MEMBERS of Carlton’s 1979 premiership team will gather for next year’s 40th anniversary of the Grand Final triumph over Collingwood minus one, with the premature passing of wingman Michael Young.

Young died in Melbourne after a long battle with cancer this morning, three months to the day short of his 60th birthday.

Recruited to Carlton from the Hobart-based Clarence in 1977, Young inherited the No.19 of the 1972 premiership back-pocket John O’Connell, who in late 1989 himself succumbed to cancer at the age of 38.

Young took out Carlton’s reserve grade best-and-fairest award in ’77. The following season, in thr 15th round of that year against St Kilda at inhospitable Moorabbin, he completed his senior debut.

Though the late Denis Collins’ presence on a wing curtailed Young’s senior appearances through 1978, a series of solid showings at reserve grade level through mid-’79 warranted his recall . . . and timing as they say is everything.

Young was part of Carlton’s emphatic semi-final victory over North Melbourne at VFL Park. He was just 20 years old and 22 senior appearances into his senior career when he played his part in the feted outfit, captained and coached by Alex Jesaulenko, which prevailed by five points on a wet deck on Grand Final day.

The following season, Young turned out in 15 senior matches including both finals, but after 37 senior games in total was moved on at the completion of a particularly trying season for the Club. Relocating to Melbourne, Young represented the Redlegs in 15 more matches through two seasons until his delisting in 1982, and despite briefly training with Essendon subsequently gave the game away.

Michael Young played 37 games for the Blues, including the triumphant 1979 Grand Final.

A fellow member of the ’79 team which delivered Carlton’s 12th League premiership was the three-time premiership player Ken Sheldon, who said of Young: “Michael was a very talented, charismatic and loyal teammate who ran his opponents around in circles . . . and often some of his teammates too”.

Another team member, the four-time premiership player David McKay, said: “Michael was a champion fellow and a very good player for Carlton in a premiership season”.

“I know Michael had been ill and undergoing treatment in The Alfred for quite a while. The old Carlton runner Brendan O’Sullivan was a regular visitor to him and ‘Curly’ Austin, Barry Armstrong and Alex Marcou had also been in to see him,” McKay said.

“I spoke to him a couple of weeks ago and thought he was on the mend. He was going into rehab and was even considering fronting up to our most recent Spirit of Carlton function, but it wasn’t to be.”

Nineteen members of Carlton’s premiership 20 of 1979, including the inaugural Norm Smith Medallist Wayne Harmes, are still living. Most of them will gather at Prahran’s College Lawn Hotel this week to raise a glass to their old teammate.

The team was as follows:

Backs: Wayne Harmes, Geoff Southby, David McKay

Half-backs: Peter McConville, Bruce Doull, Robbert Klomp

Centres: Peter Francis, Alex Jesaulenko (cc), Michael Young

Half-forwards: Wayne Johnston, Mark Maclure, Trevor Keogh

Forwards: Mike Fitzpatrick, Peter Brown, Ken Sheldon

Followers: Peter Jones, Barry Armstrong, Jim Buckley

Interchange: Rod Austin, Alex Marcou

ALEX Boyle, Carlton’s resident full-back in eight senior matches through 1953 and ’54, has died at the age of 88 after a long illness.

Considered the logical successor to the premiership-winning full-back Ollie Grieve, Boyle joined the Club from Oakleigh having earned a reputation in VFA circles as a dashing defender of renown. Prior to 1949, he’d played for rival Association club Frankston where his on-field prowess was identified by Carlton’s 1938 premiership captain-coach Brighton Diggins.

In football terms, Boyle was hot property. On June 25, 1952, The Argus reported that Oakleigh had finally relented in clearing Boyle, who’d stood out of the game for the opening 10 games of that season out of frustration in not earning a Carlton clearance.

The Devils’ move meant that Boyle’s new club had acquired what The Argus correspondent noted was “one of the most sought after VFA footballers for years”.

“Two other League clubs – South Melbourne and Footscray – were anxious to secure the services of Boyle,” the writer observed.

“Footscray tried to sign him in 1950, 1951 and again early this season. South Melbourne failed to obtain permission from Oakleigh to interview him in 1950. Boyle trained at Carlton four years ago and the club unsuccessfully sought him last year.”

Former Blue Alex Boyle. (Photo: Boyles Studio)

Named at full-back between Bruce Comben and Brian Molony, the 23-year-old Boyle completed his senior debut in Dark Navy against Footscray in the opening round of season 1953 – the same game in which a future Brownlow Medallist John James turned out for the first time.

Inaccuracy in front of goal cost Carlton the four points that Saturday afternoon – 7.18 (60) to the Bulldogs’ 9.11 (65) – and Boyle did not represent the team again that season.

On the Wednesday after the match, Boyle’s name appeared in The Argus beneath the headline PROBLEM FOR BLUES.

The unnamed reporter noted that the chief worry facing Carlton selectors was finding a successor to Boyle at full-back.

“Boyle leaves on an overseas business trip this week and may not be available again this season,” the correspondent wrote.

This week, Boyle’s son Phil revealed the circumstances behind his father’s sudden departure.

“Dad got a lucrative offer to be foreman for the construction of a cantilever crane on Christmas Island,” Phil said.

“They used to load phosphate onto ships by hand over there and Dad, who was a structural engineer, arranged for the crane to shovel it out.”

Boyle wore the guernsey No.5 of Sam Petrevski-Seton into the Footscray match and then the No.6 of Kade Simpson through a further seven senior appearances in ’54 – the last of them against Geelong in Round 18 at Kardinia Park.

Later cleared by the club, Boyle took up the role of senior coach for Pearcedale in the then Mornington Peninsula Football League in 1955.

“Dad took on a series of coaching jobs throughout in country Victoria and he was captain-coach of Narrandera Imperials in New South Wales,” Phil said.

“He played on into his mid-30s but he copped a crook hip which meant he didn’t go to watch many Carlton games later on. I can only remember a couple of occasions where he went along to watch, but having said that he always followed Carlton with interest and Carlton was his team.”

Boyle was the 662^nd player to represent the Carlton Football Club at senior level since the VFL’s foundation season of 1897.

Two of Boyle’s old Carlton contemporaries, Ron Robertson and Peter Webster, remembered Boyle, but acknowledged that after 65 years, memories of their former teammate are all too fleeting.

In terms of the character of the man, Boyle’s son Phil, who was putting the finishing touches to his father’s eulogy when contacted for this story, offered the following:

“Dad was intelligent and hard-working. For more than a dozen years he worked seven days a week because the family store was burnt out up at Narrandera, we lost a lot and when Dad came back he was fighting to get back on top again,” Phil said.

“He wasn’t one for detail. He didn’t watch a movie or read a picture book. If it wasn’t real he wasn’t interested. As I say in my eulogy, he was a real man – an old fashioned sort of person in that way. Life was tough growing up, his parents broke up and I think he was loyal to all his friends because of that.”

Alexander (Alex) William Boyle died peacefully in Frankston Hospital on July 29. He was a husband to Catherine and formerly Pat (deceased), father to Bruce (deceased), Mal and Phil, step-father to Michael and Kristy. He was also a much-loved grandfather and great grandfather.

A celebration of Boyle’s life will be held at the Rosebud Funeral Chapel, 123 Jetty Road, Rosebud, on Wednesday, August 8, 2018, commencing 2.30 pm.

The image was taken at a meet-and-greet which followed a training session at the old ground last Saturday morning. Amongst those sharing the moment were premiership players Warren Jones, Andy Lukas, Alex Marcou, Ian Robertson, Sergio Silvagni and Geoff Southby, together with assistant coach David Teague and the outgoing Head of Football Andrew McKay.

Other former players sharing the moment with Murphy, Cripps, Curnow, Kreuzer and co. included Leon Berner, Vin Cattoggio and Bob Crowe, together with reserve-grade players Max Dixon, Greg Kazuro and Tony Zoanetti.

Long-serving club property stewards Ken Kleiman and Wayne ‘Bulldog’ Gilbert were amongst the many Old Dark Navy Blues lending their support to the club, not because it was up, but because it was down – a statement of solidarity from those whose love for Carlton only intensifies with the passing years.

BOB Crowe last laced a boot for Carlton in 1964. On Saturday, for the first time in 54 years, the spritely former Carlton half-back flanker returned to the old Princes Park ground, resplendent in his dark navy blue blazer.

That blazer, a Solway standard for players back then, fitted Crowe like the proverbial glove. As the 82-year-old 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 lasted 11 seasons – and these 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 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 129^th and final game would also involve the Lions – and to quote Crowe, “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 recalled of the place where he came to grief before the opening bounce in the 10^th 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 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”.

Fifty-four years on, Crowe came back, only this time accompanied by his wife Judith, son Simon, his three grandchildren Sarah, Grace and Xavier and his daughter-in-law Jane – who captured these 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 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.

Bob Crowe and his family in front of the No.14 locker.

Bob Crowe catches up with Sergio Silvagni as Jacob Weitering listens intently.

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.”

At training’s end, Crowe was introduced to today’s keeper of the No.14 Liam Jones with whom he enthusiastically compared notes. Crowe, you see, was relocated from forward to back by the then coach of the day Ken Hands, just as Jones was more recently repositioned by Brendon Bolton – inspired decisions in both instances.

Bob Crowe meets Marc Murphy and Matthew Kreuzer.

“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 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 when it was most needed – and as he said, “It’ll turn around . . . it always does”.