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EAST PERTH - Part One: 1902 to 1960
Affiliated: Perth 3rd Rate Association 1902-03; Perth 1st Rate Association 1904-05; WAFA 1906-07; WAFL/WANFL 1908-present
Club Address: P.O. Box 447, Leederville, Western Australia 6903
Home Ground: Medibank Stadium (formerly known as Leederville Oval). The club was based at Perth Oval between 1910 and 1999.
Formed: 1902 (as Union Football Club)
Colours: Blue and black
Emblem: Royals
Premierships: SENIORS 1919-20-21-22-23, 1926-27, 1936, 1944 [see footnote 1], 1956, 1958-59, 1972, 1978, 2000-1-2 (17 total) RESERVES (from 1925) 1932-3-4-5, 1948, 1961, 1965-6-7, 1976, 1978, 1981, 1983 (13 total) COLTS (from 1957) 1967, 1975, 1980, 2000, 2006 (5 total) Western Australian State Premierships -1919, 1922-23 (3 total) OTHER PREMIERSHIPS - 3rd Rate Association: 1902-03 (2 total); 1st Rate Association: 1904 (1 total); R.P. Rodriguez Shield:1958-9, 1961, 1966-7, 1969, 1971, 1976, 2000 (9 total)
Sandover Medallists: W. 'Digger' Thomas 1923; G. 'Staunch' Owens 1925; W. 'Billy' Thomas 1929; F.Allen 1950 [see footnote 2]; G. 'Polly' Farmer 1956, 1957 [see footnote 2] & 1960; E. 'Square' Kilmurray 1958; M.Brown 1969; A.Quartermaine 1975; P.Spencer 1976 & 1984; P.Kelly 1978 & 1979; J.Ironmonger 1983; D.Bain 1988; B.Anderson 1997; R.Turnbull 2001 (14 Medallists/18 Medals)
Tassie Medallists: D.J. 'Mick' Cronin 1937; Graham 'Polly' Farmer 1956; Ken McAullay 1972 (3 total)
All Australians: Graham 'Polly' Farmer 1956, 1958 & 1961; Kevin Murray 1966; Keith Doncon 1966; Mal Brown 1972 (captain); Ken McAullay 1972; Barry Cable 1979 (non-playing coach) (8 total)
League Top Goalkickers: S.Sloss (30) 1909; H.Campbell (67) 1924, (89) 1926 & (87) 1927; A.Watts (101) 1944*; W.Mose (115) 1958; N.Hawke (114) 1959; P.Tierney (119) 1967; G.Bartlett (69) 1990; T.Wilson (74) 2006 (10 total)
East Perth's Official 'Teams Of The Century': Click here
Highest Score: 32.19 (211) vs. Claremont 9.10 (64) at Perth Oval in round 10 1958
Most Games: 269 by Derek Chadwick from 1959 to 1972
Record Home Attendance: 26,760 in round 9 1969 at Perth Oval: West Perth 16.15 (111); East Perth 12.11 (83)
Record Finals Attendance: 51,385 for 1969 grand final at Subiaco Oval: West Perth 21.21 (147); East Perth 10.14 (74)
Overall Success Rate 1906-2007: 55.0%
* signifies that this was achieved during the wartime under-age competition which ran between 1942 and 1944
Known as the Royals, East Perth have one of the proudest traditions in Western Australian football, but the club has also endured its share of hard times. Among the unique achievements of the East Perth Football Club are:
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providing the winner of the Sandover Medal for the outstanding player in the WAFL on a record eighteen occasions |
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providing more Eric Tassie Medallists (three) than any other club in Australia |
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winning a record five consecutive WAFL premierships between 1919 and 1923 |
In addition, East Perth is unique among Australian football clubs in having an official heraldic symbol of coat of arms and crest, thereby further emphasising the 'royal' connection.
East Perth's origins, however, were anything but regal. In 1902, with the population of Perth standing at little more than 10,000, employees of the Union Soap Factory and the nearby Excelsior Confectionery Factory joined forces to form the Union Football Club, which over the course of the next four seasons experienced considerable success at junior level. Encouraged by this success the club made an application to join the Western Australian Football Association in 1906 as 'East Perth' and, despite reservations on the part of some WAFA delegates who considered that the new club would be out of its depth, this application was accepted.
Concern about the new club's ability proved unfounded. Appearing in patriotic red, white and blue playing uniforms (which may have given rise to the nickname 'Royals') the team rapidly became competitive, and indeed reached a premiership play off in only its fifth season. The Royals lost to East Fremantle on that occasion, 2.10 (22) to 4.5 (29), but the team's supporters could have been excused for believing that success was just around the corner. However, over the course of the next seven seasons East Perth were to contest only one finals series (in 1915) and win just 38 of 101 matches played; it was not to be until after World War One that the Royals were first to savour the taste of premiership glory.
| The man generally accorded most credit for guiding the Royals to the top of
the tree is Phil
Matson. [see footnote 3]
Born in South Australia, Matson had a varied and highly successful playing
career in both his home state and Western Australia before taking up the reins
as playing coach of East Perth in 1918. With all clubs having suffered serious
player losses during the first World War the standard of the competition
inevitably deteriorated, and, as has frequently been shown throughout football
history, such circumstances frequently encourage domination by a single club. In
the WAFL between 1919 and 1923 that club was East Perth.
In Matson's first season as coach the Royals reached the challenge final only to lose to East Fremantle by 21 points, 8.5 (53) to 11.8 (74), having previously succumbed by 26 points against the same club in the final a week earlier. One year later, however, the club broke through for its first ever WAFL pennant, defeating East Fremantle in the premiership decider by 22 points, 10.8 (68) to 7.4 (46). The Royals then went on to defeat both the premiers of the Kalgoorlie competition (which in those days was virtually as strong as the WAFL) and a combined goldfields team to earn the title of state champions, an achievement they were to repeat in both 1922 and 1923. |
Legendary goalsneak 'Bonny' Campbell. Best remembered for his feat of kicking 23 goals for Western Australia against Queensland at the 1924 Hobart carnival, Campbell also topped the WANFL goal kicking list on 4 occasions, once with South Fremantle, and 3 times with the Royals. |
After defeating East Fremantle by 22 and 7 points in the premiership deciders of 1920 and 1921 respectively the Royals arguably reached their peak during 1922, and this was clearly evidenced during a five week mid-season tour of the goldfields and eastern states. During this tour East Perth lost only 1 of 5 matches played, recording excellent wins against a combined goldfields team, a Bendigo Football League representative side, and South Australian clubs Norwood and West Adelaide, which later in the season would contest the SANFL grand final. The solitary loss was by a single point against middle ranking VFL club St Kilda, and given that the match was played in conditions completely foreign to the Royals - wet, cold, and extremely muddy - the result could hardly be regarded as ignominious.
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W. 'Billy' Thomas, winner of the Royals' third Sandover Medal in 1929, despite the club's last placed finish. (Click to enlarge.) |
The extent of East Perth's perceived dominance of the competition was clearly
illustrated in 1924 when a record eight Royals players were included in the
state team which travelled to Hobart for the interstate
carnival. A few months
later, however, the five in a row era came to an abrupt end in a semi final when
East Fremantle scraped home by 8 points.
The Royals were by no means a spent force, however. In the 1926 final they annihilated Subiaco by 50 points to clinch the flag without needing to exercise their right of challenge, and they won again a year later when South Fremantle were the victims. After a hard fought loss against arch rivals East Fremantle in the challenge final of 1928, however, the club plummeted to last in 1929, and it was clear that a fundamental re-building process was called for. [see footnote 4] The Royals did not remain in the doldrums for long. In 1932 they once again reached the ultimate game of the season, but on this occasion, as indeed in every subsequent grand final meeting between the teams until 2002, West Perth proved to have the Royals' measure. [see footnote 5] |
Between 1933 and 1935 East Perth finished 4th, 4th and 3rd, the top sides always proving that bit too accomplished, and 1936 gave no indication of being any better when the team just scraped into the four by one win from West Perth. Under the canny guidance of former East Fremantle player Jerry Dolan however, the Royals were establishing a reputation as a team of battlers, and events over the course of the following month were to confirm this. Indeed, the 1936 WANFL [see footnote 6] finals series would surely have to be ranked as one of the most sensational in the entire history of Australian football anywhere.
In the first semi final East Perth were pitted against Subiaco, and after a dour struggle emerged a single point to the good, despite having 4 fewer scoring shots in a low scoring game. The consensus then was that the team had already achieved more than might reasonably have been expected. However, astonishingly, the preliminary final (or 'final' as it has often tended to be known in Western Australia) saw the Royals again emerge with a 1 point victory, this time against East Fremantle.
| In the grand final East Perth faced Claremont, a side which was to go on to
appear in every subsequent grand final until 1940, winning the premiership on
three occasions. This year, however, belonged to the Royals, although once again the
game was tight, tense, and dramatic, Herb Screaigh's goal with the last kick of
the match giving East Perth the unaccustomed breathing space of 11 points, 11.5
(71) to 9.6 (60). After entering the finals as complete outsiders the Royals had
sensationally managed to land the flag with a total winning margin over 3 games
of just 13 points. [see footnote 7]
The years leading up to the onset of World War Two saw East Perth rejoin the pursuing pack, although with the exception of the 1941 season they always at least managed to contest the finals before the cessation of senior football in 1942. From 1942-4 the WANFL conducted an under age competition only, although records for those seasons continue, somewhat contentiously, to be deemed 'official' by the league. Thus the Royals' 1944 premiership, which was secured with a 56 point grand final victory over East Fremantle in front of 8,991 spectators, is officially accorded the same status as the club's thirteen open age triumphs. [see footnote 8] |
Larry Duffy, one of only 3 East Perth champions to play in all 7 of the club's premiership winning teams between 1919 and 1927. |
The years immediately following World War One had yielded considerable success for East Perth, but in the wake of a second global conflict there was to be no repetition. Indeed, it was not to be until 1952 that the Royals would again contest a finals series, and even then they were quickly bundled out of contention by Claremont.
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Three years earlier the East Perth committee, in an attempt to provide the club with a fiercer image, had proposed the adoption of a new nickname, 'the Eagles'. However, this never really caught on, and indeed the club's supporters were jokingly wont to refer to the team as "seventeen galahs and a sparrow", the 'Sparrow' concerned being Frank, the East Perth captain of the time. Many Australian football clubs of the 40s and 50s sought to instigate an improvement in fortunes by introducing new, tougher-sounding nicknames, [see footnote 9] but what was actually needed in such instances was more a change in attitude, coupled as often as not with the recruitment of better players. Both these developments coincided happily at East Perth in the mid 1950s. At the end of the 1955 season favourite son 'Mick' Cronin concluded his second term as coach having only managed to get his team into the finals once in four years. However, in hindsight it is possible to see how he was responsible for laying the foundations for the success which was to come the Royals' way during the second half of the decade. For example, it was under Cronin that such top class players as 1958 Sandover Medallist Ted Kilmurray, Paul Seal, Kevin McGill, John Watts, and most notable of all perhaps, Graham 'Polly' Farmer, took their senior bows. |
East Perth's 'Mr. Football', Jack Sheedy, a real character, and almost certainly one of the cheekiest players in the history of the game. (Click to enlarge.) |
The 1956 season was, in numerous respects, a seminal one for the East Perth Football Club. In the first place, it was precisely fifty years since the club had joined the WANFL (or the WAFA as it was then known), and to commemorate this the club opened a new all brick grandstand at Perth Oval. In order to enhance spectators' views from this new edifice the oval was re-aligned to run from north to south, and at the risk of sounding crass it would perhaps be fair to observe that this was symbolic of an impending change of course, not only for East Perth but also for the sport as a whole.
Australian football in the early twenty-first century is big business, but the process leading to this state of affairs has been prolonged and complex. In Western Australia one of the key stages in this process occurred in 1956 when, thanks chiefly to the largesse of committeeman Roy Hull, East Perth became the first WAFL club to introduce an official system of payment to players. Prior to that, there is no doubt that methods of conferring financial rewards on players had existed, but these had been essentially covert in nature, and it was only with the implementation of the East Perth scheme that the whole matter was rendered 'above board'. [see footnote 10]
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Action from one of the greatest individual rivalries in the history of Australian football, East Perth's Graham 'Polly' Farmer wins a hit out against Jack Clarke of East Fremantle. |
Developments off the field are all very well, but it is achievements on it which are a football club's raison d'être. Often it is only by abandoning old methods and implementing totally new ideas that such achievements are realised, and this is precisely what the East Perth committee did in December 1955 when it appointed Jack Sheedy as playing coach for the 1956 season. Sheedy was a 210 game veteran from arch rivals East Fremantle, and this fact on its own was enough to fuel a certain amount of controversy among Royals supporters. [see footnote 11] However, the battle-scarred veteran did not waste any time in showing that he meant business. After putting the players through a tougher pre-season than any of them could remember he was soon involved in an incident which, in retrospect, can be seen as having played a large part in breaking the ice, and, moreover, in according him what amounted to hero status at Perth Oval. During the opening round of the season he was reported by field umpire Ray Montgomery for allegedly using abusive language toward him. At the tribunal hearing Sheedy produced a bible on which he solemnly swore that he had not been the player responsible, Montgomery having mistaken him for an (unnamed) team mate. In the upshot, the tribunal's guilty verdict was almost irrelevant when compared to the legend of 'Bible Jack' to which Sheedy's colourful defence gave rise. |
More tangibly, Jack Sheedy's vibrant personality and intense, almost fanatical determination to succeed had a direct and discernible impact on the team. East Perth won 14 out of 19 home and away matches in 1956, twice as many as from one game more a year earlier, to head the ladder going into the finals. Once there they proved their superiority with two hard fought wins against South Fremantle by 7 and 13 points to cap off what had been in every sense a complete year. In addition to the premiership, the club had provided in the person of Graham Farmer both the Sandover Medallist as the best and fairest player in the WANFL, and the Eric Tassie Medallist for the outstanding player at the Perth carnival.
| Farmer was in every respect the epitome of the champion
player. Possessed of supreme all round ability, he also boasted a rare and
special talent that few others have shared. Put simply, he was an innovator, who
by means of great imagination and what amounted to a kind of intuitive genius
took the game of Australian football along avenues no one had hitherto been
aware existed. If any single individual can be said to have played the major
role in transforming Australian football from what was basically a stop-start,
prop and kick affair into the fluid, play on style which is now the norm, that
player was Farmer. East Perth team mate John Watts described Farmer's uniqueness
thus:
"He would evaluate the best player......to give it to. He never got rid of the ball to get himself out of trouble...... He always managed to get the ball away to an advantage to the team...... He played the game correctly...... Even when he fell to the ground he was still thinking, he'd still have possession of it, and (be) thinking where he was going to place it." [see footnote 12] |
Ralph Rogerson spoils strongly from behind a South Fremantle opponent. (Click on the image to enlarge it.) |
Jack Sheedy's coaching philosophy admirably reinforced and complemented Farmer's approach. Under Sheedy, East Perth played a style of football which in many ways was fifteen or twenty years ahead of its time. For one thing, handball was used as an offensive weapon, rather than merely as a last resort when a player got into trouble. [see footnote 13] Other sides had difficulty coping with this style and in Sheedy's first six years as coach the Royals were easily the outstanding side in the competition. Out of a total of 138 matches played between 1956 and 1961 East Perth won 106, drew 2, and lost just 30. In addition, the team headed the ladder after the home and away rounds in four out of those six seasons, reaching the grand final every time for wins in 1956, 1958 and 1959.
Where now?
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Footnotes
1. This premiership was won during the war years of 1942-4 when the WANFL operated an under age competition. Return to Main Text
2. Awarded retrospectively by Westar Rules authorities in 1997. Return to Main Text
3. During his playing career Matson represented West Perth, Boulder City, Sturt, North Fremantle, Subiaco and East Perth at club level, and both South Australia and Western Australia in interstate football. He coached Subiaco to the 1913 WAFL premiership, and East Perth to a total of 7 flags. He died after a motor accident in 1928, aged just 43. Return to Main Text
4. The 1929 season did, however, contain at least one bright spot, with W. 'Billy' Thomas winning the club's third Sandover Medal to add to those won by (near) namesake W. 'Digger' Thomas in 1923 and George 'Staunch' Owens in 1925. Return to Main Text
5. Those subsequent grand finals were in 1960, 1969 and 1971. Return to Main Text
6. The WAFL changed its name to the WA National Football League in 1932, reverting to WAFL in 1980. Return to Main Text
7. Even the one final not involving East Perth was a thriller, Claremont downing East Fremantle in the 2nd semi by just 5 points, 11.13 (79) to 9.20 (74). Return to Main Text
8. This state of affairs is rendered all the more interesting in hindsight by the news that, in 1994, there was serious talk about introducing an upper age limit for players in the WAFL, a reaction this time not to the exigencies of war, but to the impact of the AFL in denuding the local competition of its better players, a process exacerbated by the formation in 1995 of a second Western Australian AFL club, the Fremantle Dockers. Return to Main Text
9. In the VFL, for instance, Hawthorn ceased to be the Mayblooms and became the Hawks, the Maroons of Fitzroy became the Gorillas for a time and later the Lions, and Melbourne introduced the Demons emblem in place of the Fuchsias. Return to Main Text
10. Just by way of comparison it is interesting to note that payments to players became officially sanctioned in the VFL in 1911. Return to Main Text
11. Not that the appointment of an outsider was unprecedented. As was noted above, former Old East player Jerry Dolan had coached East Perth to the 1936 premiership. Return to Main Text
12. From Polly Farmer: a Biography by Steve Hawke, page 20. Return to Main Text
13. Perhaps East Perth concentrated on handball too much, to the detriment of other skills - like kicking for goal! In one match against Swan Districts in 1957 the Royals had 33 scoring shots to 16 but, in one of the most atrocious bouts of inaccuracy in senior Australian football history, scraped home by just 7 points, 3.30 (48) to 5.11 (41). Return to Main Text