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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.

A SEQUENCE of four photographs of Carlton’s inaugural Brownlow Medallist Bert Deacon in full flight have surfaced almost three quarters of a century after the much-admired centre half-back earned the game’s most coveted award.

Captured in an unknown suburban parkland, the photos show Deacon in his long-sleeved Dark Navy guernsey (possibly carrying the original No.14 on the back) and highcuts, magnificently executing the game’s basics –the high mark, the field kick and the art of “selling the candy”. 

The images, which do not carry a photographer’s name, were stored in a box of miscellaneous football images in the keep of Peter Valentino, a former volunteer at the State Library of Victoria, who graciously availed copies to the Club.

Peter believed the photographs were captured for the national magazine Sporting Life (published from 1947 to 1957) and the Australian pictorial magazine Pix (published from 1938 to 1972).

They are thought to have been taken in 1948 – the year after Deacon, with 23 votes, earned the Brownlow by two from St Kilda centreman Harold Bray. 

To complete his stellar year, Deacon also featured in Carlton’s famed one-point Grand Final victory over Essendon in ’47 and tied with the then Carlton captain Ern Henfry for the club’s Best & Fairest award.

Henfry also featured on the front cover of the May 1951 edition of Sporting Life, a copy of which Peter also supplied. 

Both Henfry and Deacon featured in Sporting Life’s Teams of The Year (a forerunner to All-Australian teams) – Henfry in 1947 and ’49; Deacon in 1947, ’48 and ’49.

A feature of the IKON Park redevelopment includes space dedicated to significant Carlton Football Club memorabilia.

To assist in showcasing the rich history of our Club, we’re putting the call out to the Navy Blue community to see what artefacts might be out there amongst the treasure caves of suburban abodes.

Think boots, guernseys, trophies, medals – the older and more momentous, the better.

Do you have a historic item that deserves to be on display for all Carlton people to experience and enjoy?

If you are able to help the Carlton Football Club source any items of significance, please get in touch by taking a photo and submitting details about your item here.

More information on the redevelopment can be viewed here: https://www.carltonfc.com.au/club/ikon-park-redevelopment