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Shane O’Sullivan has been honoured by the AFL Coaches Association with the 2026 Neale Daniher Lifetime Achievement Award.

MORE THAN 46 years after he first walked through the doors at Carlton, Shane O’Sullivan has been honoured by the AFL Coaches Association with the 2026 Neale Daniher Lifetime Achievement Award.

Established in 2003, the award celebrates a footy lifetime of outstanding contribution to the game, with previous recipients including Chris Fagan, Neil Balme and John Worsfold.

O’Sullivan first arrived at IKON Park as the promotions officer in 1979, later stepping into the Assistant General Manager’s chair for four seasons that delivered three flags.

From there, his football journey took him away from the Blues, first to the Bulldogs as General Manager, then to a foundational role in getting the Brisbane Bears off the ground.

Six years on, he came home, returning to Carlton in 1994 as Recruiting Manager, and hasn’t left since.

Beyond recruiting, O’Sullivan has worked as the football administration manager, currently working as the manager of the Spirit of Carlton, keeping generations of past players tied to the Club long after their boots have been hung up.

In 2014, he became the 40th recipient of the AFL’s Jack Titus Award for outstanding and sustained service to the game, particularly at club level.

O’Sullivan’s connection to Carlton now spans over three decades, with his hard work recognised when he became a Carlton life member in 2002, as well as awarded with an AFL life membership in 2021.

Known affectionately around the game as “ShaneO”, his footprint reaches well beyond the three clubs he has called home, harnessing a reputation of care and respect across the competition.

Carlton CEO Graham Wright said the award was a thoroughly fitting recognition of Shane’s contribution to the game.

“Shane O’Sullivan is a fantastic football person and part of the fabric of Carlton. His contribution to the game and our Club over such an extended period is without question,” Wright said.

“As one of the longest-serving stalwarts and officials in the Club’s history, Shane is loved by every player and staff member who has come through this Club. He has this rare ability to make you feel welcome the moment you walk through the door.

“The respect, care, and connection he has amongst our past players’ cohort is a perfect reflection of the regard in which he is held.

“So many playing and coaching careers have been influenced, in one way or another, because of Shane. On behalf of everyone at Carlton, congratulations to Shane on an award that’s richly deserved.”

Former Carlton half-back flanker Bob Crowe, a member of the Ken Hands-coached team which contested the 1962 Grand Final, has passed away at the age of 90.

By Tony De Bolfo,

Former Carlton half-back flanker Bob Crowe, whose 11-season senior career began and ended against the then VFL club Fitzroy, has died after a long illness at the age of 90.

Crowe joined Carlton in 1954, the year after training with Melbourne under Norm Smith’s watch. Why the move? Put it down to the persistence of the then Carlton captain Ken Hands and a teammate Ron Robertson, who repeatedly and vociferously mounted the Carlton case.

Round 17, 1954 – the match with Fitzroy at Princes Park – coincided with Crowe’s first senior appearance. Curiously, Crowe’s 129th and final game would also involve the Lions – and as Crowe recalled in an interview back in 2018, “I also did my knee against Fitzroy, running down the race at Brunswick Street”.

“The race was like an old suburban dirt road – potholes and everything,” Crowe said of the place where he came to grief before the opening bounce in the 10th round of ’59.

“I played for a quarter with pain killers, but the knee was a bloody mess and in those days a cartilage injury meant a major operation. I remember I was a week in hospital, a week at home and a week at work. I resumed training with the stitches still in and I reckon I played in about seven weeks.”

Crowe was a member of the Ken Hands-coached Carlton team which contested the 1962 Grand Final. A fellow teammate, the Carlton Premiership player, former CEO and President Ian Collins,  remembered Crowe as a tall, lean and agile defender – “a good player and a good bloke to go with it”.

“He was one of the seven Cs at the club in 1961 – there was him, Carroll, Comben, Collis, Cox, Cross and myself, and we all played in the one Carlton team together.

“He had great mobility and he also had that capacity to come back within weeks from injury. He got over a cartilage injury in four to six weeks in the days when cartilage damage ended careers.”

Crowe finished up at Carlton in late ’64 at around the time of Ron Barassi’s landmark appointment as senior coach . . . “but that was of my own choosing”.

As he said: “I was living at Dandenong and I ended up playing a year there, but I never played again”.

Crowe last laced a boot for Carlton in 1964. Fifty-four years later, the spritely old defender returned to the old Princes Park ground for the first time, resplendent in his dark navy blue blazer.

That blazer, a Solway standard for players back then, fitted Crowe like the proverbial glove. As he quickly reminded – “I played at 11-stone-four and I now weigh in at 11-five”.

Originally recruited to the Club from Mentone on the sayso of the then Mentone coach and dual Carlton premiership player Jim Baird, Crow’s tenure with Carlton was long – and there were happy times both on and off the field for him.

“Looking around the ground now, I remember where the Robert Heatley Stand once stood. They used to put a dance on underneath and there’d be a barrel on,” Crowe recalled.

“They were good days.”

Crowe found opportunities scarce up front, until a heart to heart with the then Chairman of Selectors turned his on-field fortunes around.

“I remember playing forward and the ball wasn’t coming down much,” Crowe said.

“I eventually said to Jack Wrout ‘Give me a game on the backline’, ‘Handsy’ put me back there and it actually worked out quite well, because it usually follows that if a player has played forward he’s got a fair idea what the backman’s doing.”

Crowe’s 2018 Carlton homecoming was also savoured by his wife Judith, son Simon, his three grandchildren Sarah, Grace and Xavier and his daughter-in-law Jane – who captured wonderful images for posterity on a day in which the Club’s past players were invited to a post-training meet and greet.

Together with the clan, Crowe posed by the No.14 locker into which his name is forever etched. Later, he renewed acquaintance with one of his old Carlton contemporaries Sergio Silvagni. Together they fought the good fight in the losing Grand Final of ’62 (“one game too many” given the drawn preliminary final with Geelong) – the same year Crowe joined John Nicholls in representing the Big V.

For Crowe, ‘Big Nick’ was Carlton’s best, although he often wonders what might have been had a barrel-chested bloke from the Riverina hung around.

“We had a bloke here named Des Lyons, a centre half-forward from Barellan,” said Crowe.

“Now he only played a couple of games and he got homesick, but in my opinion he would have been the best of the best.”

Crowe and his loved ones filed out of the old ground, having completed their sentimental journey. For Crowe, timing was everything, for he wanted to lend the Club his undying support at a time when it was down – and as he said then, “It’ll turn around . . . it always does”.

Robert Bromley Crowe was the 683rd player to represent the Carlton Football Club at senior level since the formation of the VFL in 1897.

Carlton’s AFL players wore black armbands into the wildcard final with Melbourne; as did its AFLW players into their Sunday afternoon’s match with Fremantle (Walyalup) at Perth’s Cockburn ARC Oval in tribute.

Carlton history was on show at Marvel Stadium’s Victory Room, as more than 500 Members and supporters joined Captain Patrick Cripps and the entire senior playing group to celebrate the Club’s best and fairest winners across the past eight decades.

By Tony De Bolfo,

More than 500 Members and supporters – together with Captain Patrick Cripps and all Carlton current senior players – have gathered in Marvel Stadium’s Victory Room in celebration of the VFL/AFL club’s best and fairest players of years past.

Twenty-three winners across eight decades – from the only surviving best and fairest of the 1950s John Nicholls through to the reigning John Nicholls Medallist George Hewett – were in the house for the Spirit of Carlton’s much-anticipated annual luncheon under the ‘Club Champions’ banner.

Nicholls and Cripps – Carlton’s only five-time winners of the Club’s most prized individual award – brought real gravitas to the event, as did three-time winners and former captains Stephen Kernahan and Chris Judd, and two-time winners Geoff Southby, Wayne Johnston, Anthony Koutoufides and Jacob Weitering.

Also present was the 2003 best and fairest and former captain Andrew McKay, as well as the 2004 winner and former coach David Teague. McKay was the last recipient of what had been known as the Robert Reynolds Trophy since 1934, with Teague the inaugural beneficiary of the rebranded medal in Nicholls’ honour.

Nicholls himself participated in a Q and A with resident MC Jason Bennett at the luncheon – and guests later heard from Jacob Weitering, Hewett and Judd as speakers forming the first of two panels; with Peter Jones, Adrian Gallagher, Stephen Kernahan and Anthony Koutoufides forming the second.

Spirit of Carlton Manager Shane O’Sullivan said that the Luncheon importantly served as a fundraiser for the well-being of all past players – a charter established when Geoff Southby, David Rhys-Jones and a core of others came together to form the Spirit in the early 2000s.

“From 2007-2018 the Spirit of Carlton mainly supported the club with gymnasium equipment for the current players at a time when it was in a difficult financial situation,” O’Sullivan said.

“Since 2018, particularly as a consequence of the issues around concussion, the Spirit of Carlton has been more attuned to past player welfare – anything and everything from meals and rental issues through to medical expenses and even funerals – which is why the Spirit sees the importance in looking after its own.”

Of the 40 players to have earned Carlton’s best and fairest award across the 67 seasons since Nicholls in ’59, only two are deceased – the 1955 winner John James who also took the honours in 1960 and ’61) and Sergio Silvagni (1962 and ’68).

Carlton backman Max O’Halloran, a community champion of Australia’s Far North, has passed away in Cairns at the age of 74.

By Tony De Bolfo,

Max O’Halloran, a five-game Carlton backman in John Nicholls’ final season as Captain-Coach, and a giant of football in the Far North, has passed away in Cairns.

O’Halloran, aged 74, died unexpectedly at his home in Parramatta Park on Wednesday (July 15).

Hailing from Ulverstone on Tasmania’s northern coast, O’Halloran turned out for Footscray in 13 matches across three seasons from 1972. He joined Carlton in 1974, in a trade that saw the Bulldogs acquire the three-time Premiership wingman Ian Robertson.

Wearing the No.22 vacated by Neil Chandler and (now) Harry O’Farrell, the blond-haired and moustached O’Halloran first ran out in Dark Navy for the Round 15 contest with the then reigning Premier Richmond on the MCG, on an afternoon in which Alan Mangels also completed his Carlton senior debut.

The Richmond game was the first of O’Halloran’s five successive appearances – the last of them the Round 19  match with his old team the Bulldogs on the Western Oval. The late Robert Walls led O’Halloran and his fellow players out as newly-appointed captain, Nicholls having announced his retirement as a player the previous week.

In 1975 O’Halloran chased the leather for VFA club Oakleigh – as fate would have it alongside Robertson – but his football journey would take him to Cairns in the Far North where he forged a reputation built over five decades as a prominent player, Premiership coach and QAFL administrator.

O’Halloran was a force as a Captain-Coach, guiding North Cairns Tigers to two flags from 1979, and another in 1995 as Coach of Cairns Saints. An AFL Cairns board member from 1998 to 2007, O’Halloran championed the fortunes of the game in the region, chiefly in assisting with the removal of the debt owed on Cazaly Stadium.

A Life Member of both the North Cairns Football Club and AFL Cairns, O’Halloran was presented with a Merit Award in 2011, in recognition of his services to Queensland Football.

His commitment to community was also recognised as Patron of Cairns Bands and the Rondo Theatre and Life Member of Tobruk Pool, and form more than a decade he served as Councillor representing the regions of Edge Hill and Whitfield, as well as parts of Manoora, Manunda and Brinsmead.

During his time in office, Cr O’Halloran helped deliver $1.5billion in capital works projects to the city, including the Cairns Performing Arts Centre and Munro Parklands redevelopment.

A measure of the depth and breadth of O’Halloran’s great sense of community was put best by the former local Mayor Bob Manning, who told The Cairns Post: “No matter where you went with Max, he knew more people than you knew”.

“It’s rather fitting that he and Sam Neil (the late actor) are going together,” Manning said.

“They’ll give a bit of class to the mob up top.”

O’Halloran was the 848th player to represent the Carlton Football Club at senior level since Jimmy Aitken led the first team out in the opening Round of VFL competition in 1897.