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By Tony De Bolfo

Harvey Dunn Jnr outside his old house in Pigdon Street. (Photo: Carlton Football Club)

A few hours before Vinny Waite’s boy Jarrad booted the first of seven goals for Carlton on the MCG on Friday night, 81 year-old Harvey Laurence Dunn – the first League footballer ever recruited under the father/son rule – lost his three-year battle with cancer.

Harvey died at Frankston Palliative Care earlier that Friday afternoon and there to say goodbye were those who meant the most – his beloved wife of 54 years Jill, daughter Melissa (who had jetted in from London the previous day) and sons Andrew and Neale.

“Dad was as close to perfect as a person could be. He was always interested genuinely in others, selfless to the extreme and never complaining, always positive,” Melissa said on behalf of Harvey’s family.

“My mother noted a song ‘Look Over There’ from the musical Le Cage Aux Folles and the line ‘someone puts himself last so that you can come first’ – that’s Dad in a nutshell.”

Just as family was everything to this most engaging of gentlemen, Carlton was truly family to Harvey also – and while his senior appearances for the team were confined to just nine games, blood ties have bound the Dunns to the Blues for almost 90 years.

For it was on the afternoon of September 6, 1924 in the 18th round match against Richmond that Harvey’s father Harvey Louis Dunn ran down the visitor’s race at Punt Road for the first of 71 matches over the next six seasons as a Carlton player.

A little over a quarter of a century later, Harvey junior was officially cleared to play for Carlton’s senior team in accordance with the newly-introduced father/son rule (eligibility was then 50 games-plus) on May 11, 1951. Next came Melbourne’s Ronald Dale Barassi (March 15, 1953); South Melbourne’s Hugh McLaughlin and Bob Pratt junior (April 15, 1953); Carlton’s NW Huxtable (April 17, 1953); and Fitzroy’s James Chapman (March 31, 1954), whose fathers all represented their respective clubs with great distinction.

Young Harvey set the record straight on his historic recruitment a couple of years ago, when he and this reporter, together with the club’s Video Production Manager Alison Smirnoff and The Age’s Rohan Connolly, paid a sentimental journey to 361 Pigdon Street, North Carlton – the Hawthorn-brick single fronted cottage in which Harvey was born.

“Many years ago there was an article in the paper that Ron Barassi was the first player recruited under the rule, but I was in fact the first. I also dispute the above date my clearance came through and I’ll tell you why,” Harvey said at the time.

“When the under 19s were up and running I was residentially bound to North because I lived in Flemington. I wanted to go to Carlton because of Dad so I applied for a clearance from North, but they wouldn’t give me one. Instead they asked me to train and I trained there for one night in 1949, but I didn’t want to go to North because I was Carlton-mad.

“Now my father knew there was a father-son ruling being considered at the League, so he advised that instead of me going to North in ’49 that I play for Box Hill, then in the Eastern District Football League.

Harvey Dunn Junior during his playing days. (Photo: Carlton Football Club)

“During that year the League brought in the father-son rule, so in 1950 I transferred to Carlton and won the best and fairest in the thirds. I also played in the 1951 and ’53 reserve grade Grand Finals and we won them both.

“When I first went there Perc Bentley was coach of the seniors, Mick Price the reserves and Jim Francis the thirds. My Dad coached Box Hill in ’49 when I was there waiting for this clearance and he later got an offer to coach the Carlton thirds, which he did from 1953 to ’55. I know the thirds got beaten by a point in a Grand Final one year and I also know that Dick Pratt was playing when Dad coached.”

It’s three quarters of a century since Harvey and his family vacated the old Pigdon Street abode, well within walking distance of the old Princes Park ground.

Harvey was barely a toddler then, and it was only recently that he revisited the place where it all began way back in 1931.

“When Dad returned from the First World War he played for Carlton. He was a butcher who lived at 361 Pigdon Street North Carlton, near Bowen Crescent, about a three iron from the ground, and I was actually born in the front room of that house,” Harvey said.

“My family was in Carlton for the first 18 months of my life, but these were Depression days and, unlike today, there wasn’t much welfare . . . so families who couldn’t buy a house were faced with an opportunity to rent a property to Flemington, because things were pretty tough.”

While the Dunn family relocated to Flemington, father and son remained staunchly loyal to the Carlton Football Club. As Harvey said: “As a young kid I used to hear the roar of the crowd and when I went to Flemington I still walked up past the zoo to go to the Carlton ground”.

In his formative years at Carlton, Harvey struck up what proved to be a lifelong friendship with Carlton full-back, the late George Ferry. As Harvey said: “We met up in the thirds, I was best man at George’s wedding and I delivered the eulogy at his funeral service”.

Harvey donned the No.22 guernsey and completed his senior debut – the 650th Carlton player to do so – in the 8th round of 1951, against Collingwood at Princes Park. But unfortunately his appearances in the firsts were all-too-few.

“I felt I was playing pretty good football as a rover and I was getting some good reports all the time, but I don’t think I was getting too many good raps at selection,” he said.

“In 1954 I got an offer to return to Box Hill in the association for a few extra quid because I was getting on a bit. I won the best and fairest there in 1955, but after I married in ’59 I never played again.”

In the ensuing years, Harvey worked for Melbourne City Council and later managed Royal Park Golf Course. Until his health took a recent turn for the worse he was always up for a round on the Mornington Peninsula.

Over the years, Harvey made sporadic silent pilgrimages back to the house in Pigdon Street, where he was born more than three quarters of a century ago. The single fronted cottage with its cast iron fence is built right on the street, but Harvey, until recently, hadn’t mustered the courage to make contact with the kindly owner John McLaren for old time’s sake.

Harvey Dunn Jnr with a photo of his father. (Photo: Carlton Football Club)

“Many times I’ve been tempted to knock on the door, but the owner would probably think of me as a bit silly to look around. If ever I mustered the courage to knock I’d make sure I brought my birth certificate with me, which states ‘born in 361 Pigdon Street, Carlton North’, Harvey said.

When John heard of Harvey’s interest a couple of years ago, he was only too happy to open up so that Harvey could set foot in the front room.

On that sentimental occasion, Harvey came to the house armed with his Dad’s old No.16 dark Navy Blue guernsey and an old scrapbook, bursting with faded sepia clippings of his father’s career and indeed his own career with Carlton. It was clear to see, as he flicked the pages of his glorious youth, that Harvey’s love for the club had not diminished.

“I don’t get to many Carlton games now, but I still follow the Blues from afar. I went to the farewell match at Princes Park and am still a member of the Carlton Past Players,” he said at the time.

“It was really good that Carlton pushed that rule. It was the only way I could play for the team for whom Dad played and for whom I supported since I was a kid.”

At Carlton, the likes of Graeme Anderson, Scott Howell, Peter Kerr, Stephen Silvagni, Jarred Waite, Lance Whitnall and Dylan Buckley were each bound by the father/son rule, just as Harvey Dunn was more than sixty years ago.

And the boy from Pigdon Street wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

Harvey Laurence Dunn is survived by his wife Jill, daughter Melissa, sons Andrew and Neale, and grandchildren Siena, Blake, Fletcher and Charlie. He is also survived by his sister Gwen and son-in-law Mark.

Harvey’s funeral service is scheduled for 1.30pm this Thursday, June 13, at Mount Martha Uniting Church, 109 Bay Road, Mount Martha.

By Tony De Bolfo

Imagine you’re a 19 year-old country kid earning “Mr. Football” as your first opponent? This was the daunting prospect facing the former Carlton aerialist David McKay.

Somehow, the boy from Newlyn survived, emerging unscathed from his direct dealings with the late Ted Whitten, in a back pocket at the Western Oval in the wild and heady days of flower power.

It was the third round of 1969 – the first of McKay’s 263 games over a 13-season career for Carlton. And what a career – the premierships of 1970, 1972, 1979 and 1981 – the last of which he sealed with his final kick in footy.

A truly agile big man blessed with wonderful inflight judgement, McKay quickly became a crowd favourite – whether floating across the pack a la Royce Hart, or leaping high over three or four sets of shoulders to take yet another “specky”.

Curiously though, it wasn’t why he was earned the nickname “Swan”. That was afforded him by his fearsome former teammate Ricky McLean.

To hear David McKay reflect on his outstanding playing career in the latest of the “Our History” podcasts for carltonfc.com.au, click here.

By Tony De Bolfo

Cyril Mann during his playing days for the Blues. (Photo: Carlton Football Club)

Cyril Mann never talked about his Indigenous heritage. When a heart attack claimed his life at just 45, stories of the Yorta Yorta went to the grave with him.

That happened in March 1964, when Cyril was laid to rest in Preston Cemetery – a few kilometres north of the Carlton ground where the high-flying centre half-forward crafted a 42-game career either side of his wartime duties.

For all these years, Cyril’s Indigenous links were not known to either Carlton or the AFL.

Only now, and with the assistance of his surviving daughter Karen Mann-Brooks, can Cyril’s connection with his people be revealed – and it’s a splendid connection.

Karen recently confirmed that Cyril’s maternal grandfather was the great William Cooper, who hailed from the Yorta Yorta territory near the junction of the Goulburn and Murray Rivers. William is remembered as the Australian Aboriginal political activist, much-respected community leader and genuine man of stature whose extraordinary lifetime achievements cannot be properly acknowledged in the limited space available here.

William Cooper.

“It was only after Dad died that my great aunty Sally, William Cooper’s daughter, told us a lot of things,” said Karen, who now lives in Andrew Walker’s home town of Echuca, not far from Cumeroogunga where Cooper is buried.

“I don’t remember a lot about Dad because I was only eight when he died. But Mum used to talk a lot about Dad, that he played for Carlton and that he loved Carlton.

“And I do remember on my birthdays that he’d take me up Plenty Road to the shoe shop and he’d buy me two pairs of shoes. That was really good.”

Cyril Stanley Mann, the oldest of three children of Charles and Jessie (nee Cooper) Mann, was born in Carlton on August 31, 1918. He was educated at the local St Augustine’s Primary School.

Details of Cyril’s early years are unfortunately scant and Karen admitted in retrospect that she should have asked her late mother more questions.

But faded newspaper clippings reveal that Cyril represented Southampton Tigers as an Under 16 Footscray footballer of renown, having taken out the Mall Medal for best player in the comp.

The story goes that Cyril was later recruited to Carlton from Silvan, east of Melbourne in the Yarra Valley, on the sayso of the then captain-coach Brighton Diggins, who was taken by the player’s aerial skills in a local league finals match the previous season.

A munitions maker by profession, Cyril’s first senior appearance in a dark Navy Blue guernsey came in the fourth round of 1939, against Footscray at the Western Oval. Diggins led the visitors out, they won easily and Cyril, named on a forward flank alongside Jack Wrout, booted a goal on debut.

Cyril, whose uncle Lynch Cooper took out the 1928 Stawell Gift, was a real eye-catcher. His inherent athleticism was noted by football scribes of the day, not the least of whom was Carlton’s first 200-gamer Rod “Wee” McGregor. A cartoonist perhaps paid Cyril the greatest compliment, captioning his drawing of the high-flyer with the words “Mann marks in positions unthought of by Nash, Todd and Pratt”.

But when Great Britain, France and most of the British Commonwealth declared war on Germany, Cyril, like many, registered for active service.

He continued to play while waiting for the call to arms. He was there in September ’41, (booting three and two goals respectively in Carlton’s second semi and preliminary final losses to Melbourne and Essendon on the MCG) and he managed another five senior appearances through 1942 before finally being called into uniform.

Cyril served in the 2/23 Battalion, which helped defend Tobruk, before his discharge in April 1944.

Karen Mann-Brooks with a photo of her late father, Cyril.

Almost two years later, he saddled up for the Blues again, in what would be Carlton’s Peace and Victory Premiership of 1945. But for reasons unclear he managed just three home and away matches before calling it a day in May of that year.

Cyril furthered his playing career in the Association with Brunswick and, later, Port Melbourne. He earned the plaudits of The Association Football Recorder correspondent for “defeating Ron Todd in the air” and as the club’s reigning B & F starred at centre half-back when the Borough beat Sandringham in the ’47 Grand Final.

Cyril married Evelyn Pendelbury, a Fitzroy girl whom Karen suspects he met at a social on the night after a Carlton game, and together they raised three children – a son Keith and daughters Lorraine and Karen.

Recently, Karen and her husband Warren caught up with this reporter for a cuppa on High Street in Preston, not far from the old Mann family home at 16 Eisenhower Street, Reservoir, where she spent her formative years.

Karen’s love of the club for which her late father once played has not waned – the legacy of those happy times where she followed her mother to the old Carlton ground and in turn led her own children through the turnstiles there.

Then there’s her love for the people of the Yorta Yorta.

“I am proud of that Aboriginal link and I always tell everyone I have Aboriginal in me,” Karen said.

“Perhaps my father was a victim of the times and it was never spoken about, but you grow up now and it doesn’t matter what you are, does it?”

To learn more of the life of William Cooper, click here.

Cyril Stanley Mann

August 31, 1918 – March 3, 1964

Carlton player no. 548

Recruited from Silvan

Career 1939-1942 & 1945

Senior debut: Round 4, 1939 versus Footscray, aged 20 years, 255 days

Final game Round 3, 1945 versus Essendon, aged 26 years, 247 days

Guernsey No 25 (1939-40), 27 (1941 & 45) & 34 (1942)

Games 42

Goals 65

Carlton’s known Indigenous footballers

Alf Egan – 36 games, 20 goals, 1931-1933

Cyril Mann – 42 games, 65 goals, 1939-1942 & 1945

Syd Jackson – 136 games, 165 goals, 1969-1976

Rod Waddell – five games, two goals, 1981-1982

Mark Naley – 65 games, 74 goals, 1987-1990

Troy Bond – 36 games, 26 goals, 1994-1995

Sean Charles – one game, 0 goals, 1998

Justin Murphy – 115 games, 105 goals, 1996-2000 & 2002-2003

Andrew Walker – 150 games, 115 goals, 2004 –

Eddie Betts – 170 games, 270 goals, 2005 –

Cory McGrath – 50 games, four goals, 2004-2006

Joe Anderson – 17 games, 0 goals, 2007-2010

Chris Yarran – 69 games, 53 goals, 2009 –

Jeffery Garlett – 84 games, 149 goals, 2009 –

Tony De Bolfo is the Carlton Football Club’s Historian. You can follow him on Twitter: @CFC_DeBolfo

By Tony De Bolfo

 

“The only thing I remember about the flight was sitting in the plane and looking out the window at the clouds and thinking ‘’I wonder if this is Australia?’ or ‘I wonder if that’s Australia”, always thinking one of those clouds was Australia.” It was quite a realistic thought at the time . . . a kid’s imagination running wild.”

Milham Hanna quite literally walked in off the street, but in truth he came to Carlton from half way round the world. Born in Kantara in Northern Lebanon, Mil found his feet in neighboring East Brunswick, just a short tram ride down Sydney Road to the front entrance of the place then known as Princes Park.

Arriving in Melbourne with his mother and sister on Cup Day 1971, Mil, then five years old, had a premonition he would one day play for the Carlton Football Club. It would happen some 15 years later with disastrous consequences at VFL Park, but it would end 189 games later with a Premiership medallion to show for it.

“Now I look back and think about what I’d be doing if I was still in the little village of Northern Lebanon,” Milham said.

Click here to listen to Part 1 of the Milham Hanna story.

Click here to listen to Part 2 of the Milham Hanna story.

Follow Tony De Bolfo on Twitter: @CFC_DeBolfo

By Tony De Bolfo

The Carlton Football Club is mourning the passing of its 1956 Club Best and Fairest and dual Victorian representative Doug Beasy, who died in Mildura last night after a short illness. He was 83.

The second son of the 1932 Carlton captain Maurie Beasy, and a great uncle to the Hawthorn midfielder Brendan Whitecross, Doug was born on April 16, 1930 and raised in the Beasy family home in the old Victorian goldfields town of Dunolly.

Football soon became part of Doug’s life and success just as quickly followed. In 1948 at the age of 18 he took out Dunolly’s club best and fairest, and by ’49 he’d found his way to Princes Park.

A primary school teacher by profession, Doug had difficulties balancing his work and football commitments in those early days. As his younger brother Graham recalled: “Early on he (Doug) was teaching at Chum Creek, just north of Healesville, and twice a week he’d travel from there to Carlton to train”.

In the opening round of 1951, against Hawthorn at Princes Park, Doug broke through for what was the first of 129 senior appearances for the old dark Navy Blues. He booted one goal from a flank on a day in which fellow debutant Keith Warburton kicked seven from full-forward.

Wearing the Guernsey later made famous by Gordon Collis, Brent Crosswell and Mark Naley, Doug completed the ’51 season with an outstanding showing in his team’s reserve grade triumph over Essendon. He then established himself in Carlton’s senior 20, featuring in all 20 appearances in ’52 and polling the third-most votes for his club in the Brownlow behind Ollie Grieve and Fred Davies.

The ill-fated First-Semi of ’52 doubled as Doug’s maiden finals appearance (and the first of only three in his entire playing career). A last-minute behind kicked by the then Fitzroy captain Alan Ruthven gave the Gorillas the narrowest of victories in that match, and Warburton nearly died of internal bleeding after receiving a knock to the abdomen early in the contest.

In June 1955, Doug and his old teammate the late John James were named for Victoria against South Australia at the MCG. Doug, named 20th man for that one, emerged from the dugout late and had little influence, but two years later, against Tasmania at North Hobart Oval, booted three goals in the Big V’s 25-point win.

In between, Doug edged out James to take Carlton’s Best and Fairest award – the Robert Reynolds Trophy as it was known then.

In the 14th round of 1957, Doug got his name on the locker with game No.100, and kicked three goals for good measure against Footscray at Princes Park. He would later be part of the Blues outfit that went down to Hawthorn in the ’57 first-semi, having shared roving duties with Leo Brereton – on a day in which the MCG was hit with a massive hailstorm at half-time.

Doug’s time at Carlton came to an end when he limped from the field in the ’59 second semi-final against Melbourne. The team went down by 44 points, but the player couldn’t get his body right for the following week’s prelim and so he called it a day.

In 1960, Doug accepted the position of captain-coach of VFA club Box Hill. Lining up in the centre for the Mustangs, Doug duly took out the 1961 Liston Trophy for the Association’s best and fairest player.

Throughout it all, Doug maintained his commitment to teaching, and he taught in a variety of schools including Mitcham, Merbein, Portland, St Arnaud and ultimately Mildura.

On his retirement as an educator, Doug just as frenetically pursued a variety of hobbies and activities.

“He was a self-taught musician who taught himself to play piano, piano accordion and brass instruments. He played double bass tuba in the local district band and this year’s ANZAC Day Service in Mildura was the first he’d missed,” Graham said.

“He was very involved with his local community, with the church and with Rotary for which he served as District Governor. His last project was to get a men’s shed built for retired fellows living in Mildura. I took him to see that workshop just a few days before he couldn’t leave his house anymore.”

Graham said he received an email from Doug on the latter’s birthday in April advising that he had been unwell for some weeks.  “More recently, Doug spent some time at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne and he returned to his home in Mildura two weeks ago . . . but he’d never previously been sick in his life,” Graham said.

Collis, Carlton’s 1964 Brownlow Medallist who inherited Doug’s No.17 jumper, said he was privileged to have held a telephone conversation with the man just three days before his passing.

“I had a really nice chat with Doug. We spoke about the old No.17 and he was telling me how impressed he was with the new boy (Sam Rowe) who’s wearing it now,” Collis said.

The Carlton Football Club is the poorer for Doug’s passing, as are the good people of Mildura. Graham perhaps put it best when he said of his older brother – “He was a man of high integrity, a giant of a man”.

“He had concern for all in his community and he was involved in sorts of different activities. He was a man of the people,” Graham said.

Doug Beasy is survived by his older brother Lloyd, younger brother Graham and younger sister Merle.

He is also survived by his beloved wife Alys, with whom he celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary last Thursday, their children Ian, Alyson, Craig and Meryn, their respective spouses, 12 grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

Funeral details are yet to be finalised, but the service will be held at the Mildura Church of Christ.

As a mark of respect to Doug, the Carlton senior players will wear black armbands into tonight’s match with St Kilda at Etihad Stadium.
Douglas Edward Beasy

Carlton career: 129 games, 124 goals, 1951-1959

Carlton Player No. 647

Guernsey No. 17

Senior Debut: Round 1, 1951 versus Hawthorn (aged 21 years, four days)

Last Game: Second Semi-Final, 1959 versus Melbourne (aged 29 years, 148 days)

Honors: Carlton Best and Fairest 1956; Victorian Representative 1955 & 1957