Almanac Footy: The priceless lessons of history

 

 

The Margaret Donoghoe Sportsground (currently known as Patches Asphalt Park.)

 

 

The cities are Queanbeyan and Canberra and the historians are Ron ‘Chook’ Fowlie and Keith Miller.

 

I first met both in the late 1970s when Ron was (as he still is) a leading administrator and advocate for the Queanbeyan Tigers and Keith was the newly appointed captain-coach at Eastlake.

 

As a cadet with The Canberra Times, I was covering the footy when Ron, the Queanbeyan president, became the first general manager of the ACTAFL after a major revamp. He was ideal, respected by all clubs, forthcoming as far as he could be with the media and a conciliator par excellence.

 

And, in his first year in the job, 1980, the ACT beat the VFL.

 

My cadetship interrupted an under-19 career at Eastlake, which, while unpromising in pure football terms, afforded a magical inside view into Keith’s arrival. The strapping, mop-headed progressive ruckman would turn 25 only just before the 1978 season. He had arrived with some other star imports, with all the consequent pressure felt by some of the older brigade and some of the local thrusting youngsters for spots in the side.

 

That he led this side to beat the highly fancied (and highly monied) Ainslie (under no less than Kevin Neale, also in his first season in Canberra) in that year’s grand final, after trailing by five goals at half-time, has passed into legend.

 

It was a grand time, and just part of the century of capital football that Ron and Keith have captured in their separate works.

 

Ron’s comes in no less than three volumes and the depth of his work is astonishing. He has invested his time into a true passion project, spending aeons going over the records of the club and the Queanbeyan Age, and tracking down past players and officials to put together the proud history of the club that has competed with, and for periods dominated, its ACT neighbours since 1925. That’s two years before the Federal Parliament moved to Canberra from Melbourne.

 

Keith’s book is a handsome hardback, which succeeds in the herculean task of telling the stories of two clubs, Eastlake and Manuka, who shared the same inner south part of Canberra, which led eventually to their merger. Since 1991, the clubs went forward first as Southern District but, within a few years, as Eastlake, but not returning to their South Melbourne colours; instead wearing the Manuka Bullants (Essendon) strip.

 

Keith’s, too, is a real work of love: two years of searching, writing, interviewing and compiling, with editing and design assistance from the Almanac and Malarkey teams.

 

Before we hear from the authors, check the CVs.

 

During ‘Chook’s’ time at the helm, Queanbeyan has won eight Club Championship Awards and 10 First Grade Premierships. He was (deep breath) club secretary 1973 –1974; president 1975-1983; club director 1981–1988; secretary-manager of the licensed club 1983-1984; chairman of football 1985, 1987–1988, 2016 to current; chairman of selectors 1976, 1987, 1988; under-19 coach 1983–1985 (1984 Premiers); ACTAFL delegate 1973–1988; ACTAFL general manager 1980–1983; Queanbeyan football operations general manager 1987–2014; team manager, all grades, 2016-current. He was awarded the National Football League Merit Certificate in 1985, carried the 2000 Olympic Torch and was awarded the Australian Sports Medal in 2000.

 

Keith played two games with Geelong in 1974, and in the nine seasons surrounding that one, he was club best and fairest seven times. In the preceding two years, he was Echuca’s best and fairest, in 1972 as a teenager. In the following decade, he would be Turvey Park’s best and fairest in 1976 and 1977, Eastlake premiership coach 1978, Eastlake best and fairest 1979, 1980 and 1981, Mulrooney Medallist (league best and fairest) 1979 and 1981, and Alex Jesaulenko Medallist, best on ground in a losing grand final side in 1982.

 

And, of course, he was prominent in that win over the VFL, which he often referred to back in the day as the Vultures Football League for its gluttonous appetite for footballers and its ability to half-chew them up and unceremoniously spit them out. As the Almanac put it on the book’s release in 2013,

 

Miller played, coached, managed, administered and did just about everything else at Eastlake.

 

As the noted historian and Carlton fan Professor John Molony put it in the foreword,

 

‘Statistics have no life in themselves; they merely tally the things that make our lives. Our author has gone beyond that to write a fine book, replete with dignity, decency and a touch of creative artistry … He never stoops to meanness, and he instinctively knows when to leave on the field matters that belong only there’.

 

Miller had never been to Canberra before being flown over by Eastlake, home of Alex Jesaulenko.

 

Eastlake were not to know that Jezza was Miller’s hero, and Keith hadn’t known Jezza’s origins. ‘Not a Carlton person’, Miller (who follows the black-and-whites) had actually dropped out of footy for a couple of years while at uni – but had still gone to Carlton games just to see the champ.

 

“When I came over here for the interview and realised [the connection], that was it. I said, ‘This is destiny, this is’.”

 

Miller had had to break into the club in some ways, melding a couple of star imports, including himself, into a pretty tight-knit group, with a couple of its own stars with ‘wayward tendencies’. The young coach was direct and honest, and got them to be premiership standouts. The bulk of the players remained locals ‘and the bond that they had made the coaching a lot easier’.

 

Ainslie had bought in more imports than Eastlake and were highly fancied, but almost half a century on, Miller declares:

 

“That’s probably the most satisfying thing of my whole career, winning that premiership; not for myself but for what it meant to Eastlake with a group that was fundamentally locals.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

After stewarding the ACT RAMs in the TAC Cup and a brief stint with Ron at Queanbeyan, Keith was approached by Graham Glenn to come back to Eastlake as football manager – and it was from there that the book came about.

 

There were bits of history, but nothing substantial:

 

“It was on my mind for some years.”

 

Glenn, player at Manuka 1958-1963, and president at Eastlake across the turn of the 21^st century, gave ‘sensational’ support for a book that at once told the story of the two clubs and the story of the national capital.

 

That story of course started in Queanbeyan where the statue of John Gale, ‘Father of Canberra’, still watches over the city from the courthouse corner of the main street, and where it must only be a question of time before there is one for Fowlie.

 

Miller describes Ron as ‘a classic’, ‘a wheeler and dealer’ who has brought an unmatched ‘togetherness’ to the lone NSW club in the Canberra AFL first-grade comp.

 

“Yes, they exploit the them-against-us mentality very well,” says Miller. “Canberra against us. Canberra against Karabar (the Tigers home part of Queanbeyan).”

 

“What they have got is fundamentally a really great club spirit and I mean that. They have got volunteers and people who are prepared to do things for the club,” which had been on the verge of folding when Ron came to power.

 

Miller has discussed this Queanbeyan phenomenon with Brian Quade, premiership coach at Manuka and Queanbeyan and so perfectly placed to offer a view.

 

Miller asked him why the Tigers won last year’s flag, in their 100^th year, after Eastlake had led at half-time. Quade’s answer:

 

“It’s just their sense of purpose.”

 

Miller continued,

 

“We probably all knew it was coming in the third quarter … they just have this capacity to really dig in there and not play fancy football; just good, serious, honest football and they get back in the game. And then they go on with it. It’s this sense of togetherness they’ve developed over the years, and it’s not just the players. It’s the club.”

 

In large measure, that spirit comes from Ron ‘Chook’ Fowlie, the 17-year-old who walked into what he was told was to be a players’ meeting and emerged from what turned out to the annual general meeting as secretary when the committee resigned en masse.

 

That was in the early 1970s and Queanbeyan were in a ton of strife. Ron’s first job was to clear the post box, untouched for months, if not years. “It was all bills,” he said matter-of-factly, looking back, and amounted to about $40,000 in 2025 dollars.

 

“It’s an amazing story how we went about resurrecting the footy club, all the young blokes,” he said.

 

They walked up and down the main street with a pig in a wheelbarrow and other food items, selling raffle tickets every Saturday morning – wrote to creditors, asked for time and a bit of support – ‘and they all did’.

 

The need to build a licensed club was obvious to compete against the Eastlakes and Ainslies so Ron seconded ACT Chief Magistrate Ron Cahill, local solicitor Jack Herald and former president Dave Imrie, Ron’s ‘second Dad’.

 

It took six and half years, such were NSW’s licensing laws, involving multiple court appearances, ‘whereas you could walk across the border and buy one over the counter’ in the ACT.

 

The Queanbeyan council allocated the club ‘the bare field’ that was Margaret Donoghoe Sportsground in 1979, says ‘Chook’, looking around the facility now, an enclosed complex with handsome grandstand, equal facilities for the men and women players, extra sheds for visiting sides, again with equal male/female facilities, a Legends Stand, and the Tigers Walk of Honour.

 

Ron’s work on the book started early on.

 

“There was nothing, there was no history,”

 

he recalled, telling of being handed a box which had one premiership flag, the keys to the post box and not much more.

 

Ron, president at 19, had a willing history helper in champion rover Jimmy Black, another member of that rep side that beat the VFL, and they got the best part of four decades’ headstart on Keith.

 

“We were both still playing but we spent hours out at the National Library …” Ron says, understating it mightily. “It’s taken some time, but I’ve got every result of every game we’ve ever played against every club.”

 

The three volumes cover 1925-1988, 1989-1999, and 2000-2023.

 

Ron takes great pride in the club’s ‘amazing’ success in

 

‘historical moments: the ’53 Coronation premiership, the ’56 Olympic premiership, the Bicentennial … our 100^th year, and AFL Canberra’s 100^th year.’

 

And the Sydney Olympic year flag was the third in a row, too.

 

You might think with his devotion to the club that Ron worked only in footy but he was simultaneously a rising star in the Foreign Affairs Department as well as being a player, administrator and historian at Queanbeyan.

 

His appointment as the first general manager of ACTAFL ended the diplomatic career path:

 

“on reflection, I probably should have stayed there, but then again this has been a great environment, coming from nowhere to somewhere.”

 

He’s still in touch with mates from Foreign Affairs days, hardly surprising given this was the likely lad who could convince those in the typing pool to ‘do up’ his hand-written notes for the books ‘the whole lot of them – they’d down tools on some of the more important things and do this book – they were terrific.’

 

One feature of the new Tiger complex is a Premiership Flag display, all put up to full mast on their dozen or more poles every match day, most often by guess who? Of course, that young bloke who pulled the lone flag out of the dusty box back in 1972-73.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More from Dougie (Andrew) can be read Here