The old fellah hasn’t been spotted floating around town much, lately……..
Gone are the days when Albert John Comensoli would be smacking a golf ball down the fairway at Waldara……or perched in his usual vantage spot behind the Town End goals at the Showgrounds, passing judgement on his beloved ‘Pies…..
Ab and his wife of 63 years, Lorraine, now spend much of their time pottering around their Adams Street abode ……..
He’s fit and well, and looking forward to chalking up a significant milestone – four score years and ten – tomorrow (August 20).
Coincidentally, when I caught up with him he was painfully trying to digest another snippet of news on the TV, detailing Carlton woes.
“You may not live to see another Blues’ flag, Ab,” I suggest………”Nah, the bastards are just as far away as ever,” he replies………
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Ab’s ties with Carlton stem from his maternal grandfather Bill Collins, who wore the Navy Blue back in the late 19th century.
“He was on two quid a game…..They wanted him to stay down there, but he said: ‘No, I’ve gotta earn some more money for the family’ ……So he returned home to do some gold-mining, and coached Exelsior, an O & M club on the outskirts of Rutherglen.”
“He was a big, gentle man, but could be a wild bugger if he was stirred up…..Wouldn’t allow any beer inside the house, apparently.”
The background of the Comensoli side of the family replicates countless tales of European immigrants. Ab’s grandfather Dominic emanated from a tiny, thousand-year-old Italian town called Edaloo-Moo, high up in the Alps, near the border of Switzerland and Austria.
He then trekked out to Australia and landed in Rutherglen, seeking to make his fortune as a gold-fossicker.
Ab was 14, going on 15, when his parents, Bill Snr and May, moved down to Wangaratta, in search of more work opportunities for the four boys and five girls…..eventually settling in Templeton Street.
The Comensolis made their name in local football in the 50s and 60s.
Ab (left), Bill, Bob and Jim (Jay).
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Ab got his first job, as a mechanic, at Ovens Motors…..His fascination with footy was piqued when he started playing in the local junior League.
Bill Jnr, his eldest brother, had walked straight into the crackerjack Wangaratta team in 1952, and from that point on the Comensoli’s were pretty well intertwined with the ‘Pies.
“I used to kid ‘em on and tell ‘em I had a soft spot for the Rovers, but Pop (his dad Bill Snr) was a one-eyed ‘Pie…..He could get into a blue pretty easily…..Had an argument there one day with some old bloke who was a mad Rover…..”
“He turned around and threatened to give him a bunch of fives…. Nan (his wife May) said: ‘Settle down Pop, it’s only a game’…..But to Pop it was more than a game.”
Meanwhile, Ab played in a WJFL Grand Final with the Junior Magpies alongside another brother Bob (incidentally, Bob’s grandson Joel is now playing there, 70 years later).
“We won everything bar the Grand Final that year…..Then I decided to head out to Tarrawingee, who were the reigning O & K premiers, and were coached by an ex-Wang ruckman, Kevin French.”
He’d played 55 games with the Bulldogs before he decided he’d had enough of being a mechanic, and embarked on a radical career-change……..as a Shearer.
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Longreach is located in the heart of Queensland – 650km from Mt. Isa, 700km from Rockhampton and 1200km from Brisbane.
Ab was 21, and soon learned to cope with the experience of life in the outback…..
“They were great people….You’d strike all types…..I was walking down the main street there one night…..Next thing this bloke comes flying backwards out through the swinging doors of the Pub, and lands flat on his back.”
“I said: ‘What’s wrong with you ?’………’Nothin’ ‘, he replied….’ I was just standing there, minding my own business, havin’ a beer, and these two buggers were fighting…..One of ‘em swung….and hit me….”
“Those swinging doors used to get broken off every week….”
Ab was still shearing when he arrived home after three years in the Wild West….. Bill, after a magnificent career with the Magpies, had just been enticed to Beechworth as captain-coach in 1959……One of his first recruits was his younger brother, whom those at Bomberland instantly labelled ‘Meggsy’.
They forged a strong partnership…….There was no better, or more inspirational big man in the O & K than Bill, who waged some terrific ruck battles with fellahs like Moyhu’s Maurie ‘Bumper’ Farrell, Chiltern’s Joe Dixon and Tarrawingee’s Ray Warford.
And Ab became something of a ‘ Kossie Pickett-style’ resting rover. Besides his work around the packs he proved dynamite near the big sticks and topped Beechworth’s goal-kicking in four of his five years at Baarmutha Park.
He bagged one haul of 10, a few others of seven and eight, and finished with 80 goals in his finest season.
With a slight physique, he copped his share of punishment, but Bill made sure to keep an eye on him, as he did with most of his team-mates.
Local dairy-proprietor Graeme Cook, who was officiating as the man in white in one particularly rugged clash, accused Ab of throwing his weight around recklessly……..”What !……I’m barely 5’5” and weigh eight and a half stone, and you’re blaming me for being too aggressive……”.
“I must admit, though,” he says, “….I had a pretty short fuse. If I got hit I’d hit back.”
Ab says one thing that hindered him in his time at Beechworth was that Shearing affected his match-fitness…..
“I used to get really stiff in the legs. Shearing took a bit of my pace away,” he recalls.
And he copped a shattered little finger one season, which caused him some discomfort………
“I knew how crook it was, but went to old Roy Phillips, my doctor, to see if he could help…..He kept yanking at the bloody thing and I was screaming with pain. It took ages to get over it.”
“I couldn’t shear for a while, and we had to borrow a bit of money to keep us going…..There was no such thing in those days, as Player Insurance to help you out…..
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Beechworth went into the 1960 Grand Final as warm favourites after a convincing win over Moyhu in the Second Semi……..But the Hoppers were a different side in the ‘Big One’ and the game fluctuated throughout.
Its fate still lay in the balance when the siren blew………Moyhu were holding a six-point lead, but Ab had taken a mark, and lined up his shot from the boundary, with the crowd holding their collective breath.
He missed……and the Hoppers were home……..
The following season the Bombers met Greta in the Grand Final and made amends with a 13-point win over the tiring Purple and Golds.
The baby of the Comensoli clan, Jay, who had joined his brothers at Beechworth during the season, proved the game’s hero, as he led beautifully and kicked with deadly accuracy, to finish with six of Beechworth’s 14 goals.
Ab Comensoli (third from left, kneeling) in Beechworth’s 1961 premiership photo.
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Bill switched over to Milawa as coach in 1964 and Ab followed him, spending a couple of fruitful seasons with the Demons before deciding he should have a crack at the coaching caper himself.
Glenrowan appointed him as their leader……The first thing he did was to re-build the playing list. He’d turned over about 27 players when they lined up in 1966, and placed his faith on a talented group of youngsters.
“We had several 15-18 year-olds, kids like David McCullough, John and Peter Booth, John Michelini, Hans Tatulaschwili and a few others, to go along with some of the stalwarts…..”
“The Club had its own unique culture, and it was an enjoyable place to be. The BDFL was an interesting League…….You’d go up to a place like Tatong, or Tolmie, where they’d rather a fight than a feed…..”
“I was in the shower with ruckman Corrie Haring after one game, and someone came in and said: ‘There’s a bloke out there having a go at your old man, Corrie………..Out he went, and flattened the fellah…….He came back in and I said: ‘Did you clean that up, mate ?’……’Yeah, no worries…..’ “
“On another occasion, a couple of our supporters were irate at the goal umpire, and reckoned he’d given a couple of touchy decisions against us. One of them sneaked up behind the ump and donged him, then took off into the bush, with a few of the opposition chasing after him…..”
Among Glenrowan’s keenest fans was a great local identity, Myra Tully, a mother of 10, who’d been following the side for decades…..
“She was always first there and barracked hard all day……Her favourite saying was: ‘Pick up your man Tigers….Pick up your man….’ “
In Ab’s third year as coach, 1968, they went within a whisker of taking out the flag, when All Blacks narrowly defeated them…….”We’d probably have won it if Peter Booth hadn’t been cleaned up late in the game…….” he says.
Lorraine jokes that their son Mark has never let her forget that day…..”The kids and I came down a bit later, and ran out of petrol on the way…….He was the mascot, and missed leading the team out on the ground ! ….”
Ab realised that his time as a player was up after that game …..”My back was buggered, and I was finding it hard to get up for each game…….”
Ab leads Glenrowan into the Grand Final in the mid-sixties.
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He took over as coach of WJFL club Centrals in 1969 – the first of eight years he had at the helm:
“We went two seasons without winning a game, then the success eventually came…….There were some terrific youngsters who came through, like Shane Robertson, Leighton Wood, Peter Sanderson, David Cunningham, ‘Pup’, Neville and ‘Spud’ Allan, Peter Brown, Geoff Guley, Brendan ‘Commo’…….a lot of them enjoyed fine senior careers…..”
“We defeated College in the ‘75 Grand Final, and took it out again in ‘76, when we went through undefeated.”
Centrals had a fine era in the WJFL during the 70s. Ab Comensoli with his charges.
He took a year off footy, but Wangaratta were keen to get him involved…..He coached their Reserves for three years, which included two Grand Final appearances, and did the Thirds job for one season.
“That year really tested me out,” he says. He was now working with VicRoads and was finding it difficult to devote the time to coaching.
Instead, he stepped back and helped out on the recruiting front with Bob Rowland and the senior coach, Ray Card.
He remained vitally connected to the Club and, in fact, his deep affection for Wangaratta still remains………the Pies acknowledged his service with a Life Membership many years ago.
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Sport has played a massive part in the family’s life. Lorraine remains as well-informed and enthusiastic as ‘Ab’……..Their two kids, Mark and Ali (another baby, Brett, survived for three days) inherited the genes.
Mark is a twelve-time Wangaratta Table Tennis singles champ, a Life Member of the Yarrawonga Association and fervent golfer, as is Ali, who has enjoyed quite a bit of success in recent years at the Howlong Golf Club.
Veteran cricket pundits will remember Ab as a key component of the South Wangaratta team, which played in the Wang Social Association for more than 25 years.
He picked up hundreds of wickets as a left-arm opening bowler with the ability to move the ball…… Mark joined him in the Southerners line-up for the last decade or so of his career…….
Of course Mark combined playing Saturday and Sunday cricket for many years, and produced his most memorable performance when he captured 6/18 to pilot Rovers to a WDCA premiership in 1980/81………
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A large contingent of the Comensoli clan will gather at the week-end to celebrate Ab’s 90th……..at which many tall tales and true are expected to be divulged ………
This story appeared first on KB Hill’s website On Reflection and is used here with permission.
All photos sourced from KB Hill’s resources unless otherwise acknowledged.
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