The Carlton Football Club and the League football community are today mourning the passing of Robert Walls.

By Tony De Bolfo

The Carlton Football Club and the League football community are today mourning the passing at 74 of one of the game’s great servants, the Blues’ three-time premiership player and premiership coach Robert Walls.

Walls’ tenure as a player and coach across four clubs, and as a respected commentator across television, radio and print, spanned some six decades. But it was at Carlton that the AFL Life Member and Australian Football Hall of Fame inductee savoured his greatest individual and collective footballing moments.

On-field, Walls was part of the drought-breaking Grand Final victory over Essendon in 1968, the incredible come-from-behind Grand Final triumph over Collingwood in 1970, and the winning Grand Final shootout with Richmond in 1972. Off-field as Senior Coach, he commandeered Stephen Kernahan and his players to Carlton’s penultimate premiership, when they prevailed in the heat against Hawthorn on Grand Final day 1987.

Born in the Central Victorian goldfields town of Dunolly, but raised in the inner-city northern suburb of Brunswick, Walls supported Essendon in his childhood and at the age of eight was famously snapped by a photographer chasing an autograph from his idol Alec Epis.

As fate would have it, Walls was residentially tied to Carlton through its metropolitan zone and in the summer of 1966, on the strength of some creditable performances for Coburg Amateurs, the tall, gangly 15 year-old accepted an invitation to train and peddled his pushbike to Princes Park.

There he met another hopeful, a kid from Jacana by the name of Alexander Bruce Doull.

By the winter of ’66, Walls and the likes of Doug Baird and Peter Dyring were earning Reserve Grade call-ups from the thirds. The Club’s Reserves report of that year records that “a notable performance was that of Robert Walls, who despite his youth was adjudged the second best and fairest and best first year player. Robert’s play at full-back during the season was admired by many”.

Wearing the No.42 on his sinewy back, Walls, at 16 years 275 days, was pencilled in at full-forward for his first Carlton senior appearance, the Round 2 match of 1967 against  Hawthorn at Princes Park – co-incidentally the same match in which the legendary full-forward Peter Hudson first ran out for the visitors.

Carlton won by 44 points with a scoreline of 12.16 – two goals of which came from ‘Wallsy’s’ trusty right boot, the first of them with his first kick. A further six senior appearances followed in ‘67, and by season’s end the slightly framed teenager found his way to the back pocket, sharing the last line with a couple of hardnuts in Wes Lofts and Ian Collins.

Under the great Ron Barassi’s watch as Carlton captain-coach, Walls the footballer thrived. As he said on the night of his elevation to Legend status in the Carlton Football Hall of Fame in 2011: “Ron Barassi was my hero as a 16-year-old kid and he still is my hero”.

In 1968, Walls featured in each of Carlton’s 20 home and away contests, plus the semi and Grand Finals, as Barassi’s Blues barnstormed their way to a premiership – Carlton’s first in the 21 years since Fred Stafford’s snap sealed the Bombers’ fate.

Two years later, as the mainstay at centre half-forward, he was amongst that exclusive group to have somehow transformed a 44-point deficit into a 10-point triumph over good old Collingwood before a never-to-be-surpassed audience of more than 121,000 people.

While most would succumb to nerves on football’s day of days, it was the steadying words of Barassi’s mentor Norm Smith that rang in Walls’ ears as he headed into football immortality.

“It goes back to a couple of years before ’70 – to ’68 when most of us were playing in our first Grand Final. Ron Barassi took us to Norm Smith’s home,” Walls told this reporter in 2020.

“I remember Norm telling us that when you run down the race and you hit the ground, put your head up, throw your chest out and take it all in. Say to yourself, ‘I’m here because I deserve to be here, because I’m part of a good team and I’m going to show everybody just what a good player I am and what a good team we are.’”

Walls followed Smith’s edict to the letter, setting up a Ted Hopkins running goal with a carefully-measured handball, and putting another over the goal umpire’s hat after selling the candy to Ted Potter – in what was a rush of seven majors in a frenetic 11-minute period of the third quarter.

For all that though, Walls’s greatest hour was yet to come. That happened on Grand Final day 1972, when the seasoned centre half-forward, earning Rex Hunt as his direct opponent, booted six goals of a record 28.9 – as the Blues overwhelmed Richmond in a famous victory masterminded by captain-coach John Nicholls.

“‘Wallsy’ moved around a lot on the field, he had pretty good goal sense and his six-goal game in the ’72 Grand Final was masterful,” said David McKay, who shared the 1970 and ’72 triumphs with his old teammate.

“I think it was probably his best game for the Club, and Peter Jones’ showing in the ruck was equally valuable.”

As his No.43 locker adjoined Walls’ at 42, McKay was impeccably placed to pass judgment on the player and the man.

“As a centre half-forward, Wallsy was a terrific exponent of punching the ball backwards so that the small forwards could get it. He was a very courageous player and he stood up for himself, which was very impressive. He was one of those teammates who made you walk taller. I wouldn’t say he was ruthless, but he didn’t cop any s**t. He was more forthright as a coach and commentator, but I never experienced that.

“Because he was part of the ’68 premiership team, Wallsy was regarded as more of a senior player when I started, even though he was younger than me. That was because he and the likes of ‘Nick’ (John Nicholls) and ‘Serge (Sergio Silvagni) broke the Premiership duck after 21 years.

“One of the things I always admired about him was his ability to say the right thing at the right time. He was a statesman.

“‘Wallsy’ was a loyal and respected teammate, and one of the most talented players ever to turn out at Carlton. He was consistent and he gave his all. Even though he went to other clubs, he was Carlton through and through, because Barassi and Jack Wrout instilled in him and in all of us that the Club was greater than the individual.”

By the mid-1970s, Walls’ reputation as a big-game player in the most demanding of on-field positions was assured – and his goalkicking returns of 59.43 and 55.43 topped the Club’s honours in 1975 and ’76 respectively. The following year, Walls’ leadership attributes were acknowledged with his elevation to the captaincy, but by late 1977 Carlton was a place beset by player rumblings and discontent, and the team failed to contest finals that season.

In the immediate aftermath of Ian Thorogood’s sacking as Carlton coach, Ian Stewart was appointed Thorogood’s successor, but amid a toxic environment Stewart found the task no easier. Amid the chaos, and following the Round 5 match with South Melbourne in 1978, Walls resolved that his future as a League footballer laid elsewhere. Reluctantly, the Club with which he’d been associated for almost half his life acquiesced – and at 27 and in his prime Walls was cleared to Fitzroy.

Walls significantly contributed to the Lions’ fortunes in a further 41 matches, pairing with Bernie Quinlan in the Lions’ front half – and when a chronic knee condition put paid to his on-field career he accepted the role of coach. As an acknowledged coaching innovator (he famously concocted the dispersing player huddle to transition the ball quickly from the kick-in), Walls commandeered the Lions to the finals in three of his five years at the helm.

In late 1985, Walls returned to Princes Park as Senior Coach, in a swap which saw Carlton coach David Parkin replace him in the role at Fitzroy. For Walls, the timing couldn’t have been better – the Blues having completed a recruiting coup with the signings of Craig Bradley, Jon Dorotich, Peter Motley and Stephen Kernahan.

As Carlton coach, Walls was both brutal and uncompromising with his players, and his relationships with some were irreparably damaged. But his unswerving faith in others bore handsome reward.

One was David Rhys-Jones, the gifted if highly strung wingman whom Walls assigned the unlikely task of negating Hawthorn centre half-forward Dermott Brereton on Grand Final day 1987. Rhys-Jones emerged the Norm Smith Medallist for his close-checking role on Brereton on that sweltering Saturday afternoon, thus vindicating Walls’ courage of conviction as Premiership coach.

Another was Kernahan, whom Walls anointed as captain that very year. Some questioned the timing, but Walls was in no doubt, declaring Kernahan on a par with Brisbane’s Michael McLean as the best person he’d ever met in the game – and so it was that Kernahan led, earning across-the-board respect as the greatest on and off-field leader Carlton ever had.

In his 1997 autobiography ‘Sticks’, Kernahan referred to Walls as a both a hard taskmaster and a great coach.

“He opened my eyes with his attention to game plan and team strategies. We had set-ups for boundary throw-ins, centre bounces and moving the ball out of defence. There were also, in particular, different forms of forward set-ups . . .

“ . . . Wallsy got the best out of us as a group of players . . . (and he) certainly got the best out of me. I’ve got no doubt he helped mould me from a young, skinny South Australian footballer into a competitive VFL player more rapidly than I could have hoped or imagined.”

The 1987 premiership – a premiership earned in a year in which the Club was rocked by the twin tragedies of Des English and Peter Motley – rounded out Walls’s grand career at Carlton. Fate would ultimately lead him elsewhere after coach and club parted company in mid-1989, and Walls’s long and valued contributions beyond Princes Park will no doubt be detailed in other media forums.

Not surprisingly, Walls was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2006 – but in the chronicles of Carlton history his name is forever etched, as a Team of the Century Member, Hall of Fame Legend and one of only five men to complete the playing/coaching premiership double since the Club’s admission to the VFL.

For all that he achieved at the Carlton Football Club, Walls was forever thankful. As he once said: “‘Barass’ was my first coach for six seasons, then John Nicholls for the next four. I played in five Grand Finals by the age of 23 and I played alongside some of the great names who 40 years later are still legends, such as John Nicholls, Alex Jesaulenko and Bruce Doull”.

Walls faced his final days with extraordinary courage and a remarkable perspective. He took time to reflect on a life well-lived and was able to share his farewells with the many, many players, officials and media representatives whom he had met along the way. As he said: “I’ve had a wonderful life”.

On learning of Walls’s untimely passing, Kernahan paid tribute to a person he deeply admired both within and outside the League football fraternity.

“When I came to Carlton, ‘Wallsy’ drove me to get the best out of myself, and I’d do anything for him,” Kernahan said.

“He was a hard man – how would he go coaching the kids today? – but I loved that hardness in him. He was also ahead of his time, a real visionary.

“‘Wallsy’ was a great mentor and friend to me, and I’m shattered I’m not going to see him again.”

A few weeks ago, Walls graciously bequeathed to the Carlton Football Club each of his four premiership medallions (1968, 1970, 1972 (as a player) and 1987 (as coach)), as well as the AFL’s Jock McHale Medal, which in 2001 was retrospectively awarded to him as a premiership coach.

Those medals are now on display in the front-of-house Museum at IKON Park.

Robert Walls

July 21, 1950 – May 15, 2025 

AT CARLTON

218 games, 367 goals 1967–1978

First game: Round 2, 1967 vs Hawthorn, aged 16 years, 275 days

Last Game: Round 5, 1978 vs South Melbourne, aged 27 years, 282 days

Premiership Player: 1968, 1970 & 1972 (adjudged Best on Ground)

Captain: 1977-1978

Leading Club Goalkicker: 1975 (59), 1976 (55)

Premiership Coach: 1987

Hall of Fame: inducted 1990, elevated to Legend 2011

Team of the 20^th Century: (named on interchange) 1999

The great Australian game has lost a little of its lustre today, with the untimely passing of Peter Bosustow.

By Tony De Bolfo

THE GREAT Australian game has lost a little of its lustre today, with the untimely passing of one of its most spectacular exponents, the two-time Carlton premiership forward Peter Bosustow.

Bosustow, 67, died in Perth early this morning after a long illness. He leaves behind his beloved wife Shelley, son Brent and daughter Brooke who were all with him to say their goodbyes.

The son of Carlton’s 20-game ruck-rover of the mid-1950s Bob Bosustow, ‘The Buzz’ set Princes Park alight when on the cusp of the 1981 season the Perth forward joined Claremont’s Ken Hunter in crossing the Nullarbor to follow his football dream.

Both were instant football sensations – Hunter with his caution-free high-flying, Bosustow with his spectacular acrobatics and canny goal sense. Under David Parkin’s watch as Senior Coach and Mike Fitzpatrick’s on-field leadership as Captain, the fellow Western Australians Hunter and Bosustow featured in the Blues’ famous back-to-back triumphs of 1981 and ’82 – and their names are forever associated with those coveted all-conquering teams.

Hunter, Carlton’s Best and Fairest winner in his maiden season of ’81, said today that in thinking of Bosustow, “I think of what a character ‘Buzz’ was and how much he took to the big stage”.

“I look back on him in his first year, winning Mark of the Year, Goal of the Year and a Grand Final – him being a half forward, me being a half back,” Hunter said.

“He used to joke that I was the extrovert and him the introvert, when it was obviously the other way around. He was a unique character and a rare football talent in equal measure. That talent was obvious in Perth but it went to another level when he came to Melbourne.

“The Carlton people loved ‘Buzz’ and he loved Carlton.”

Bosustow’s Carlton career lasted just 65 senior matches through three seasons – his father’s illness requiring him to return to his native Western Australia – and yet few players across the competition made such an impact through such a short tenure. ‘The Buzz’ effectively exploded onto the scene, and his on-field impact was seismic. As a truly energised competitor with the capacity to turn a match with a quarter or two of football magic, Bosustow’s impact was both dramatic and immediate.

Blessed with a precocious football talent and a healthy ego to match, ‘The Buzz’ was a football showman who unhesitatingly walked the talk. That his passing should follow Sunday’s meritorious victory over Geelong would not be lost on Carlton supporters with long memories, for it was against the Cats that he completed that extraordinary Mark of the Year/Goal of the Year double in his maiden season – the huge grab over John Mossop in the shadows of the Heatley Stand in Round 18 at Princes Park; and the instinctive snap over the shoulder after smothering Ian Nankervis’ kick from the pocket in the Semi-Final at VFL Park.

Parkin, in paying tribute to an enigmatic player “who took me to the ends of the earth in both directions”, recounted that goal at Waverley to in part tell the whole of Bosustow the footballer.

“Peter was an exceptional talent. I’ve coached some outstandingly talented players, but on his day Peter could do things on a footy field few could emulate – a case in point that smother, gather and goal.

“Peter had remarkable capacities in  the air and on the ground, and was probably as exciting a player to watch as we ever had.

“What was really good was that despite the ups and downs of a coach/player relationship we remained really good mates and shared so much over the journey. We used to call, text or email eachother a lot, particularly through the course of his illness which began 18 months ago. As a player he tested me like nobody else, but he was always quick to apologise to me and the players and it was just a bit sad that he decided to go home. But he was a gem of a bloke.”

On returning to Perth in 1984, Bosustow would again top the Western Australian Demons’ goalkicking table and represent his home state in contests with both Victoria and South Australia. A return to Carlton was later mooted, but neither Perth nor Carlton could come to terms on a clearance fee, and his ’84 year was brought to unfortunate finality when he put his fist through a sheet of plate glass.

The lure of returning to his Princes Park playground did however remain robust and in the summer of late ’85 he gave it another crack, at the time the Blues completed the recruiting coup of Bradley, Motley, Kernahan and Dorotich. But the comeback was short-lived and by the time season ’86 had rolled around Kernahan had claimed his old no.4 guernsey.

Notwithstanding his extraordinary achievements as a Carlton footballer, Bosustow also excelled with Perth from 1975-1980, 1984-1985 and again in 1987. There he put 375 over the goal umpire’s hat and earned the Redlegs’ goalkicking honours three-times. He was also named in Perth’s Team of the Century.

PETER BOSUSTOW

At Carlton

Player No. 888
Guernsey No.4
65 games, 146 goals, 1981-1983
First game: Round 1, 1981 vs Richmond, aged 23 years, 152 days
Final game: Round 21, 1983 vs North Melbourne, aged 25 years, 296 days
Premiership player 1981, 1982
Night premiership player 1983
Club Leading Goalkicker 1981 (59 goals) 

A lost photograph has been discovered of a former Carlton player.

By Tony De Bolfo

OF THE 1246 men to have represented the Carlton Football club at senior level since the VFL competition’s inception year of 1897, photographs of just 107 remain outstanding.

That number has now been revised to 106, with the discovery in the lead-up to Anzac Day of the first known image of former Carlton footballer Henry Charles (‘Harry’) Powell – appropriately enough in military uniform.

Thought to have been taken in late 1918, the damaged and worn sepia photo depicts Harry (with moustache) and an unknown fellow soldier mounted on camels in the shadows of the Great Sphinx and one of the Pyramids of Giza.

The precious image was supplied by Harry’s great-grandson Ken Brownrigg, who noted that Harry served with the 4th Australian Light Horse Regiment from 1917 until his discharge after the war’s end.

Born in Malvern in July 1878, Henry Charles Powell’s first known footballing forays involved the inner-city Amateur club Fitzroy Crescent. Joining nearby Carlton in 1901, the then 22-year-old earned senior selection in Round 6, having been named on a half-back flank alongside the captain Ernie Walton for the match with Melbourne on the MCG.

This was the first of just eight senior appearances for Powell – each one of them losses – with the last of them in Round 2, 1902 against South Melbourne at the Lakeside Oval.

Fifteen years later, Powell, at 39 years two months, volunteered for active service. With The Great War nearing an end, Powell was allocated to a draft of reinforcements for Australia’s iconic Light Horse Brigade – and in early 1918 he bid farewell to his wife Margaret, and boarded a troop ship bound for the Middle East.

However, Pte. Powell saw little active service. Not long after his arrival in Suez aboard the Ormonde, he contracted malaria, and was rushed to hospital with a soaring temperature and a racing heartbeat. He later reported back for duty, but after a few weeks was struck down with pneumonia – and by the time he completed hospital stints in Port Said, Damascus and Cairo the guns had fallen silent.

In June 1919, Pte. Powell was finally discharged. At Kantara he boarded the ship Essex, and by late July completed the short walk down the gangway and back on to Australian soil.

Powell’s great grandson Ken Brownrigg, who graciously availed the photograph to the Carlton Football Club archive, was able to shed some light on the returned soldier’s post-war years.

“Harry was born in Malvern, but lived mainly in Northcote – in Gladstone Avenue, Clarke Street, Charles Street and Mansfield Street,” Brownrigg said.

“He had a number of jobs throughout his life – from bread carter to barman, railway worker and general labourer. He and his wife were parents to eleven children, not all of whom survived.  One son Henry, nicknamed ‘Goog’, later played for Fitzroy, but sadly smashed his knee on debut and never played again.”

Tragically, Powell’s life was brought to premature end in June 1930.

“Harry fell asleep on the last train out of the city,” Brownrigg explained.

“When the train pulled into Croxton Station he awoke and quickly got off the train, but it was one station too early. He tried to get back onto the train, but fell between the train and platform and was crushed . . . and he died of injuries in St Vincent’s Hospital shortly afterwards.”

Almost 100 years after his passing, and through the generosity of his great grandson and the emergence of a treasured sepia photograph, the life and legacy of Carlton footballer and returned serviceman Harry Powell can truly be acknowledged.

“My family is proud of Harry’s AIF service especially given he was nearly 40 when he enlisted. He must have been aware of the horrendous casualties the AIF suffered and therefore the dangers he might face after he volunteered,” Brownrigg said.

“Family folklore holds that he was a courageous bloke on the footy field too. Every time I sit in the stands at the MCG I think of Harry running on with his mates in 1901, and doing his bit for the Blues.”

Doug Ringholt, the former Carlton wingman/half-back flanker of the early ’60s, and nephew of the Blues’ 1947 Premiership rover Jack Conley, has died at the age of 82.

By Tony De Bolfo, Carlton Media

Doug Ringholt, the former Carlton wingman/half-back flanker of the early ’60s, and nephew of the Blues’ 1947 Premiership rover Jack Conley, has died at the age of 82.

Joining Carlton as a budding Under 19 player in 1960, Ringholt worked his way through the ranks to earn selection for his first senior match, as 20th man in Round 6, ’63, against Geelong at Princes Park.

It would be the first of just four senior appearances for Ringholt, who wore Conley’s No.35 in each of them – and as he later lamented, “five got you a club blazer”.

That said, he was incredibly proud to wear his maternal uncle’s 35 on his back.

In December 2019, Ringholt and his wife Dot completed an emotional homecoming from Yarrawonga to the place he remembered as Princes Park, and was photographed for posterity by his Uncle Jack’s locker.

“Gee the facilities have changed a lot,” Ringholt conceded at the time, “but even when I was playing back in those days we all thought what we had was the best available.

“They were great days, both in terms of football life and social life . . . and I guess we had a lot more freedoms than the players enjoy these days.”

Ringholt’s formative years were spent in the family home at 22 Campbell Street, Coburg. They took in schooldays at Moreland Primary and later Coburg Tech, where he chased the leather conveyance with an old teammate the late Wes Lofts.

At Coburg Tech, Ringholt’s football philosophies were shaped by the legendary Hawthorn mentor John Kennedy sen., the school’s resident coach at the time.

“‘Kanga’ (Kennedy) really left an impression,” Ringholt recalled. “When I laid injured on the ground in a school game he told me something about getting up. At the time I thought ‘He really means it’ and I learnt later on that his message was that you don’t let the opposition know you’re hurt.

Zoned to Carlton, Ringholt embarked on his football journey with the unswerving support of his father Stuart (a winner of Coburg’s Best & Fairest in 1940 and six-time West Coburg Premiership player) and of course Uncle Jack.

“I remember having a kick-to-kick with Uncle Jack in the street, and him telling me ‘can you hit the top rail of that fence with a stab kick?’. I said to him ‘I don’t really think so’ and he replied ‘when you can you might be a League footballer’.

“I ended up pretty good stab kick, but I don’t think I ever got to hit the top rail.”

Ringholt turned out for the Carlton Under 19 and reserve grade teams under the watch of the respective coaches Tom Booker and Jack Carney. He broke into the Ken Hands-coached Carlton senior team in that sixth-round match of 1963 with eventual Premiers Geelong. Starting on the pine with John Reilly, Ringholt got the chance to pit his skills with the likes of Denis Marshall and the late ‘Polly’ Farmer . . . and the Blues went down by a goal.

Ringholt’s next senior foray came a fortnight later, against Collingwood when 38,000 spectators crammed into Princes Park on the Queen’s Birthday weekend. The Blues went down by two points after resident rover Bruce Williams fluffed a kick for goal on the final siren – but the game was marred by an ugly incident in which the resident field umpire Ron Brophy was hit with a half-full longneck hurled from over the fence.

As fate would have it, Ringholt’s third appearance came against Collingwood, in the fifth round of the ’64 season at Victoria Park. Named on a wing alongside Ian Collins, Ringholt featured in Carlton’s best and earned a call-up for the following game against St Kilda at the Junction Oval – his last senior game for the club on a day the three-time Carlton Premiership rover Adrian Gallagher completed his senior debut.

“I thought I was doing very well up until half-time, before I got in the way of Gordon Collis and Darrel Baldock,” Ringholt said of the encounter.

“They hit me from behind and I ended up flat-out on the cricket pitch, which left me with a back injury and semi-concussion. Ken Hands said to me ‘How do you feel?’ and I told him ‘Not too well’, so I exited the game at half-time and have probably regretted it ever since.”

Through the Carlton network, Ringholt was sounded out about pursuing his career interstate – either to Tasmania or to Western Australia. Ringholt pitched for Perth because of the warmer weather, representing Claremont in 114 senior appearances in the WAFL and committing 46 years of his life to Western Australia life, which took in his experiences as a sailor involved in ocean racing.

On returning to the Garden State, Ringholt rediscovered his passion for all things Dark Navy. Of Carlton and what it meant to him, Ringholt replied that it was all about the people.

“The club was such a formative part of my life,” he said. “The friendships with the players I met have been ongoing . . . ”

Doug Ringholt was the 753rd player to represent the Carlton Football Club at senior level since the formation of the VFL in 1897.

Great conversation with former Carlton thirds player and country champion, Derrick Filo.

A precious photograph of one-game Carlton centre half-forward Gerald O’Halloran, complete in his dark Navy Blue matchday attire, has this week surfaced – 100 years to the round since he turned out for his only senior appearance.

By Tony De Bolfo, Carlton Media

A precious photograph of one-game Carlton centre half-forward Gerald O’Halloran, complete in his dark Navy Blue matchday attire, has this week surfaced – 100 years to the round since he turned out for his only senior appearance.

The image is thought to have been taken in the backyard of O’Halloran family home at 7 Frank Street Coburg, on or at about the time that Gerald, wearing the No.19, lined up at centre half-forward in the third round match with Melbourne at the MCG on Saturday, May 16, 1925.

Gerald’s son Bob, himself a Carlton Under 19 and Reserve Grade player from 1960-’63, paid IKON Park a visit this week to share the never-before-published image and shed some light on his father’s short but  varied life.

“It’s quite an historic photo. I think my Mum might have taken it with her box brownie,” said Bob, a Carlton Member for almost 50 years who was accompanied by his wife and ardent Blues supporter Jenny.

“It’s precious in a sense, but there is no emotional attachment as I was only seven when Dad died.”

One of seven O’Halloran siblings, Gerald was born in the north-eastern Victorian town of  Benalla in 1902. His grandparents, both hailing from County Clare in Ireland, eventually settled in Benalla, having set sail for Australia in the early 1850s at the height of the potato famine.

Away from the game, Gerald found fame as an accomplished flautist and clarinettist, and, as Bob declared, was a member of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. “I don’t have any of his recordings,” Bob lamented, “but I do know he was for a time an accompanist to Dame Nellie Melba.”

Gerald’s musicianship took him to Sydney town where he also found time to kick a footy in local competition – and it was from Sydney District that he was recruited to Carlton between the wars. Beyond Princes Park, Gerald furthered his on-field career at Coburg, and he later served the VFA Lions as a committeeman and treasurer.

He also found work in a senior position with the taxation department, but illness cruelly brought his life to an end at just 47 years of age.

“Unfortunately Dad developed pancreatic cancer and died in early 1950. I was seven at the time and didn’t know much about Dad or his family because when he died my mother gravitated to hers, and lived in Port Fairy,” Bob said.

“About six or seven years ago I found Dad’s grave in Melbourne General Cemetery, and a memorial has since been placed there.”

Bob graciously availed to the club’s archive a list of Under 19 team rules for the 1960 season, including Round 10 which reads: “players must be financial at all times – especially before the end of season trip”.

He also shared another precious photo of the 1962 Carlton reserve grade team, pictured in front of the since-demolished Robert Heatley Stand. Bob features in the pic, together with the likes of Leo Brereton, Martin Cross, John Goold, Ken Greenwood, Doug Ringholt and Vasil Varlamos, and the resident Coach Jack Carney.

By Tony De Bolfo, Carlton Media

BETTY Plumridge is now 90, her older sister Shirley Orbuck 93 – and while the passing years may have curtailed the ladies’ efforts to front up on matchdays, that shared love of all things Carlton has not waned.

For years the two girls followed their father George Armstrong to Princes Park (and anywhere else that the Carlton players ran out) – and although it’s more than 40 years since George passed on, Betty and Shirley have seen fit to honour his memory by donating the precious Carlton artefacts and publications he collected and safeguarded from as far back as the late 1800s.

Central to the lot of coveted items is a blue cap with distinctive white piping and wire-embroidered “VFL Premiers 1907” script on the front panel, which was awarded to an unknown member of Jack Worrall’s Grand Final-winning Carlton Premiership team that completed the back-to-back leg of the 1906-’08 Premiership hat trick.

Coincidentally, 1907 is the year Armstrong was first recorded as a Carlton Member. He later served the football club as a Board Member (1951-1964) and Vice-President (1960-’64); and was also honoured with Life Membership in 1957.

Similarly, Armstrong was a lifelong devotee of the Carlton Cricket Club. A Second XI team member through the 1920s, he also served as a Committeeman from 1949 and Vice-President from 1959 – combining duties with those as Chairman of Match Committee and Ground Management.

He was also honoured with Life Membership of the CCC in ’61 – all the while serving as Company Secretary of Sutton’s House of Music, which later amalgamated with Brash’s under his watch.

“Dad’s love of cricket was great, but his love of football was equally strong, and as with his brothers he loved Carlton,” Betty said. “Dad’s brother Uncle Wal used to walk around selling tickets at the ground, and Uncle Frank, who is also a Life Member, was on the door for many years.

“Like them, Dad was incredibly loyal to the club and he gave them a lot – and he also did a lot for the kids coming through in the Northern Junior Football League.”

(George Coulthard and Horace Clover, courtesy of the George Armstrong Collection)

As the Armstrong family home was located at nearby Coronation Street in West Brunswick, the sisters were regular patrons at Princes Park from as far back as the 1940s when Carlton Baseball teams shared the ground with their senior counterparts on matchday.

“My sister and I used to go to Carlton with our Mum Ada and Dad. It was handy having someone like Dad on the committee as you could always get tickets,” Betty recalled.

“I remember seeing players like Jimmy Baird walking into the rooms carrying their Gladstone bags. I remember old-timers like Charlie Davey and ‘Mickey’ Crisp, although I never saw them play. In the later years the whole family would gather in the Social Club for pre-match lunch.”

The  Armstrong sisters recently arrived at their decision to commit their father’s items to the Carlton archive due to changing circumstances. 

“About five years ago we thought about selling the cap in the hope that if Carlton made the Grand Final we could buy a couple of tickets and an overnight’s accommodation at the Hilton so that we could wander down to the MCG . . . but obviously that didn’t materialise,” Betty said.

“We stopped going to the football three or four years ago, and recently decided that maybe Carlton was the right home for the cap. It’s nice to known that the cap is there now.”

Included in the Armstrong collection are publications and scrapbooks from as far back as George’s childhood.

Within their sepia-toned pages are glorious photographs of former football club greats – from an incredibly rare image of George Coulthard, Carlton’s first genuine star of the pre-VFL years in civilian attire, through to a full length portrait of Horace Clover, the football club’s greatest player between the wars.

There’s even a postcard pic of “A Young Armstrong”, right arm over, sending down a cricket ball whilst wearing a cap and matching tie.

For the sisters, the preservation of such artefacts at Carlton serve to keep their father’s spirit alive at Carlton – and few have given Carlton more than George and his two girls.