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THE CARLTON footballers of today, the likes of Patrick Cripps, Harry McKay and Sam Walsh, are photographed and filmed ad nauseum. But there was a time when cameras were not in plentiful supply and players quite literally disappeared into the ether.

The Carlton Football Club’s digital archive boasts images of 1103 of the 1224 men to have donned the famous Dark Navy guernsey in senior League competition – from Jimmy Aitken in 1897 to Brodie Kemp in 2021 – which means 121 more aren’t represented by a single photograph.

That number has now been whittled down to 120 with the discovery of an image of one-game senior player Alf Key, by way of a team photo in which he appeared precisely 100 years ago, and thanks to the generosity of a lifelong Carlton supporter (more of that later).

Born in North Carlton in November 1897, Key was recruited to the club from local team Carlton District. On the end of a turbulent week in which Charlie Fisher resigned as captain, Key completed his debut for the old dark Navy Blues against Melbourne at Princes Park in Round 6 – Saturday, June 5, 1920.

Not surprisingly, the home team lost by 18 points, on a day incessant rains left Princes Park under water and prompted a delayed start.

In 1921, Key crossed to neighbouring Fitzroy and featured in two senior matches with the Maroons, before returning to Carlton District in 1922. That year, Key (as resident vice-captain) posed for the team photographer wearing the Carlton guernsey with the CFC monogram as opposed to the CDFC monogram – and it’s worth noting that seven other players including the captain Dee, Harry Bell, Rowley Faust and Vern Wright are all pictured wearing Carlton Football Club guernseys.

Key passed away at the age of 80 in November 29, 1977, some 44 years before his image found its way the club’s archive thanks to Lorraine Gillett, whose father Percy was a long-time Carlton trainer of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s.

Prior to being struck down with ill health, Lorraine instructed her partner Gordon Archer to forward her father’s precious items of Carlton memorabilia to the club – including her father’s trainer’s cap and blazer which she treasured, a trophy awarded to him by the VFL in recognition of his services to the club in the 1947 Premiership year, and various certificates and photographs like the one featuring Alf Key.

Now in her late 70s, Lorraine’s propensity to horde items of Carlton memorabilia, amongst other things, has proved to be a godsend for the club, but Lorraine and her loved ones are equally thrilled that Percy’s items have found the right home.

“Lorraine has lost most of her memory now, but she still remembers most of the Carlton theme song . . . and she is thrilled to pieces to know that Percy’s items may one day be displayed at the club for everyone to see, as she’d always promised that the items would go to Carlton – a place where they would be wanted.

“Lorraine treasured her father’s blazer and cap in particular,” Gordon said. “As a young girl, she and her brother Robert would accompany their mother to Carlton games, as their father had left for the ground early to fulfil matchday duties.

“Lorraine’s mother would take them to Princes Park by bus from Ivanhoe Station to the Sarah Sands Hotel, then walk down Royal Parade to the ground. At Carlton their father would meet them afterwards, but during the matches the children would sit by themselves and watch.”

Gordon, a fellow teacher who met Lorraine at the Glen Waverley Special School for the Mentally Disabled more than 40 years ago, said that Lorraine was a lifelong Carlton devotee – “but she had no choice” in terms of her allegiance, given her father’s presence.

As he said: “Even after Percy gave training away, Lorraine continued to support Carlton. She was a Social Club Member and she just loved everything about it”.

The following is a list of those Carlton players whose images are still outstanding. If you can provide an image of any of the following players, please feel free to contact Tony.DeBolfo@carltonfc.com.au.

Keith Stanley Rae – Carlton’s, Richmond’s and League football’s oldest surviving past player – has passed away peacefully in his sleep at the age of 104 years, four months and 24 days

News of Keith’s death in a Mornington Peninsula nursing home was conveyed to the club by his daughter Julie.

A Carlton centreman in the days of Diggins, Francis and Chitty, Keith’s long life was bookended by two global pandemics – the Spanish flu and now the Corona virus.

Keith was but a toddler when returning soldiers brought the flu ashore in 1919.

He was too young to comprehend then, but the story goes that as thousands succumbed to its killer grip, his Mum and Dad took him north to the Queensland sun so that the little boy could overcome a worrying bout of bronchitis.

Born before the Armistice was signed, and hardened by the days of the Great Depression, Keith was of that fast disappearing generation who also served their country through the Second World War (in his case as a leading seaman).

Between times, the boy from Williamstown chased the pigskin in the VFL through 15 games out of the centre for Carlton in 1939 and again in ’43, and in two more for the Tigers after the guns fell silent in ’46.

Keith was the oldest of five Rae siblings, with three sisters and a brother following.

Appropriately, Carlton’s 550th player to complete his senior debut was born in the Blue Room of his grandfather’s Stag’s Head Hotel in ‘Willy’ on July 30, 1917.

Keith carried his books to the local Williamstown state school, and later Footscray Technical College, despite his father’s best efforts.

“Dad wanted me to go to Scotch College and I said ‘Why go all the way out there?’”, he told me in an interview on the occasion of his 100th birthday.

Not long after finishing up at Footscray Tech, Keith took on a welder’s course at the Williamstown naval dockyards, “but in the end I joined the Navy because I was 16 and I couldn’t get a job”.

That move would later have significant ramifications.

In Williamstown, Keith’s prowess as a midfielder soon came to the attention of the renowned Carlton talent scout Newton Septimus Weston Chandler.

“I reckon it was Newton who approached me at a game at Williamstown and said ‘Son, we think we could use you’,” Keith recalled. “In the end I went up to Carlton to practice and I remember breaking into the team and running down the race.”

Keith got the nod for his first game more than 80 years ago – against Footscray in the 15th round of the 1939 season – with the imprimatur of the then Carlton premiership captain-coach Brighton Diggins.

As he recalled: “He was quite a good bloke Diggins. He told me I was playing and I couldn’t wait to tell my father”.

Keith was named in the centre, between Jack Carney and Bob Green. He followed Diggins down the race with the likes of Baxter, Crisp and Hale.

Together they contributed to Carlton’s 88-point annihilation of the visitors, with Paul Schmidt and Baxter booting nine and eight goals respectively, and ‘Micky’ Crisp putting another five over the goal umpire’s hat.

Omitted after the following match against Hawthorn, Keith’s ’39 season was done and dusted when Carlton failed to make the cut for September.

Then the war came . . . and Keith, already serving with the RAN Volunteer Reserve, was called upon by the navy.

The ensuing three years would see him fulfil various duties on a number of ships, amongst them the destroyer HMAS Nestor which, in June 1942, was amongst a convoy attacked from the air by the Luftwaffe, by U boats and by E boats.

Both engine rooms of the Nestor were flooded and four stokers were killed in that incident.

But Keith lived to tell the tale.

“The plane came over and dropped a bomb. The bomb hit the yard arm of the mast and deflected into the water,” he said.

“I’d just come off the wheel and wooden pieces of it came flying down, some of it hitting me in the leg. It’s why I’ve still got this crook leg, but I was lucky. I sat on top of the deck until a rescue ship came by.”

In 1943, Keith was posted back to Melbourne, and wasted little time resuming his playing career by Royal Parade, under the watch of Diggins’ successor as Carlton senior coach, Percy Bentley.

Sporting the No.23 later worn by Bert Deacon and now Jacob Weitering, he got a call-up for the opening round match of the ’43 season – and in the lead-up stood with his teammates to observe a minute’s silence for his old teammate Jim Park, who had been killed in action in New Guinea.

After the lone bugler played The Last Post, the ball was bounced, and the Carlton players attacked it with sheer ferocity. Prominent amongst them was Jim Baird with 10 goals from full-forward, and Keith was acknowledged for his handy contributions on a wing.

Carlton ended the ’43 home and away season in fourth place, only to be bundled out of the finals by Fitzroy in the first semi. Keith, despite appearing in 13 of the 16 regular season matches, was omitted for the that Gorillas game and never again took to the field in dark navy.

The Navy called Keith back to the colours in 1944, and he was still on duty when World War II ended.

Amongst those who could genuinely claim that they served ‘for the duration,’ Keith was finally discharged in May ’46 – and fronted up for two senior games at Richmond before calling it a day as a League footballer.

At Carlton, Keith is accredited with just two career goals – two too many as he dryly suggested.

“I remember one game there was a boundary throw-in, I got the football, swung around and kicked a goal, even though the centre half-forward Jack Wrout was calling for it,” Keith said.

“After that happened and the ball was being taken back to the centre, he (Wrout) came up to me and said: ‘I kick the goals’.”

Through his days as a League footballer, Keith was paid three pound a game for his troubles – with all proceeds passed on to his mother.

“Not that she needed it,” Keith said.

“It was more that money never meant anything to me.”

Keith celebrated his 100th birthday with family and friends on the Peninsula where he lived for many years in coastal tranquillity.

The best wishes card from Her Maj had already found its way to his modest home, as had a card from the PM, when he gave of his time for what was his final interview.

He became the third former Carlton footballer known to have notched the three figures after his recruiter Newton Chandler, who died at the age of 103 years, six months and six days in 1997, and Mac Wilson, who lived for 103 years, one month and a day before he met his maker in August 2013.

As Keith’s daughter Julie observed, her father was “truly hardy considering the life he has led – elite sportsman, World War II veteran who overcame dysentery and malaria, and fisherman who was washed off the rocks many times”.

“Dad absolutely enjoyed his time at Carlton,” Julie said.

“His only disappointment was that his football career was interrupted.”

On turning 100, Keith quite rightly predicted there were a few more birthdays left in him yet.

As he said at the time: “Have a look at me. I never smoked, I never had an argument, and when you live to be 100 it’s got to mean you’re happy”.

Keith Rae’s first senior game for Carlton, Round 15, Saturday, August 5, 1939, versus Footscray at Princes Park:
B: Don McIntyre, Frank Gill, Jim Park
HB: Bob Chitty, Jim Francis (vc), Frank Anderson
C: Jack Carney, Keith Rae, Bob Green
HF: Ron ‘Socks’ Cooper, Jack Wrout, Creswell Crisp
F: Harry Hollingshead, Ken Baxter, Paul Schmidt
FOLL: Brighton Diggins (cc), Rod McLean, Jack Hale
19th man: Jack Skinner

Former Carlton players and officials – amongst them the club’s greatest player John Nicholls – have completed a three-hour drive to southwestern Victoria to celebrate (albeit belatedly) the 80th birthday of the dual Premiership centre half-back John Goold.

A troupe of seven made the trek to Goold’s property just outside of Camberdown, in a Hyundai van organised by the Spirit of Carlton Manager Shane O’Sullivan. On board was Nicholls and fellow Premiership players Ian Collins, Ken Hunter and Mark Maclure, together with former Carlton Chief Executive Officer Stephen Gough and the club’s recent Life Membership recipient David Nettlefold.

At Goold’s idyllic property they reminisced about the golden days of Barassi – the latter having coached “Ragsy” in 108 matches for Carlton including the Grand Final triumphs of 1968 and ’70 – just as they did back in 2011.

“Ten years ago a few of us headed down to the property with all the cows and horses to celebrate ‘Ragsy’s’ 70th birthday,” Nicholls said this week.

“We were to have returned in June to celebrate his 80th birthday (June 27) but COVID restrictions forced a couple of cancellations . . . we finally got there on the weekend.”

Nicholls said that those in attendance truly savoured the moment with their flamboyant host.

“It was a great catch-up. We talked about old days and the culture of Carlton, and I talked about how positive I am with things at the club now looking up,” Nicholls said.

Through the course of the ‘swinging sixties,’ John William Crosbie Goold, with his long hair and dapper dress sense, earned as colourful a reputation off the verdant green of Princes Park as he did on it – and his involvement in the rag trade earned him that unmistakeable moniker.

After chasing tack to pursue a career in farming, Goold formed a diversified pastoral company and purchased a magnificent complex called Ballangeich Run at nearby Ellerslie. As his passion for farming and livestock grew, Goold began breeding top quality polo ponies, represented Australia in international competition, and further built on his already handsome reputation as a Hunt Master of the hounds.

As for his footballing prowess, Goold earned high praise from the best.

“He was a good player,” Nicholls said. “He played centre half-back and he played on the best of them, Royce Hart included . . . and he more than held his own with them all.”

Sir James Gobbo, the former Supreme Court judge and later Governor of Victoria, was a staunch follower of the Carlton Football Club prior to and beyond his public life – perhaps a throwback to a time when the game was territorial and the club and its vibrant Italian community were inextricably linked.

Sir James – “Giacomo” as he was christened – was born in Carlton’s Royal Women’s Hospital in 1931 to Italian parents Antonio and Regina Gobbo (nee Tosetto). Antonio, who hailed from Cittadella in the Veneto region of Northern Italy, traversed the globe to Australia in 1927; his wife following with their oldest son Flavio aboard the steamship Regina d’Italia not long after.

In a series of articles for the newsletter of the Italian Historical Society of which he was chairman, Sir James recalled with affection the early family years in Carlton.

“My links are personal as I was born in Carlton and lived in Newry Street and later, after a childhood in Italy, returned and eventually settled in Carlton,” he wrote.

“Our first home was in University Street, near Tibaldi’s salami factory. Later we moved to 501 Drummond Street, a house with a great deal of character and a long garden covered with grape vines. At the rear was a sleep-out, where for years we had as a friend and lodger Chenno Baggio – who still bakes some of the best bread in Melbourne at San Remo Bakery.”

Sir James’ parents later found permanent lodgings at 501 Drummond Street within walking distance of the Carlton ground. It was here in 1951 that Sir James learned that he had been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for Oxford University.

Clearly, Sir James inherited his great empathy for migrants through his father and mother. The historians Michelle Stevenson and Laura Mecca noted that Antonio, a terrazzo worker, sponsored many people from his hometown to Australia and supported them in the assimilation process. On Sundays, these new Australians would all gather at the Gobbos house for a meal, and during the Great Depression Regina took in Italian boarders, enclosing the veranda of their terrace house with calico to create sleeping quarters.

In 1935, Antonio returned to Italy with Flavio, James and the youngest child Natalina. Three years later the children followed him back to Australia. To quote Sir James: “We came back here in 1938, so at this point I was truly a migrant. I did not speak any English and I went to school initially at St George’s in Carlton (later St Joseph’s North Melbourne and Xavier College)”.

In 1939 Antonio and Regina purchased the St Kilda Grill Rooms cafe at 274 Victoria Street, North Melbourne (opposite the Victoria Market) and Regina’s sister Savina, who later married an Italian POW Bruno Bianchi, supported them in managing the café.

Regina, it has been said, was the driving force behind her son James’ academic success, from his schooldays at St Joseph’s North Melbourne and later Xavier College, through to the University of Melbourne and Oxford. A Rhodes Scholar in 1952, James was also a member of the crew that took line honours in the 100th Oxford-Cambridge boat race and he also served as President of the Oxford University Boat Club.

Sir James returned to Melbourne to pursue a life in the legal professional, and in 1957 married Shirley Lewis, a former librarian. Together they raised five children.

In 1978, following a successful career as a barrister, Sir James was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of Victoria. In 1997, he was appointed Governor of Victoria, the state’s 25th Governor and the first Australian of non-English speaking background to be elevated to that office.

Sir James was honoured with a knighthood in the Carlton back-to-back Premiership year of 1982 for services to the community. In 1993, he was honoured with the Companion of the Order of Australia for his contributions to the law, multicultural affairs and hospitals.

At Carlton, the 1968 Carlton Premiership player and former Chief Executive and President Ian Collins remembered Sir James as an understated, but passionate devotee.

“I’m very sorry to learn of Sir James’ passing,” Collins said. “Sir James was very quiet, but very supportive. His family was one of those classic Italian migrant families who came to Australia and settled in Carlton.

“As with Sir Robert Menzies, Manning Clark and BA Santamaria, Sir James was a guest speaker of the club, invariably at player inductions or guernsey presentations whether at the Southern Cross, or in the Social Club or the John Elliott Stand.

Sir James’ address to the Carlton players on the eve of what would be the 1981 Premiership season remains firmly in the memory of the three-time Carlton Premiership player, ’81 club Best & Fairest and former Director Ken Hunter – a promising West Australian recruit in that particular year.

“I distinctively remember Sir James as guest speaker. He delivered an eloquent address about Carlton and what it meant to him. That was on the eve of the ’81 season and for me it was incredibly inspiring,” said Hunter some 40 years after the event.

“Sir James spoke about Carlton and what it meant to his family. He spoke about the significance of representing the club and the impact on Members and supporters. It made me want to go out and play straight away.

“Sir James made me feel how fortunate I was to be representing the Carlton Football Club.”

Sir James Gobbo, AC, CVO, QC served as Governor until 2000 under Premiers Jeff Kennett and Steve Bracks.

In 1997, he shared the podium with the then Lord Mayor of Melbourne Ivan Deveson and Carlton President John Elliott when Premier Kennett formally opened the Legends Stand at the Carlton ground prior to the Round 3 match with Adelaide, on April 13. The following year, he returned to the ground, officiating at the launch of “The Old Dark Navy Blues”, Dr Lionel’s Frost’s definitive history of the club; and in July 2000 he was amongst the dignitaries present for the last suburban battle with Collingwood at Carlton, which ended with the Blues’ record 111-point hammering of the hapless black and whites.

Dr Frost remembered Sir James as “a sincere, down-to-earth fellow”.

“I can recall Sir James’ speech from the book launch in which he talked about watching Carlton games from the outer wing in front of the old Northey Stand at Princes Park,” Dr Frost said.

“Interestingly, he also considered the 1972 Grand Final our greatest win – not 1970 as most people think.”

After leaving office as Governor, Sir James took up the position of Commissioner for Italy for the Victorian government until June 2006, and continued on various boards and councils. He officiated as Chairman of the Council of the National Library of Australia and Chairman of the Australian Multicultural Foundation. He also served as vice-president of the Order of Malta, which supported home-based palliative care in Victoria through Eastern Palliative Care (EPC).

But for all his lofty achievements in life, Sir James Gobbo – the son of Italian migrants – remained true to his humble origins . . . and his lifelong love for Carlton and the Carlton Football Club never waned.

Alan Rees, a Life Member of the Carlton Football Club, has passed away in a Brighton nursing home four weeks short of his 99th birthday.

A former member of The Carltonians coterie, Alan was awarded Life Membership of the club in 2006, the same year Brendan Fevola and Matthew Lappin were so honoured.

Born in nearby Brunswick on November 14, 1922, Alan was a five year-old when he was gifted his first Carlton Football Club Membership by his father. So began a 93-year association with his beloved Blues.

The owner of Richmond’s Sydenham Hotel, Alan regularly availed his licensed premises to Carlton officials and players through the 1970s and ’80s. As the long-serving former runner Bob Lowrie recalled: “We used to go down there after Sunday morning training . . . and Alan was the perfect host.”

It was at the Sydenham that Alan’s raucous voice quite literally caught the ear of the football club’s patrons – amongst them the three-time Premiership player Jim Buckley who gave him the nickname “Bullfrog”.

For a time Alan owned and operated the Ampol service station (later Dan’s Car Wash) on the corner of Rosanna Road and Burgundy Street in Heidelberg. Prior to his retirement, he managed The Grandview Hotel in Pearson Street, West Brunswick.

Alan was photographed with Lowrie and the late property steward Ken Kleiman for the front cover of the AFL Record on the occasion of Carlton’s 150th year celebrations in 2014.

In later years Alan was a regular at the club’s Bequest Society Luncheons.

Alan’s beloved wife of 65 years June predeceased him.

There were no children.

IN SEPTEMBER 1961, in the aftermath of what was then its first Grand Final victory in League football history, Hawthorn Premiership Coach the late John Kennedy sen. acknowledged the influence of his former coach the Carlton Premiership hero of 1938 Jack Hale.

As coach, Hale mentored Kennedy through most of his 164-game career, and clearly influenced the latter’s coaching methodology. 

To quote Kennedy: “Jack Hale taught Hawthorn to hate defeat”.

Sixty years on, and the Hale legacy endures, through a generational coaching connection with some of the game’s true luminaries – from Kennedy through to David Parkin, Leigh Matthews and now Michael Voss. 

Carlton’s 26-man squad, including the 19 members of its 1938 Premiership team. Jack Hale sits at the far left in the second row.

More of that later, but for the moment it’s important the Hale story is told.   

Raised just a stone’s throw from the Carlton ground in nearby Richardson Street, Jack Hale’s childhood days invariably took in the terraces of Princes Park where he and his father watched on in wonderment as the likes of Horrie Clover and Paddy O’Brien strutted their stuff in dark navy.

Taking his highcuts to Carlton in the early 1930s, Hale broke through as a senior player in the third round of 1933, against Geelong at Princes Park, when he was named on a half-back flank alongside Jim Park. Ultimately he found his feet as first rover for the greater part of his 123-game, nine-season career which was prematurely ended when he badly broke his leg – the best of them the drought-breaking Grand Final victory over Collingwood in 1938.

Carlton ended a 23-year Premiership drought on that one day in September – in no small part due to Hale whom captain-coach Brighton Diggins had assigned the task of curbing the Magpies’ star rover Des Fothergill. Before a then record audience of more than 96,000, Hale kept Fothergill in check and played a blinder, booting the sealer to secure the Blues’ sixth Premiership in League competition.

“To be part of the team which defeated Collingwood that day was a great experience,” Hale said later. 

“The crowd was so massive that it spilled over the MCG fence to sit three deep behind the boundary line. I just couldn’t do anything wrong. It was one of those days when the ball just seems to follow you.”

Hale maintained his Carlton connection as coach of its reserve grade teams for four years, before accepting an offer to coach the South Melbourne seniors in 1948. Amid bitter acrimony at board level, Hale resigned from the position after just two seasons, and in ’52 he took on senior coaching duties at Hawthorn.

“When I went to Hawthorn I took the Carlton spirit with me,” Hale said later. “I wanted to create a Hawthorn spirit by encouraging the local kids to become involved. I suppose it was the start of the ‘family club’ tradition.”

At Glenferrie, Hale took Hawthorn from rock bottom to its first ever finals appearance – the 1957 first semi final, ironically against Carlton – and the Hawks triumphed in a contest best remembered for a freakish half-time hailstorm.

Beyond his years as Hawthorn coach, Hale continued to give back to the great Australian game as a member of the VFL Umpires Appointment Board, a role he held for 15 years. A Life Member of Carlton, Hawthorn and the AFL, he died at the age of 88 in June 2001. 

But in the 20 years since his passing and the sixty since Hawthorn’s maiden Grand Final triumph, Jack Hale’s coaching legacy has not only endured, but come full circle – through the Kennedy-coached Hawthorn Premiership player and Hawthorn and Carlton Premiership coach David Parkin; who as with Kennedy coached the Hawthorn Premiership player and Collingwood and Brisbane Premiership Coach Leigh Matthews; and now the Matthews-coached Carlton mentor Michael Voss – a three-time Brisbane Premiership captain under Matthews and the man Voss cites as his greatest influence.

THE HALE COACHING LINEAGE 

JACK HALE

At Carlton
Senior player (123 matches, 1933-’41, including the victorious 1938 Grand Final)

At Hawthorn
Senior Coach (146 matches for 61 wins, 84 losses and a draw) 1952-’59

JOHN KENNEDY Sr.

At Hawthorn

Senior player (164 matches, 1950-’59, including eight seasons under Hale);
Senior Coach 1957, 1960-’63 and 1967-’76 (299 matches for 181 wins, 116 losses and two draws); Premiership Coach 1961 and ’71

DAVID PARKIN

At Hawthorn
Senior player (211 matches 1961-’64, including the victorious Kennedy-coached 1971 Grand Final);
Senior Coach 1977-’80 (94 matches for 57 wins and 37 losses); Premiership Coach 1978

At Carlton
Senior Coach 1981-’85 and 1991-2000 (355 matches for 219 wins, 134 losses and two draws); Premiership Coach 1981-’82 and 1995

LEIGH MATTHEWS

At Hawthorn
Senior player (332 matches 1969-’85, including the victorious Kennedy-coached 1971 Grand Final and the victorious Parkin-coached 1978 Grand Final)

At Brisbane
Senior Coach 1999-2008 (237 matches for 142 wins and 92 losses and three draws); Premiership Coach 2001-’03 

MICHAEL VOSS

At Brisbane
Senior player (289 matches 1992-2006, including the victorious Matthews-coached 2001-’03 Grand Finals);
Senior Coach 2009-2013 (109 matches for 43 wins, 65 losses and one draw)

At Carlton
Senior Coach 2022-

CARLTON Football Club Premiership Player and star Syd Jackson is aiming to raise much-needed funds to help Roeland’s Village.

Syd Jackson was taken to Roelands Mission (now Roelands Village) when he was a child and he lived there until age 16.

He played with both South Bunbury then East Perth Football Clubs, before being recruited for the Carlton Football Club by Ron Barassi. Syd returned to Roelands Village in 2013 to assist his former mission brothers and sisters to convert the former mission into a happy, and productive place of healing, skills development and business, including agricultural business on the farm the children worked in former mission days.

Syd’s dream is to see many community members developing skills, getting fit and healthy, and having employment through Roelands Village enterprises in food and honey production, tourism and accommodation, health and fitness programs on site, and contracting works opportunities.

Syd believes that Roelands Village will continue to change the lives of young people and others for the better through the social enterprises on site, alongside opportunities for education, employment, healing and sports programs.

“I’m running a fundraiser for my community and my home, Roelands Village,” Jackson said.

“My dream is to see many community members developing skills, getting fit and healthy, and having employment through Roelands Village enterprises in food and honey production, tourism and accommodation, health and fitness programs on site, and contracting works opportunities.

“I believe that Roelands will continue to change the lives of young people and others for the better through the social enterprises on site, alongside opportunities for education, employment, healing and sports programs.”

But Syd needs your help. Your donations will assist Syd to achieve his dream of seeing Roelands Village as a thriving community business hub. Any contribution is appreciated. All donations are tax deductible with Woolkabunning Kiaka Aboriginal Corporation, the organisation that manages Roelands Village today, having DGR1 status.

Multi-year pledges are welcome.

Carlton fans can click below to find out more and to help contribute to Syd’s cause. 

JOHN Dorman Elliott, the Carlton Football Club’s longest-serving President – and perhaps its most polarising – has died ten days short of his 80th birthday.

Elliott, the former Federal President of the Liberal Party once touted as a future Australian Prime Minister, was the unmistakable face of Carlton through a record 20-year presidency which surpassed Sir Kenneth Luke’s 18 years in office.

Replacing Ian Rice as President the year after the back-to-back Premiership seasons of 1981 and ’82, the autocratic Elliott and his board of directors presided, for the most part, over a period of on-field and off-field prosperity.

Immortalised as the cigarette-smoking, scotch-swilling “Rubbery Figure”, the larger-than-life Elliott saw his beloved Blues triumph in the Grand Finals of 1987 and ’95 – the latter affording the club its 16th piece of silverware, at the time more than any other.

On Elliott’s watch, a new grandstand bearing his name was built by the north-eastern wing to cater for the corporate heavyweights of the country who’d significantly contributed financially to the club through “The President’s Men” – a coterie personally championed by Elliott, the one-time head of Elders and the Foster’s Group.

On match-day luncheons, Elliott would welcome football identities and VIPs to his dominion, then take his place at his designated seating area in prime position for the first bounce. There he’d open the sliding glass, light a cigarette, and take great pleasure in flicking the ash onto the heads of unsuspecting opposition supporters filing past on the concourse below.

In the immediate aftermath of a stirring Blues victory, more often than not back then, Elliott would lead Members in a rousing rendition of the club’s theme song, over clinking beer glasses on the first floor of the Carlton Social Club (George H. Harris Stand). Just as the players of his day could walk the walk, ‘Big Jack’ talked the talk.

In 1994, Elliott was party to negotiations for the ground’s naming rights arrangement with the communications conglomerate Optus – which in turn afforded Carlton the financial wherewithal to build the Legends Stand at the Garton Street end of the ground.

Under Elliott, Carlton furthered its reputation as a powerhouse both on and off the field – “the best in the business” as he proudly declared with genuine conviction.

But his presidency would ultimately end in ignominy with his resignation on Remembrance Day 2002 – on the very day the club was first charged by the AFL for illegal player payments – and on the end of a season in which his beloved Blues became the last of the VFL’s foundation clubs to take the wooden spoon.

Elliott claimed he had no knowledge of any rorting. In the end, his moniker was removed from the grandstand and renamed the Carlton Heroes Stand as a mark of respect to the football club Members who paid off the club’s League-imposed salary cap fines which totalled almost $1million.

Fiercely committed to his club and generous to a fault with his players, Elliott found loyalists in the likes of Anthony Koutoufides and Stephen Kernahan. Kernahan, himself a former Carlton President Stephen Kernahan and the man who captained Carlton to Grand Final triumphs in the Elliott years of 1987 and ’95, was taken aback by news of the man’s passing.

“I’m truly in shock,” said Kernahan, football’s longest-serving captain.

“I knew John was battling with his health, but I thought the great man would live forever.

“He was a loved man and he was very good to Carlton people. He may have polarised a few, but whatever people thought of him there was no doubting his love for the Carlton Football Club.”

Elliott was never one to shirk an issue. In clubland for example, he insisted that Essendon be stripped of its 1993 Grand Final victory over Carlton as punishment for its own salary cap discrepancies.

As for city hall, Elliott best voiced his disproval when he memorably declared: “No-one barracks for the AFL . . . they barrack for Carlton and Collingwood”.

In September 1984, Elliott convened a clandestine meeting of VFL club Presidents at his Mt Macedon retreat Sefton, at which the concept of a breakaway Super League competition was discussed.

The concept never gained traction, but the fact that the meeting took place reflected the view of a number of club Presidents of the day that the VFL had adopted a “Big Brother” approach to what had become the football business.

To the end of his Presidency he was at war with the League and its commissioners – a war that he (and by association his club) ultimately lost. He never forgave the AFL commissioner for conveying by way of a phone call the demise of Princes Park as a League venue after 118 years.

Through the dark winters of the 20th century, as a once great club struggled to find its way, Elliott’s great love for Carlton endured – and he was there for the final game in May 2005, when ‘Kouta’ handed the final match-day footy to ‘Big Nick’.

One tale told by Tom Elliott on a Ghosts of Princes Park Tour relates to that very match, when Elliott was invited back to the President’s pre-game Luncheon – ironically convened by Ian Collins – in a nook of the grandstand that once bore his name.

Tom recalled his father lighting a customary cigarette in the room at a time when smoking laws were finally invoked, but through the course of the match refused an attendant’s repeated requests to butt out his “ciggy”.

When the frustrated blue coat ultimately returned with reinforcements to evict the smoke-puffing former Prez from the room, the final siren sounded on the historic final contest – which then prompted a gleeful Elliott to puff smoke into the hapless attendant’s face and bellow: “This is no longer an AFL venue, the smoking laws no longer apply”.

John Elliott died in the Epworth Hospital after a short illness. His first wife Lorraine, a former Victorian state parliamentarian for the Liberal Party, predeceased him in 2014. He is survived by his four children – 3AW Broadcaster Tom, daughter Caroline, son Edward and daughter Alexandra.

The former Carlton President is also survived by his second wife Amanda Elliott (later the first female Chairperson of the Victoria Racing Club) and his former partner Joanne Hurley.