptional overhead mark for his size with a magnificent leap. His final line in the report summed it up. This kid is a Wizard!

 

So, let me dispel all myths. It was Bernie Dunn our WA based Recruiting Officer who crowned the young Jeff Farmer ‘Wizard’ way before we had secured his services via a trade let alone him running out onto the MCG in his debut match in 1995.

 

Tambellup is a small wool and grain town with a population of just 350 people in the deep south of Western Australia. The town had a tiny footy club that played in Essendon colours. In 1993 by the age of fifteen years Jeff Farmer was playing in the senior team alongside his father Jeffrey senior who was the club captain. He was also representing his state at the prestigious Teal Cup. Playing against men Farmer would display all the aerial and ground skills that would become the hallmark of his AFL career.

 

By 1994 Jeff was on the radar of the South Fremantle Football Club in the WAFL- he was zoned to the Bulldogs and played a handful of games in the club’s Colts team to qualify him for the trade or pre-listing by the Dockers who were about to enter the AFL competition in 1995.

 

In the meantime, the Demons had a sprinkling of Western Australian players on its list such as Darren Kowal, Jason Norrish and Phil Gilbert – all products of the powerful Claremont FC coached by soon to be appointed coach of the Fremantle FC, Gerrard Neesham. The Fremantle Dockers were to enter the AFL competition in 1995 and Neesham was keen for Gilbert to return to his home state and fill a key defensive role for the fledgling club.

 

Phil had played 25 serviceable games for the Demons between 1992 to 1994 and was keen to return home. Here was our opportunity to manufacture a trade to secure the services of the young Wizard- Jeff Farmer. The Dockers had priority access to players zoned to clubs such as South Fremantle and hence was available to be part of a trade with rival AFL clubs. I met with South Fremantle Football Manager, Mark Bayliss about Jeff’s time at the Bulldogs and to gain greater insight into his personality and off-field aspirations.

 

It was during this meeting that Mark informed me of Neesham’s reluctance to place Farmer on the inaugural Fremantle list partly based on an allegation that young Jeff had allegedly stolen a pair of runners from a teammate’s locker.

 

Our first task was to contact Jeff and his family to broker a meeting in Perth to discuss the prospect of a shift to Melbourne. Bernie Dunn did an enormous amount of work brokering that meeting. By mid-September a meeting had been arranged in a Perth coffee shop with both Jeff junior and Jeff senior. I did not underestimate the trepidation they must have felt entering that meeting as the prospect of a young seventeen-year-old indigenous boy from country Western Australian relocating to a bustling city like Melbourne must have been a daunting prospect for him and his family. Nor did I underestimate the importance of ‘selling’ the virtues of coming to one the oldest sporting clubs in Australia, the lure of playing on the hallowed turf of the MCG, and the support mechanisms in place to ensure a smooth transition to a new life in Melbourne.

 

After an hour or so I was encouraged by the positive response from both Jeffs and I was asked to provide a contract offer and to start negotiating a trade with the Dockers.

 

It took no time to do the deal with the Dockers; a straight swap – Gilbert for Farmer. And we met Jeff and his family’s financial and relocation requirements. The Wizard was bound for Melbourne and was to arrive for pre-season training in early November 1994.

 

Phil Gilbert played fourteen games over two seasons with the Dockers and was delisted by the club at the end of the 1996 season. He became the inaugural skipper of Peel Thunder in the WAFL then became coach of the Pinjarra Tigers in the Peel League. He is currently the director for Great Southern Football Academy (Clontarf) at North Albany Senior High School.

 

Jeff Farmer played 118 games for the Melbourne Football Club between 1995 and 2001 booting 259 goals. He thrilled the Demon faithful with his uncanny ability to kick freakish goals from nothing and to take spectacular high marks. His running goal from the half back line at VFL Park and the soaring mark at the MCG over Garry Lyon are etched in Melbourne folklore. We will never forget his nine-goal haul against Collingwood at the MCG in 2000. That year he finished with a career best 76 goals and was named in the All-Australian team.

 

At the end of 2001 Jeff wished to return home to family and was traded to the Fremantle Football Club. He played a further 131 games for the Dockers and booted 224 goals to take his career tally to 483 – the most by any indigenous player in the history of the game.

 

A series of off-field indiscretions marred his time at the Dockers and he eventually retired at the end of the 2008 season. His 483 goals including three in his final game, is the 49^th most in VFL/AFL history and his 224 goals for Fremantle is second behind Matthew Pavlich.

 

Bernie Dunn was appointed the club’s Western Australia Recruiting Officer in 1992. He would serve the club for the twenty-five years and was awarded Life Membership in 2018. The man who anointed Jeff Farmer the Wizard had served the club well.

 

In October 2002 I travelled to Europe on a long-awaited holiday. Collingwood were playing Fremantle at The Oval, London in an exhibition match that year. My old mate from Melbourne Neil Balme who was now Football Manager at Collingwood arranged some tickets for me. It wasn’t much of a game (glorified circle work) but it was fun drinking cans of VB with the Poms behind the goals.

 

 

Jeff Farmer and Richard Griffiths outside Buckingham Palace

 

A couple of days later I was doing the normal tourist thing visiting Buckingham Palace with a mob of other sightseers. Suddenly amongst the crowd I heard a voice yell out; “Hey Griffo!” I turned around and there was Jeff Farmer running towards me. I couldn’t believe it! The Wizard at Buckingham Palace!

 

I hadn’t seen Jeff since my departure in 1996 and it was great to catch up for a few brief minutes. He said something that I will never forget.

 

“I never got the chance to thank you for bringing a 17-year-old kid from Western Australia to Melbourne – it was the best time of my life;” he said.

 

And with that he gave me a hug and he was on his way.

 

Jeff Famer is now 48 years of age, has returned to Melbourne where he works for a tunnel construction company, is a member of the Melbourne Football Club Past Players and Officials Association and recently took the plunge down the slide to support Neal Daniher’s, FightMND Big Freeze.

 

Hawthorn may have its own Wizard of the Nick variety but for me there is and has only been one Wizard and that’s the kid from Tambellup.

 

 

Read more from Richard Griffiths HERE.

 

 

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