Almanac Memoir: Summer, Autumn, FOOTBALL and Spring

Reminiscences of a country football reporter

 

 

My father, former Border Morning Mail football reporter Jim Clark, recalls his experiences as a country football reporter in the 1950s and 1960s. In recollecting his memories of Ovens and Murray League football at the time he reflects on the influence of football in the daily lives of footy followers.

 

In posting this piece, written by my father seven years ago, I pay tribute to him twelve months after his passing aged 100.

 

Peter Clark

 

 

The grand final postmortem done, the conversation switched to the influence of football in our lives. I was chatting with an official of the Ovens and Murray League team that had lost the premiership the day before. “You know,” he said “it is not just losing that hurts, it is also the fact that we won’t have football for another six months!”

 

I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so answered with dead silence! He went on: “The four seasons really are summer, autumn, FOOTBALL and spring.”

 

Reflecting on my experiences of country football, many years later, I was surprised at my first thoughts. Not of my favourite player, not my best-ever team, not of the most memorable game. What immediately came to mind was a nine-year old lad who took great delight sharing drop kicking practice with the ‘grown-ups’ of my neighbourhood. I wonder whether there are football followers today who regret the demise of the drop kick, what 50 years ago? I am one who does miss the skill of drop kicking. I also thought of the ten-year old who kept pestering his Mum and Dad to let him walk the mile or so to the nearest, and only, shop, just so he could hold and admire one of those lovely new red footballs. On both occasions that youngster was me.

 

I was only ten when there was an all-in brawl in a game between Howlong and Kiewa at Howlong. The fight was exciting enough but not as interesting to me as the hot dog cart left unattended when its owner jumped the fence and joined the fray.

 

How could I forget what happened on a wet Saturday at Dederang just after World War II. Kergunyah, the visiting team, was a man short when their captain Jack Glass spotted me sitting in a car out of the rain. “You’re in!” he said. “We’ll find boots but we can’t give you a jumper, it went home with one of our players last week and didn’t come back.” So, unregistered, unprepared, untrained and unhappy, out I went in my white singlet to try and get a kick against the fit, tough locals. If I thought my gear made me stand out that day, I was mistaken. The lass I chose to partner me at the post-match dance quipped: “You must have been 19th man today, I didn’t see you on the ground.” I thought better of telling her that I had kicked the first goal!”

 

I laughed at myself when I thought of the boundary umpire dogpaddling through floodwater to retrieve the football after a goal had been kicked at the flood-prone Kiewa football ground.

 

 

Jim Clark pondering the site where footballs were regularly fetched from the Kiewa River floodplain (source: author)

 

 

You make your own luck, we’re told. True enough, but there are also timely coincidences that help make your destiny. Just after the war I was back home in Wodonga without work and without cash. Enter the Border Morning Mail newspaper at Albury. They wanted a cadet journalist and, at age 24, I applied and got the job. No, not a job, but a work of love, especially when a few years later, I became the Mail’s chief football reporter, an unofficial position earning no extra pay. This was my opportunity to not only pursue a career but simultaneously to closely follow one of my main sporting interests, football.

 

 

Jim Clark at his desk (source: author)

 

 

I was just one of a small team of reporters who happened to have some football experience. It was pretty much a one-man job with assistance, when needed, from other journalists. But that’s not to say we took our task of bringing the football news, team selections, match previews, results and game reports to a wide footy-hungry readership lightly. It was also where I developed many friendships with football people, including players, coaches, officials and district football correspondents. Much of what was printed and read about football in those days came from a network of loyal correspondents. In our case they included Henry Taft (of Rutherglen), Don Forbes (Yarrawonga), Bill Findlay (Wangaratta Rovers), Jack Garoni (Myrtleford) and Norm Minns (a willing source of information wherever he coached in the O & M League).

 

Football writers are unbiased, aren’t they? At least I thought I was, even though l lived in Wodonga and worked at Albury, both home to Ovens and Murray heavyweight teams. I quickly found out that footy scribes are fair game for coaches looking for any means to fire up their charges. At a game between Wangaratta Rovers and Wodonga at Wangaratta, prior to the battle I wanted to say hello to my friend Rovers’ coach Bob Rose, wish him luck and shake his hand. As I approached the change room door, I could hear Bob’s booming voice shouting at his players: “Clark is on their side, you know that! He’s with them now, urging them on.” I didn’t enter the room. That was one lesson.

 

Another I learnt was to keep my mouth shut in the presence of workmates. Wodonga was to play a crucial game against the top team and foolishly I said to one of my colleagues: “I think I know how to beat them.” To my embarrassment and annoyance, the ‘mate’ came to my office the next day with Wodonga’s coach behind him. “Tell him what you told me,” my workmate said. So, trapped, I told the coach: “I’d try to starve their best player.” “And how would you do that?” He asked with more than a touch of disbelief. Meekly, I answered: “Whenever you have the ball make sure you deliver it to where he isn’t.” I’ve forgotten whether he replied, but he left soon afterwards. That game resulted in a win to Wodonga’s opponent, secured with a late goal kicked by the ‘target’ player. Pure coincidence of course!

 

Put a foot wrong, miss something crucial, fail to observe a highlight, or give credit where deserved and you would be promptly pulled into line by one or many unhappy readers. Even when you were unarguably right some would take you to task.

 

One example comes to mind. Late one Sunday night, when I had worked out the Ovens and Murray team percentages (yes, that too was part of the job!) I was confronted by one of the Mail’s downstairs staff waving a piece of copy paper I had dropped down the shoot for type setting. “This says North Albury’s percentage has gone down, even though they won yesterday. How can that be right?” Too tired to explain in detail, I simply said, “Think about it.”

 

If you live in Brisbane, as I do now, and follow the AFL, you will have been caught up in the hype that surrounds rugby league’s State of Origin matches. You cannot escape it! Each year at ‘Origin time’ I think of the popularity Australian Rules interleague games enjoyed in the 1950s and 1960s.

 

Travelling on the team bus, usually in the company of league president Clem Hill and secretary Cleaver Bunton, I was often the target of good humoured banter about my efforts as a footy scribe. On one such trip O&M captain, former Essendon champion Greg Tate, didn’t whisper when he advised me to “get behind” his team Rutherglen when “guessing” who might win that year’s premiership. Of course, he was right, when well against the odds, outsiders Rutherglen did win. And later he didn’t forget to remind me!

 

Former Collingwood star Mac Holten, for whom I later worked when he was Minister for Repatriation, led the O&M team in football’s Coronation Match in 1953 against the Bendigo League at Echuca. At half time Bendigo were well ahead. One of their vocal supporters elbowed me in the ribs and said: “These Ovens and Murray blokes are too big and too slow – no match for us.” That comment was still in my mind when I entered the O & M’s room and heard Holten barking at his players for what he described as a pitiful first half performance, including his own. A much different mood settled over the Bendigo camp when the O & M turned the game on its head in the third quarter, led by a rampaging captain. I savour that memory!

 

These days as I watch football on TV I often reflect on the changes the years have brought. I ask myself whether I can envisage the Strang brothers, of Richmond fame, running onto the football ground in pink boots. Or big John Nicholls wearing an off-white jumper instead of Carlton’s beloved navy blue. There are days when I don’t immediately know which team is which at the first bounce. Rule changes will come and go. In the case of the deliberate out-of-bounds rule the sooner it is scrapped the better. If not, sometime a team may lose a grand final because of a wrongly given free kick.

 

As I write this there is speculation that wide-ranging changes may be necessary for the very survival of country football in some regions. Will we see much smaller leagues and teams with fewer players? It seems likely. And might team announcements only name players as forwards, backs, mid-fielders and rucks? Not much point in naming rovers, centres and centre-half-forwards when nowadays those terms are seldom used.

 

One change we will not see, I hope and believe, is a downward trend in the popularity of our great game. Not even if we travel to footy in electric cars to watch teams of robots! We’ll still be there.

 

Today’s newspapers, big and small, play a lesser role in bringing the news football lovers must have. There have been, and still are, predictions that the Internet will eventually bring about the demise of newspapers we have relied upon for decades. I disagree. I believe country football followers will continue to want local news written by local journalists employed by local newspaper owners eager to satisfy their needs.

 

Now 94 and long retired, I often think of the talk I had with the losing team official after the grand final all those years ago. His reference to football as the fourth climate season was tongue-in-cheek, needless to say, but not such a wild statement if we acknowledge that in winter there is no subject more talked about than football, day after day, from March to October every year.

 

Written by Jim Clark (2019)

 

To read more from Peter Clark click Here

 

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