Keith Truscott
Today's headlines
Today's videos
‘It just makes it more real’, says Brad Miller, looking back at the Shrine of Remembrance, where the 2009 playing list has just spent over an hour on the Tuesday before Anzac Day, touring and peacefully taking in the ‘The Greater Game’ exhibition. As its name suggests, this temporary display is a specially tailored collection that reflects on the place of conflict in the lives of so many sportsmen.
Paul Wheatley and Cameron Bruce have just finished making their way through the exhibition, noting the number of Melbourne players acknowledged – Barassi, Truscott – the names familiar and linked to awards to this day. The Victoria Cross on display is looked at intently, and James McDonald reads The Ode as the Last Post and Reveille in turn sound deep within the Shrine.
From year to year, story to story they move, many of them descendants of veterans and all part of the story of this place in their own right, dual connections held via family and club alike. Melbourne has had players and support staff in every conflict from World War One to Korea, when Geoff Collins graced the skies, with National Servicemen following in his stead.
Past and present are very close in this place. Miller queries the style of the uniforms worn from one war to the next, Mark Jamar asks the Shrine guide about the medals he wears from the time of the Vietnam War, and the generations blur in gentle recognition.
Most of the current day players know about Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott, after whom the Club’s Best and Fairest is named. Other awards also bear the names of the fallen – Second Best and Fairest is for lost pilot, Sid Anderson, and Third Best and Fairest commemorates Ron Barassi Senior, killed at Tobruk, father of Ronald Dale. The Best First Year Player award also has its place, named in honour of young ruckman Harold Ball - a Private with 2/9 Field Ambulance, captured and killed in Malaya in 1942.
All were integral to the Club, playing their role in premierships of 1939 and 1940, and Anderson also playing in 1941. Truscott in particular was a feature of the local sporting landscape long before he came to Melbourne in 1937, as a local cricketer and captain of Melbourne High’s Old Boys football side. He became the ‘ubiquitous redhead’, the darling of a nation and the hope of a side. Truscott – after initial hiccups - flew as if he was born to it, and took to the skies as if they were his natural environment, having played the game with the same heart and soul.
Barassi, like Truscott, is a familiar name in red and blue circles. The Club’s Third Best and Fairest is named in his honour. In August 1941, shortly after hearing about his death, the Sporting Globe reported that ‘Players, trainers and representative officials…stood on the ground with bowed heads. As a bugler sounded the first notes of the Last Post the crowd rose to its feet. It was a tribute befitting a great clubman, a clever footballer and a gallant soldier.’
Gallant. The word could also have been applied to a young ruckman by the name of Harold Ball. He died in Malaya after having played just 33 games and kicked 33 goals. He had also played in two premierships, in 1939 and 1940, and he was hailed as one of the best in the game. It was said of him in the Sporting Globe late in 1941 that ‘Every season for the last few years, Melbourne have been the envy of other League clubs by producing a ready-made champion who has been able to step into an important position and hold it against all comers. Several seasons ago Harold Ball, a young six-footer from Merbein, jumped into the Melbourne side and was the best first year player for that season.’
The loss of the likes of Ball, Barassi and ‘Bluey’ hit the Club hard. As one generation of young men stood in silence on 21 April 2009, so another assembled for two minutes’ silence in the club rooms on 31 March 1943. ‘Bluey’ was gone – Club President Joe Blair spoke for many when he said, ‘There was no finer example of a grand young Australian.’ Even after he enlisted in April 1940, Truscott had continued playing, and took his place in the triumphant Grand Final side at the end of that season. He had returned for one more game when on leave, played in the mud of Punt Road against Richmond in May 1942. Despite a 79 point loss for Melbourne, it was what the Football Record called ‘a gala day for ‘Bluey’’, revelling in the chance to lead the way for one last day, one remaining game.
And so he left to become the Commanding Officer of No. 76 Squadron, and so he was lost but not forgotten less than a year later, and is commemorated to this day. The Club also took in Clyde Helmer, ‘one of the best half-forwards in the last decade.’ As a youngster from Rushworth, he had starred first in the Goulburn Valley League, then at Geelong, encouraged by his cousin, Fred Hawking, who played 102 games there. On leave during the war, Helmer had scouts clambering for his services, and Melbourne won, securing him for two games in 1942. Sadly, he was killed in April 1945, another of a long parade of VFL identities who would never play the game again.
As Melbourne recovered post-war to come back to the MCG in 1946 and play the game - having been in exile at Punt Road while the larger ground was used as a personnel depot and transit camp for American Marines and RAAF personnel - so the Club had regrouped after World War One. Then, after a recess of three seasons, there were 28 new players in the team of 43. These included Gallipoli veteran Ivor Warne-Smith, who went on to win two Brownlow Medals, then served in World War Two at the age of 43, as well as Albert Chadwick, who learned to play the game wearing his army boots, and George Haines, an AIF veteran who changed his name from ‘Heinz’ to overcome anti-German sentiment.
They, as in a future generation, were walking in the footsteps of those who had been lost in conflict. World War One was called ‘the war to end all wars’, but was merely the beginning. In this beginning, they joined up eagerly, including the recently retired Melbourne defender, Arthur Mueller ‘Joe’ Pearce, who enlisted on 17 August 1914, aged 29, and whose words at a farewell dinner resonate even today. ‘I think I ought to go, and if I don’t come back, well, it won’t much matter….’ Corporal Pearce was killed at the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, one of the first of the Anzacs. His hometown newspaper – the Bendigo Advertiser – lauded him in his contribution to sport and life. ‘The call of his country was readily responded to by Corporal Pearce…He was one of the most popular players in the metropolis.’ Pearce’s cousin - Jack Mueller - would himself forge a legendary status wearing Melbourne colours in coming decades.
At the other end of the war, in the shadow of the Armistice and with the world holding its breath for peace, Clifford Burge fell at Villers-Bretonneux in France on 14 August 1918. He hadn’t needed to be there, as he was recovering from being gassed, but in typical fashion had volunteered his way to the thick of the conflict. Burge had enlisted in February 1915, after just five games with the Demons, all played in 1914. He had been recognised for the promising start to his career, with the Sport newspaper of 1 May 1914 stating ‘Burge, a big fellow from Elsternwick, did well in Melbourne’s ruck last Saturday. His first appearance was very satisfactory.’
But no more. Nearly 100 years later the players of the Melbourne Football Club stand in the sunshine outside the Shrine, surrounded by tourists and traffic. They have forged a link with those whose service created this place. It is real. We will remember them.
Melbourne Football Club – past and present players lost in war (from research as at April 2009)
World War One
Clifford Burge, Jack Doubleday, Frank Lugton, James Mackie, Fen McDonald, Arthur ‘Joe’ Pearce, Percy Rodriguez, Alf Williamson, Tom ‘Alick’ Ogilvie
World War Two
Sid Anderson, Jack Atkins, Harold Ball, Ron Barassi Senior, Noel Ellis, Clyde Helmer, Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott, Derek Mollison, Ted Regan, Archie Roberts, Beres Reilly, Percy Wood.
WebMail
My BigPond