GARTH Evans was but a babe in arms when his father, the Carlton ruckman Maurie Sankey, was killed in a car accident five kilometres north of Wangaratta.

“Mum and Dad were engaged, I was born in July 1965 and Dad died that November. I was four months old,” Garth said.

Now 53, Garth returned to the old Carlton ground this week to share precious photographs and hand-me-down tales of the father he never knew and the mother whose passing last August at the age of 82 is still profoundly felt.

Maurice Graham (Maurie) Sankey’s life and untimely death is well-known. Recruited from Tasmanian club Latrobe in 1958, he was part of the cast of Carlton followers which included the great John Nicholls, Ken Greenwood, Graham Donaldson and Brian Buckley.

It’s interesting to note that as someone who “sailed close to the wind” by those who knew him on Royal Parade, the adventuresome Maurie inherited the nickname ‘Garth’ – a reference to the British comic strip action hero according to former teammate Ian Collins.

Maurie Sankey, Carlton footballer, 1965.

At 25, Maurie turned out for what would be his 100^th and final appearance for Carlton – the 17^th Round match of 1965 against Richmond at Princes Park. In recognition of the milestone, the committed tap ruckman and vice-captain was presented with a silver tray (since handed down to Garth by Maurie’s sister Lurlene).

A few months later, on the evening of Sunday, November 21, 1965, Maurie would be dead.

“Maurice had been on a golf trip and was behind the wheel of an EH Holden, when he tried to overtake a semi-trailer on the Hume Highway,” Garth said.

“Unfortunately that semi was directly behind another semi and Maurice couldn’t get back into the lane. Another car came the other way, both swerved to the right, but hit eachother head-on. He was killed in the accident, as were two people in the other.

“Maurice might have been wearing a lap belt in his bench seat, but really there was no protection. He got a broken neck and was killed instantly and the three other guys in Maurice’s car got out of it pretty much unscathed.

Maurie’s funeral, at the Brunswick Baptist Church in Sydney Road, was reported inThe Sun News-Pictorial. Chief mourners included Margaret, Maurie’s mother Vera and siblings Barry and Lurlene. The then Carlton President George Harris paid tribute to “a great team man who supported all club activities and helped young players” and Maurie’s old teammates Graeme Anderson, Collins, Gordon Collis, Berkeley Cox, Wes Lofts and Sergio Silvagni acted as pall bearers.

Maurie takes a towering mark against Richmond, Punt Road Oval, Round 5, 1963.

At Springvale Cemetery’s HN Featonby Lawn section Maurie was laid to rest, after his funeral cortege had passed the old Carlton ground for the last time.

It is almost certain that Maurie met Garth’s mother Margaret Evans at Carlton. As Garth said, “Margaret was a long-time supporter and while I’m not sure whether she met Maurice inside the club or outside the club I think it was more likely inside”.

“Mum used to tell me about Maurice, that he was a real knockabout fun guy, a bit of a risk taker and someone who lived life on the edge,” Garth said.

“He played the game hard and he played life hard.”

But if Maurie was the hard man, then Margaret – who was still dealing with the tragic loss of her first husband when she and Maurie met – was positively stoic.

Born in the northern suburb of Eltham, the second of eight children of Jack and Margaret Mynott, Margaret was raised in a working class family through the trying years of the Second World War. To quote Garth: “The family wasn’t really well off, Mum left school early and married quite young”.

In 1955, Margaret exchanged vows with her first husband, John Robert Evans, to whom she bore three sons Larry, Michael and Joel – the stepfather of the former Melbourne AFLW captain Daisy Pearce who, not surprisingly, followed her beloved Blues as a kid.

Tragically, Margaret would be left to fend for her three boys when in December 1961 her husband drowned in an incident which also claimed the lives of her brother-in-law and another man.

“Robert got caught in a rip down the back of Rye at Koonya Beach,” Garth said.

“Terribly, my Aunty’s husband also lost his life in the same incident, as did an off-duty ambulance officer who ran down to help.”

Not long after the tragedy, Margaret found work at the Carlton Football Club as typist and bookkeeper for the then Senior Coach the late Ken Hands.

Margaret Evans and Maurie Sankey, place unknown, circa 1965.

It was all pretty simple. The position was advertised, Margaret applied and she got the job – and as Garth suggested: “Mum was most likely one of the first women employed at a football club”.

“I reckon Mum worked for Ken through 1963 and ’64. My older brothers remember having the run of the club whenever they followed her into work,” Garth said.

Following Maurie’s awful demise, Margaret was again left to pick up the pieces and fend for her four sons – and to her eternal credit she found a way.

As the years rolled on and her boys entered into adulthood, Margaret found more time to pursue a myriad of interests, politics included. Through the heady days of the 1970s, from the “It’s Time” campaign onwards, she committed wholeheartedly to the Labor Party.

“I reckon her support of Labor was a throwback to her working class origins,” Garth said. “She also worked for Legal Aid in Preston and through 1973 and ’74 she served as the first secretary of the Eltham Basketball Club, which is now a huge club, and her name is on the Honour Board there.

“At the age of 50 she went back to school. She earned her VCE and later got a Bachelor of Arts at Latrobe. She was also a very good creative writer and she penned lots of nice pieces.”

In 1991, Margaret exchanged marital vows with Keith Davies, a South Australian who, like her, had been married previously. Their union would endure for more than a quarter of a century until Keith’s death in September 2017, just 12 weeks after he was diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.

Less than a year later, Margaret also died, for Keith’s passing hit her hard – as it did her four sons. As Garth said: “There wasn’t really a father figure until later in our lives through Keith. He became a stepdad from 1991 onwards and we grew closer to him over time”.

But through it all, Margaret’s love for Carlton never waned. In fact, it only intensified, particularly through the early 1980s, when Garth turned out in Dark Navy for the Trevor Keogh-coached Under 19s.

Margaret Evans and her second husband Keith Davies, Premiership night 1995.

For Garth, these were happy days.

“I was invited down to Carlton to train under the father/son rule by Ian Collins and I still have the invitation on the club’s Avco Finance letterhead,” Garth said.

“I came down in late 1982, played with the thirds through 1983 and 1984 and managed one reserve grade appearance in a star-studded line-up in the ’84 season . . . and I loved every second of it.

“There was a game here at Princes Park, the only home game for the year as the others were played at Glenferrie Oval, where I managed to boot eight against Fitzroy as my Mum and my aunt, who was very sick at the time, watched on.

In 2011, Margaret completed a sentimental journey back to the old ground, this time with Garth and Maurie’s old teammate, the 1964 Brownlow Medallist Gordon Collis. Gordon had roomed with Maurie and another teammate John Reilly in a house at 19 Berry Street Coburg at the time of Maurie’s death.

Margaret, Garth and Gordon filed into the club’s theatrette to view rare home movie film, shot in early ’65 at the Balnarring seaside escape of the then Chairman of Selectors Jack Wrout, of the Carlton players’ first pre-season under Ron Barassi’s watch.

Featured in that precious film were flickering images of Maurie and Gordon riding bareback on a horse, which pleased the three theatregoers no end.

“Having Maurie as a father is a great source of pride. I was always proud of what he did at Carlton, I’ve always loved the club and I loved my time here as well,” said Garth, who is himself a proud father of Jami (30), Lachlan (24) and Liam (21).

“As I said in Tassie when Maurice was inducted into the Tasmanian Football Hall of Fame, it’s a great honour. But it’s such a long time ago that he died and it was totally unexpected.

“If he (Maurie) had lived on life would have been a lot different for me. In terms of football alone I was a footballer with a fair bit of potential, but was a bit busy off the field and not quite disciplined enough . . . so that stern male figure I didn’t have might have helped a bit.”

And Margaret?

“Mum was a very resilient woman,” Garth said. “She scraped through after Maurie died and they were hard days I think.

“Mum and I were very close, as were the other boys, because she was all we had.

“She was Mum and Dad to us.”

Until last year, when ill health forced him to curtail his football club activities, Perriam committed his energies as a dedicated volunteer – just as he had done for the better part of six decades through Carlton’s most successful epoch both on and off the field.

John Frederick Perriam’s official links with his beloved Blues can be sourced to the early 1960s by way of Allen Cowie, the former Carlton Secretary who later died in office.

A lifelong acquaintance, the former Carlton Premiership player, Chief Executive and President Ian Collins remembered first being introduced to Perriam by Cowie in early 1963.

“Allen and I were boarding with the Smith family in Linda Street, Moreland and it was there that I met John, who was a drinking mate of Cowie’s,” said Collins, who is to deliver the eulogy at Perriam’s funeral on Thursday.

“First impressions were that he looked like Clark Kent with his distinctive thick-rimmed glasses and he was always impeccably dressed.”

With Cowie’s imprimatur, Perriam accepted the role of Carlton Football Club Assistant Treasurer to Tom Barter. These were the Barassi years and Perriam’s name first appeared beneath Barter’s in the 1966 Annual Report. Soon after, Perriam joined the club’s Finance Committee, chaired by Graeme Emmanuel, which controlled all matters related to finance, and in 1969 he succeeded Barter as Honorary Treasurer.

Perriam fulfilled duties as Honorary Treasurer through to mid-1974 when he was seconded to the Football Club’s Board of Directors (and in 1975 the Social Club board as a delegate) – roles he would retain until standing down in May 1997.

“When I became CEO I reinstated him as Treasurer because he was such a reliable bloke,” Collins said. “He was always honorary, he never took a dime from the club ever, and the old Annual Reports always carried his address if ever something went wrong.

“He was a good bloke. He was straight down the line and he had good finance understanding without being qualified. He had his own business in partnership with another chap, and one stage he employed Bruce Doull, on reception I think, which didn’t last long because ‘Doully’ wasn’t mad on talking to people.”

On Carlton matchdays at the Docklands, through his years as CEO of Stadium Operations Ltd, Collins hosted Perriam and the likes of former players David McKay, John Reilly and Sergio Silvagni.

The aforementioned also met regularly over bowls of rigatoni and bottles of Sangiovese at Bulleen’s Veneto Club. The next lunch had been inked for February 20, but as Collins lamented: “with John’s passing we’ve had to pull the plug on that.”

Until late last year, Perriam maintained his close working relationship with Carlton through its Finance Department. Assistant Accountant Cathy Altham recalled that for many years, “John came in three days a week to assist Rhonda Stevens with payroll”.

“John checked the payrolls and did most of the payroll reconciliations. We were still using the old journal books then, so John would write up the payroll journals to be processed,” Altham said.

“When Rhonda left at the end of 2009, John continued assisting with reconciliations and looked after compiling the figures for the FBT return. He generally pitched in and assisted wherever an extra pair of hands was required.

“John used to commence very early, and came in rain, hail or scorching sun. Some mornings when I asked John what time he’d arrived he would say ‘7am’. John would laugh off our concerns about him coming into the office on days when the temperature would be in the 40s.”

Though recent health battles forced him to scale down his onsite appearances, John’s passion for the goings on at Princes Park never waned.

“I know John was passionate about his club, and some of our discussions were about the game on the weekend,” Altham said.

“But most of my discussions with John were more of a personal nature. He was a proud grandfather and much of our discussions revolved around our families. He had a wonderful sense of humour, so I enjoyed our Monday morning chats.

“He called me on the day of the club’s Christmas party. He’d been in hospital again, but was determined to try and get back to the office in January.

Perriam never made it back, but it wasn’t for want of trying. As Altham said: “If you looked up the word ‘resilience’ in the dictionary, there’d be a picture of John”.

John Perriam is survived by his wife Nanette, children and grandchildren.

A funeral service to celebrate his life will be held in the Wilson Chapel, Springvale Botanical Cemetery, 600 Princes Highway on Thursday, January 31, commencing 2.15pm.

It’s doubtful that any Carlton player before or since has completed a more controversial senior debut than Colin Holt, the 20-game former half-forward who died last Saturday at the age of 84. 

Originally recruited to the club from neighbouring Brunswick, Holt toiled for six seasons at Under 19 and reserve grade level before getting his first senior call up – in the 10^th Round of 1955 against Footscray at Princes Park.

The 21 year-old didn’t hold back. He got reported and was subsequently suspended for eight matches for kicking Footscray captain-coach Charlie Sutton no less.

All this on a day in which Carlton defender Harry Caspar, in his last appearance for the club, also had his number taken for striking Dave Bryden – for which the Tribunal duly imposed a four-match ban he never served. 

The Argus’ Peter Banfield, in covering Holt’s Tribunal hearing on the night of Tuesday, June 29, 1955, reported that an obviously upset Holt had told the Chairman that he had tried to push Sutton out the way, but had not kicked the Footscray “Iron Man”. 

“‘It was my first League game,” he (Holt) said emotionally. ‘I had never struck anyone before as hard to get past as Sutton’,” Banfield noted. 

Despite Holt’s and Sutton’s view that the former hadn’t delivered a kick, the Tribunal sided with the reporting field umpire Alan Nash that the toe of Holt’s boot had made contact with Sutton’s leg between the knee and ankle in the second quarter. 

News of the sensational hearing was splashed across the back page of The Argus, together with a photograph of a relaxed Holt and Sutton awaiting the Tribunal verdict.

Holt’s senior lapse bellied his steadiness at both Under 19 and reserve grade level at Princes Park, which saw him feature in the 1948 and ’51 Premierships with the Unders and take out the reserves’ Most Consistent Award in ’57.

In making his senior debut, Holt became the 693^rd Carlton footballer since 1897 to achieve the feat. His career would span 20 games in total, the last of them the Round 10, 1957 contest with Collingwood at Victoria Park. 

Through 1958 and ’59, Holt managed a further 21 senior appearances for Richmond.

Colin Francis Holt died at the Village Glen Retirement Facility. He is survived by his beloved wife Jacqueline, daughter Colleen, sons Daryl and Russell, daughter-in-law Michelle, son-in-law Mick and seven grandchildren.

His funeral took place yesterday morning (Thursday, November 8) at the Rosebud Funeral Chapel on Jetty Road, followed by private cremation.