Almanac Footy: The day 1000 goals needed no security

 

IF the ball with which Lance Franklin kicked his 1000^th goal is worth $200,000 to well-heeled memorabilia collectors, as has been suggested, then Doug Wade probably should start rummaging around his house.

 

“Yes, I’ve still got mine – I think,” he told me this week.

 

“I just don’t know where it is.”

 

The six footballers who have reached the mammoth milestone constitute one of the game’s most exclusive clubs, and the affable Geelong and North Melbourne champion, now 80, is the most senior of the five living members and therefore the de facto president.

 

He has clear memories of the day he became only the second to achieve the feat – and as an occasion, it couldn’t have been more different to the pandemonium that engulfed the Sydney Cricket Ground when Franklin became the sixth last weekend.

 

It came while playing for North against Hawthorn in a final-round home and away game at Princes Park, Carlton, in 1974.

 

It was one of three he kicked for the game, taking him to 91 for the season, which was converted to 100 – the second ton of his career – during the finals series that saw North lose the Grand Final to Richmond.

 

And while 20,000 fans swamped Franklin and held up the match for half an hour, there was nothing of the sort for Wade. “The only people who ran out were two trainers,” he said.

 

Which was a bit strange because when he booted 100 for the Cats five years earlier there was an invasion, but that might have been because that game was at Kardinia park, their home ground.

 

There had been no great media build-up to the event, Wade said. “In those days, there wasn’t much – it was no big deal. I knew I was close to it, and on the day so did North and Hawthorn.

 

“There was only one footy used then, and it was mounted and inscribed and presented to me.”

 

It’s one of only a limited number of memorabilia items from a stupendously successful career that he has kept, which is a source of some regret.

 

“I didn’t worry about it much in those days but I wish I’d kept a lot of the things I had. I gave a lot away to kids and family.”

 

But a big book of cuttings produced by North to mark the end of his career provides plenty of nostalgia.

 

Asked if he would consider selling the 1000 goal footy, he said: “No, I don’t think I would.” But then after a short pause: “There’s always a price on everything, isn’t there.”

 

Wade wasn’t quite the first footballer to kick 1000 goals – but he was the only one alive at the time.

 

That was 37 years after the first, Gordon Coventry, played the last of his 306 games for Collingwood in 1937 – and seven years after his death at 67 in 1968.

 

It took another 20 years before Hawk Jason Dunstall became the third, kicking his 1000^th against the then Brisbane Bears at the Gabba in 1994. Tony Lockett followed up against Fremantle the following year and Gary Ablett, also against Fremantle, the year after that, 1996.

 

Their club should, of course, have at least two more members.

 

Essendon superstar John Coleman, after whom the medal for leading goalkicker each year is named, kicked 537 in only 98 matches before a knee injury ended his spectacular career at age 25 in 1954.

 

And Hawk Peter Hudson kicked 727 in 129 matches, despite returning to Tasmania for two years, and retiring at just 31. When you include Tasmanian club and state footy, etc, Hudson played 372 matches altogether for 2191 goals, an all-comers record.

 

Wade, a bush boy from Horsham, came along just seven years after Coleman and kick-started a new goal-den era which was enhanced  when Hudson and Collingwood’s Peter McKenna also arrived on the scene.

 

Wade played 267 games between 1961 and 1975, leading Geelong’s goalkicking 11 times and North Melbourne’s twice, and finishing with 1057 goals, 834 for the Cats and 223 for the Roos.

 

He played in premierships with both clubs, in 1963 and 1975 – but  nearly didn’t make the historic North triumph.

 

Despite kicking 103 the year before, his form dropped off to the extent that he played only 13 home and away games for 41 goals, adding two more in a losing second semi against the Hawks and missing the Preliminary Final.

 

Coach Ron Barassi had decided not to play him in the decider but distraught and angry – insiders at the time recall a dressing room door almost being slammed off its hinges – Wade pleaded to be given a chance to finish his career on the highest possible note.

 

The master mentor – after studying a set of stats provided by club president Allen Aylett – relented and restored him to the team.

 

Wade responded with four goals from 10 possessions as North thrashed Hawthorn to claim their first-ever flag.

 

And then he retired – in triumph.

 

Like everyone else, Wade, who lives near Geelong, is a fan of Franklin’s. “He’s been fantastic for the game,” he said.

 

And like most other experts, he does not expect to see the mountain climbed again, not in the foreseeable future anyway. The same goes for 100 goal seasons.

 

“It’s played a lot differently from our day,” he says. “Tom Hawkins (who is approaching 700 goals) is our full-forward at Geelong, but he also goes in the ruck and runs down to half-back. It’s hard to kick 100 goals doing that.”

 

That’s certainly not something the man in the No 23 guernsey for Geelong or the No 2 for North Melbourne was ever guilty of doing – he just took the big marks and kicked the big goals.

 

 

 

Read more from Ron Reed HERE.

 

 

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Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

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