Almanac Footy: Minor Encounter with a Major Legend – Ted Whitten at Elizabeth Oval

 

Scanlens VFL footy card 1963

 

A Saturday in March 1968, and Elizabeth Oval’s broad expanse lay beautifully green under a cloudless sky. The Central District Bulldogs, preparing for their fifth year in the SANFL, were to take on the VFL’s Footscray Bulldogs in a practice match, the first of three over consecutive years in what was no doubt designed as a good will exercise involving the two clubs in red, white and blue.

It may also have been a sign that the SANFL Doggies was beginning to develop its thinking and look forward, after four years of understandably modest results as the new boys in the competition along with the Woodville ‘Peckers. A sign that Centrals was considering the future, of moving onward and upward, and taking on the Victorian Dennis Jones as the new coach and connecting with what was undeniably the “big league” of the VFL through this fixture with Footscray might be seen as symbolic of this approach.

So Dennis Jones, who had played under the legendary Norm Smith in the late 1950s, at this point was embarking on a building program intended to make the club competitive, and in turn respected. The former he achieved handsomely in his four year stint, climaxing with the club’s first final in September 1971- a famous win over Sturt- unfortunately followed by a loss to Port Adelaide the next week, his last game as coach. But what he’d established carried over into the following season with Centrals making the finals again.

The question of respect was a longer-term deal. Centrals, the “Pommie” club representing the satellite town of Elizabeth, established through the latter 1950s and home to a largely British migrant population, was viewed with some derision. Elizabeth seen as a bit of an outpost, and the “waterbag” trip to play there something of an inconvenience. The journey was in fact such a drag that in an interview with a former champion player of the 1960s, it was revealed the travel and preparation for the fixture at Elizabeth Oval involved a stop at a pub halfway, where a steak and bottle of red was consumed by he and his driver! Ah well, suppose it might take the edge off a sore spot here and there.

Understandably then, there was some apprehension within the, as you’d expect being a practice match, smaller than usual crowd at the ground that afternoon. A new coach and new players. Hopes and expectations. Even a new jumper. The Footscray style red and white hoops on blue of the first seasons was replaced that year by a red and white vee on blue. (They did look snazzier).

We were there – Mum, Dad, my brother and I – just ten metres or so around the iron chain link fencing from the goal square at the northern end. A good spot, where you could marvel close up at the 60 metre drop kicks full backs of that time – Port’s Ron Elleway or Bruce Jarrett of Sturt for example – would unleash when kicking in after a point. Thump!….Whoosh!…and into the distance.

Just behind us was the dirt track around the ground, which funnily enough would become a significant part of the home game experience a few years later when Centrals’ full forward Gary Jones made himself a cult hero. The coaches’ nephew and a mild mannered giant – he wouldn’t have caused a ripple in a bird bath, as they say – stood tall in the goal square and its close surrounds and plucked overhead marks out of the sky. At quarter, half and three quarter time a group of Dogs’ supporters, hundreds of them on a good day, stirring up a cloud of dust in drier weather, would shuffle from one end of the ground to the other to cheer on big Gary.

Many of us there that day also turned up to see Ted Whitten as well as the “new” Centrals. “EJ”, “Mr. Football”, now approaching the twilight-time of his playing days after being Footscray’s best player for much of the past 15 years, was still a giant of the game – a strongly built 14 stone, six footer in the old money, who played at centre half back or centre half forward, and pretty much anywhere else over his stellar career. In SA we knew him quite well as a player through interstate football and the VFL replays that were beginning to filter through to local television, but weren’t so much aware of his media presence – different states had largely different TV programming back then. However, we had an inkling he was a big thing by way of the explosion of football coverage that was occurring on our 14 inch screens right at that time in the late 60s.

In Melbourne the Tonight Show had Graham Kennedy- we had Ernie Sigley (ex-Vic). The Sunday football show in Melbourne featured EJ, Bob Davis, Lou Richards, Jack Dyer and so on. We had a couple of former umpires – the host Max Hall and Ken Cunningham (who was also a very capable cricketer at Sheffield Shield level), assorted old players and Wally May (ex-Vic). Now – I’m not suggesting us kids would dream of missing the Sunday show, certainly not, we loved it, but we’d have to admit it was probably at a different level compared to its Victorian version.

Then on weekdays after primary school through the 1960s, the Channel Niner’s program for kids, featuring the dream line up of an episode of “The Three Stooges” followed by three Warner Brothers’ cartoons with Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and the rest of the gang, would also routinely include the great, and later so greatly admired, Geof Motley, his matchless chin prominent, doing an ad flogging Glen Ewin’s apricot jam – in a large tin if I remember. (Perhaps an effort to get us kiddies to eat some fruit, even though the jam was full of sugar.)

On Victorian TV at the very end of the 60s came the Four and Twenty Pies ad, with Jack Dyer driving a bus along a country track. Inside was a host of football luminaries singing in praise of the nation’s dietary staple. Among them were Des Tuddenham, Alex Jesaulenko, Bobby Skilton, Kevin Murray and of course Ted Whitten, with EJ also providing musical accompaniment on a squeezebox. In SA we had Balfour’s pies, which a friend of mine once memorably described as “maggot-bags”. I’m fairly confident the contents of the Four and Twenty weren’t that dissimilar.

But folks, back to the main event – Ted Whitten on the Elizabeth Oval and the memory still vivid after all this time. This is the exciting bit.

Well into the game, Footscray were deep in attack, the ball in dispute right in front of us up against the point post, Centrals players trying to force it over the boundary, their blokes trying to make something of a scoring opportunity. Suddenly out of the pack the ball was shot across to the goal square – was it knocked on, or a handpass, or one of those dodgy flick passes that had eventually been banned from the game earlier in the 1960s, of which Ted Whitten incidentally was a skilled exponent?

But he couldn’t be blamed in this particular case, because from nowhere he came hurtling toward the ball, which was just about to bounce on the goal line. He had timed his run perfectly, so well in fact that when his boot made contact with the footy for a certain goal he looked to have been, at most, about two centimetres inside the playing area.

However, there was a problem. Ted Whitten, as mentioned earlier a strong and powerful physical specimen, was travelling at speed with the momentum of a charging rhinoceros. Also mentioned earlier was the presence of an iron chain link fence, into which he was going to collide in micro-seconds with potentially nasty consequences, both for he and the fence. But he had other ideas, and as the smattering of spectators directly behind the goal posts parted left and right he did what this gawking kid, yours truly, did not expect at all.

Later this same year, 1968, at the Mexico City Olympics, the American high jumper Dick Fosbury employed his “Flop” technique, which would go on to dominate the sport. He won the gold medal with a world record leap, as he bounced high-kneed toward the bar and landed on thick foam matting. Sprinting rather than springing, and with nothing softer than the dirt track around the oval to cushion him, Ted Whitten was about to do something a little different. He became airborne, rolled over the iron fence parallel to the ground, perhaps even got a 360-degree spin in there, and landed on his side with a tremendous thud. Some may have said they felt the earth shake, but in the immediate vicinity there was certainly a gasp of concern, and maybe the odd “Crikey!” following the impact.

Unperturbed, as though this was nothing out of the ordinary, he got up, dusted himself off, and placing one hand on the fence hopped over it back onto the field of play. Aged nine and suitably wowed, I had the feeling I’d seen something pretty impressive.

 

Read more from Philip Peel (Reject Phil) HERE

 

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