Almanac Footy: No mere legend
No mere legend
My favourite Fitzroy story speaks to the scope of our great game to define what our society should be, what it could be. It spits in the face of those who suggest that the AFL should mind its business and keep its powder dry when it comes to making a stand on social issues.
Pastor Sir Doug and Lady Gladys Nicholls’ statues – Parliament Gardens Melbourne
It’s a small story that has become a large one. It’s a story about a former player who would go on to become a pastor, a governor and earn a knighthood. It came before we affixed his name was affixed to a round and became a talisman for the simultaneous shame and splendour of our game. Doug Nicholls was an undersized, speedy footballer. His career was solid, he earned Victorian representation honours a few times and won the Best and Fairest one year for the Fitzroy reserves. But it was what he did after retiring, purloining the recognition and leverage that being a footballer brough him into the political sphere, for which we should forever be grateful.
Haydn Bunton statue – MCG
Lions’ fans of my vintage tended to look back to bask in the glories of our what our club was rather than forward to the national-stage death that was inexorably certain. Haydn Bunton could well be the greatest the game has ever or will ever produce. His record is Bradman-esque. Three Brownlow medals in a relatively short career at Fitzroy, three Sandover medals in a similarly short chapter with Subiaco in the West Australian Football League. One can quibble about the weighting such awards should have in those futile exercises in defining greatness, but his is a record of individual accomplishment that cannot be denied.
This story echoes through us all. It’s not my story to tell but in some ways, I’m part of it – we all are. Bunton: a nascent legend. Nicholls: so, so much more of a great Australian story, yet to unfold – but at this stage, just a recruit at his first training session with his new club, Fitzroy. An Indigenous man, he had endured racial comments and behaviours at his previous club that were typical for a nation yet to realise all that it could and should become. He averted his gaze and distanced himself from his new teammates, changing at the back of the clubrooms instead. Some say it was in an adjacent room. The nascent legend, arguably the greatest footballer of his or any time, Haydn Bunton noted this and went over to befriend the man who would one day be knighted, who would become the first Indigenous governor of an Australian state, who would one day lobby Prime Ministers Chifley, Menzies and Holt. A man who would lead us as a nation to the 1967 Referendum where we voted to change a constitution that had left Indigenous peoples outside of the scope of federal lawmaking.
Who knows exactly what it was Bunton said to Nicholls that day. Fill in the gaps and imagine for yourself as you hopefully take a moment, this Tuesday the 4th of June, the anniversary of Sr. Douglas Ralph Nicholls, OBE., the 28th Governor of South Australia, to remember this great Australian. Whatever he said, Nicholls and Bunton were teammates at Fitzroy for many years to come. Last year, I received a Christmas card from one of my graduating students. It was profoundly simple and profoundly moving. They said, “Thank you for seeing me, for really seeing me.” I don’t know what Bunton said, but thank God Bunton saw Doug Nicholls that day, he really saw him. We’re all the better for it.
Both photographs taken by the author.
Read more from Shane Reid HERE.
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Loving life as a husband, dad and teacher. I’m trying to develop enough skill as a writer so that one day Doc Wheildon’s Newborough, Bernie Quinlan’s Traralgon and Mick Conlon’s 86 Elimination final goal will be considered contemporaneous with Twain’s Mississippi, Hemingway’s Cuba, Beethoven’s 9th and Coltrane’s Love Supreme.
With you 100% Shane. I wrote this a few years ago. Sir Doug’s book is very old so a new version I think is required to educate the kids and adults of today re this man’s achievements and legacy. Cheers
https://isowilson.com/two-giants-of-indigenous-leadership/
Pastor Doug Nicholls visited my primary school when I was in grade 5 or 6 in 1961/62. We had been told he had played VFL footy but the first thing that struck me was his height, he was very short.How could a man that short play VFL footy we wondered? It was also the first time I had seen an aboriginal person in the flesh and he mesmerised me. He spoke eloquently about footy, being aboriginal, and his religious beliefs. He certainly allayed many of the prejudices our rural town was known to have against aboriginals. I was proud to shake his hand and I followed his later life with great interest as I grew older. A wonderful man.
Shane you’ll be delighted to know that both Hadyn Bunton (Albury) and Sir Doug Nicholls (Cummeragunja) were both inducted recently into the inagural AFL NSW Hall of Fame.
Both grew up and learnt their footy in NSW before moving to Melbourne to play in the VFL.
Sir Doug conducted the church service for Hadyn Bunton’s funeral in Adelaide following Bunton’s tragic dearh in a car accident in 1955.