Resource The NMFC History thread

[12Chill]

So 8 posters pick 22 players each in ''draft order''. Each poster has to choose a team that could take the field. I like it.

Did you organise it all somehow e.g. via pms, or are the 8 selectors mates of yours?

TN25 just made a sign up thread and got interest from the first 8 people and generated a random order for the selections which would go in snake order to keep things fair, so team 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 7, 6, 5 etc so yeah.

 

[12Chill]

Top 5 of Carey, Harvey, Greig, Archer and Schimmelbusch perhaps?

Would be interesting to see it unfold after the first pick which would surely be Carey.

 

[RobZombie]

Top 5 of Carey, Harvey, Greig, Archer and Schimmelbusch perhaps?

Would be interesting to see it unfold after the first pick which would surely be Carey.

Blight before Archer for mine. The other 4 would round out the top 5 I've seen in person. And before my time Foote, Aylett, Dwyer would surely all rate highly?

 

[12Chill]

Blight before Archer for mine. The other 4 would round out the top 5 I've seen in person. And before my time Foote, Aylett, Dwyer would surely all rate highly?

You think you'd get enough (8) participants to see how it would pan out?

And yeah, I've read a bit about Foote (won a BnF at the Saints too in one of his final seasons) and was supposed to be an absolute gun.

 

[FootyGeek]

You guys might like this. I uploaded it a while back.

 

[FootyGeek]

1975 Premiership flag flying in the breeze in 1983. Not sure how rare this is, but imagine it would not have been on film in the wild in the open air very often?

Enjoy!

 

[Grogg]

That's some 24 carat gold right there FootyGeek.

Thanks for the post.

 

[Twinkletoes]

Unreal seeing that again. Cheers mate!

 

[Old Shinboner]

A look at the old grandstand at Arden street in 1983.....

 

[Twinkletoes]

A look at the old grandstand at Arden street in 1983.....

Thanks for posting that OS. I watched the smoke rising over the stand from the outer side of the ground. Love seeing Arden St footage, even if it involves it's destruction, as it reminds me so much of the packed days there back in the day.

 

[Handsome.B.Wonderful]

Fair dinkum, I reckon a casual jumper/sweater of this design that could be worn over a shirt would sell like hotcakes at the Rooshop. Just keep it nice and simple with the white monogram on the navy and it would look brilliant.

 

[Old Shinboner]

Thanks for posting that OS. I watched the smoke rising over the stand from the outer side of the ground. Love seeing Arden St footage, even if it involves it's destruction, as it reminds me so much of the packed days there back in the day.

I do too. Get nostalgic sometimes and really miss the place. So few photos of the ground seem to be around.

The very end of this clip shows a view towards the scoreboard from the grandstand



This clip below (from the same game) shows a panoramic shot from I believe that small scoreboard that was down the swimming pool end. About 25 seconds in



Unfortunately the quality isn't great but gives a sense of what the ground was like.

 

[Woodson]

As it's the 40th anniversary of North's first flag (VFL) there was a marvellous 2 hour presentation about RON BARASSI on Ch ONE a couple years ago… I highly recommend everyone who has a great interest in the NMFC to pull up a chair, grab a drink and watch rare footage amongst many untold stories and well known specifics about the clubs successful 70's domination. You'll immensely enjoy it. FIVE STARS!!

 

[numchuks]

Saw this on the SEN website last night, hadn't seen it posted anywhere.

Nice story on the aborted move to Coburg from Arden St in 1965, with a number of quotes from Ron Joseph in it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Home is where the heart is

By Russell Holmesby
The gut-wrenching decision to move house proved to be the making of some clubs in the 1960s.

Season of 1965 was a landmark for league football as no less than 12 clubs changed their home venues.

In 1964 the 12 VFL clubs had played out of 12 different venues.

All but Geelong were in close proximity to the centre of Melbourne, and that’s the way it had largely been for 40 years, apart from re-jigging during World War II when military requirements affected the availability of grounds.

Fifty years on the landscape of footy has changed dramatically with the national competition’s Melbourne clubs using just two venues, Docklands and the MCG.

Traditional fortresses such as Princes Park, Windy Hill and Victoria Park have fallen by the wayside – a notion that would have been unthinkable half a century ago.

Brunswick Street Oval, Glenferrie, Arden Street, Junction Oval, and the Lake Oval are also long gone as major venues and kids today are staggered when their elders show them these ancient battlegrounds that formed such a part of the VFL in days gone by.

The concept of “home” changed forever in 1965 and the reasons and outcomes for those ground-breaking moves are worth examining in the 21st century.

North Melbourne to Coburg

Throughout league football’s history up until the mid-1960s, a recurring theme permeated the competition. The issue of ground management was a constant bugbear as clubs chafed under the direction of their landlords – cricket clubs or local councils.

Ron Joseph, such a vital person in North’s history, has no doubt that the experiment of moving to Coburg played a key part in North eventually reaching football’s summit.

“It almost needed the Coburg move for North to eventually win the premiership at Arden Street, if that makes sense,” he said.

“We were just rambling along and at that stage most other clubs were their own ground managers but we were still beholden to Melbourne City Council, who were ground managers. We didn’t win a lot of friends at Melbourne City Council by going to Coburg.“

North Melbourne’s tenure at Arden Street Oval had been the subject of constant manoeuvring in coming to agreements with the Melbourne City Council, which owned the land, and the North Melbourne Cricket Club, which shared its use.

By 1964 North was determined to get autonomy. If that couldn’t be achieved then it demanded a long-term lease that guaranteed satisfactory conditions in the long term and also included better facilities for players and spectators.

It is amazing today to think that the Arden Street Oval featured a greyhound racing track around its perimeter in the 1950s which was operational until 1961! Until a decade or so ago, a visitor could still see the remnants of the bookmakers’ betting ring. After the departure of dog racing the club engaged in an arm wrestle with the council for three years and by 1964 the relationship had soured. North put out feelers to Broadmeadows City Council whose boundaries encompassed much of North’s territory.

That idea fell through when Broadmeadows shied away from spending the necessary money, and some in the North hierarchy considered buying land to develop a ground, but that idea also died.
At this stage the City of Coburg offered to have North play at the City Oval and the majority of councillors supported the concept of having a VFL club in their suburb.

The deal was good for North. It would have a seven-year tenure as ground manager and the council would erect a $150,000 grandstand for the 1966 season and another $50,000 on development of facilities. Early in 1965 the deal was signed.

The belief within the North committee was that in the previous 10 seasons the club membership had never exceeded 3000 while other clubs had at least 5000. A check of attendances over the previous decade showed that 33 per cent more people attended North’s away games than attended home games. The Coburg district also had a population of 100,000, a greater catchment than around Arden Street.

Allen Aylett had just ended his career as a player and would be co-opted to the committee later in 1965. In his autobiography he outlined the machinations behind the Coburg move and tells how club secretary Leo Schemnitz, who had previously been in charge at the Coburg VFA club, was a prime mover in the Coburg push.

Schemnitz was a hard worker and an asset to the Kangaroos, but he insisted on his own way and clashed with coach Alan Killigrew. Their relationship worsened in the lead-up to the 1965 season and Schemnitz stunned the club when he announced his departure on the eve of the first game.

Aylett recalled that divisions over the move were opening up at a time when the club was in a precarious position and needed no distractions.

Influential vice president Phonse Tobin, of the famous undertaking firm, was anti-Coburg, but president Jack Adams and another vice president Tony Trainor were strongly in favour.

Aylett was neutral, although he wrote: “I realised the North ground was only a small plot in an industrial area and the one-time large population areas of West Melbourne and Kensington had dried up, that North quite possibly had to move out to the people and that Coburg could be the answer. Yet I still wasn’t sure. It wasn’t quite right. Certainly not as convincing as the reasons for St Kilda Football Club to leave the Junction Oval and move south to Moorabbin.”

Aylett saw that moving the club further from town had merit.

“The idea was right but the venue was wrong,” he wrote. “In hindsight North should have moved to the MCG and shared with Melbourne. Of course this would not have taken North to the suburbs, but the MCG was well served by public transport and the facilities would have attracted the crowds.

“Richmond was smart enough to snap up that bargain in 1965 thanks to the clever negotiation of its legal eagle president Ray Dunn and administration superstar Graeme Richmond.”

From the beginning the move to Coburg was a disaster for North Melbourne. Many supporters dropped off in resentment and generated public meetings, council lobbying and intervention by the VFA over the fact that it saw Coburg Football Club as betraying the VFA competition.

The intention had been for North to use the ground on Saturdays and Coburg to use it on the alternate weekends or on Sundays but the VFA, already bristling over Moorabbin’s perceived treachery in its dealings with St Kilda, ruled out any plan for co-existence and threatened to axe Coburg.

A number of Coburg officials favoured the North move and they were suspended by both the club and the VFA. For a brief time in December 1964 Coburg faced extinction, but a core of officials stuck to their guns and worked hard to unseat the Coburg councillors who were in favour of the North move.

The VFA subsequently agreed to let Coburg play home games at Port Melbourne in 1965 and train at Brunswick until the matter was sorted out. It was a toxic, acrimonious environment, exacerbated by the fact that North couldn’t get an early win on the board at its new home ground, an often boggy oval unkindly labelled “The Everglades” by visiting teams because of its perpetually sodden nature. North’s first game at its new home was played in appalling weather and drew only 13,774 people. To top it off, North lost to South Melbourne by 10 points.

Hopes that better conditions would bring the crowds soon evaporated. In nine games the club drew an average of just 13,146. The best was 21,626 and the worst a dismal 7738 against Fitzroy.

North had to wait until its sixth home match – deep into the season on July 24 – to record a win. That game was notable for the fact that it came against Melbourne, which had just sacked its famous coach Norm Smith.

North won just three of its nine games at Coburg in 1965. The average of 13,146 people was well below the 1964 average of 16,242 at Arden Street.

The only consolation in a trying year was that North won the post-season night series contested by the clubs that did not make the finals.

It was now a case of either stay at Coburg for 1966, leave Coburg, return to Arden Street, or pursue the left-field suggestion of moving to the Junction Oval which had been vacated by St Kilda a year earlier.

The St Kilda Cricket Club, severely chastened by the exit of the Saints and their attendant revenue from football, had modified its stance on having a VFL club as a tenant and tried to make the deal attractive to North.

Ron Joseph, not yet 20 years of age, had been thrown into the secretary’s job just before the 1965 season. He was tossed in at the deepest of deep ends.

“They threw me into the job as a very raw secretary,” recalls Joseph. “Then it became a battle between Phonse Tobin and Tony Trainor as to whether North would go back to Arden Street or North would look at the Junction Oval which St Kilda had vacated.

“Tony Trainor won out and Harold Henderson, who was the father figure of the building of our social club, had a lot to do with the infighting that got us back to Arden Street.”

A “Back to North” group had been meeting secretly throughout 1965 and new president Tony Trainor and influential committeeman Albert Mantello ruled out the Junction Oval option saying that if there was any move at all, it would be back to Arden Street. At a meeting in September 1965 there were 600 North fans clamouring for a return to Arden Street. Meanwhile the Coburg Council was under increasing pressure from locals to scrap the North deal and have the Coburg VFA club as the sole tenant. At the subsequent council elections new councillors who were anti-North, had the numbers. Coburg council wanted to reneg on its agreement to build a new grandstand for 1966 and North was against staying at Coburg for the remaining six years of the original deal.

In the end both North Melbourne Football Club and the Coburg Council agreed to tear up the contract, and North was able to arrange a better deal from the now amenable Melbourne City Council to return to Arden Street, essential to that agreement was the building of a social club which would prove to be a cornerstone of the club’s financial revival.

In turn it would have other flow on effects that were crucial to North’s success as it appeared to hasten the rise of Aylett to a position of control within the club.

Joseph doesn’t believe the situation accelerated Aylett’s involvement.

“Going back to Arden Street was orchestrated by Tony Trainor. People didn’t think in those days that North was capable of those sort of things. I can remember at one stage I had been secretary for three months and we didn’t have any money in the bank.

“I went to Jack Adams the president and he said ‘Ring Jack O’Brien from O’Brien Catering, he’ll lend us 2000 quid!’ Jack lent us the money and didn’t let me forget it for 15 years.”

The creation of a social club attracted well-heeled local businessmen and North would be a trailblazer in terms of corporate backing. None of this would have unfolded had the club stayed at Coburg.

Joseph says: “When we got back to Arden Street we virtually said if we can’t make a success of it now, having made the blue we did in going to Coburg, we will never do it. It was a stimulant for making the club successful.

“Plus we got Frank Rogan the Town Clerk of Melbourne to come on side. He liked Tony Trainor, and Tony’s successor Allen Aylett. He became a powerful influence in us getting the social club and becoming our own ground manager.”

Joseph says that the social club was built in a realistic scale.

“The social club wasn’t built as a Taj Mahal like St Kilda had built at Moorabbin, or Carlton had built at Princes Park. It was a social club that was suited to North and its members and the sort of club we were. As soon as we started having success on the field in the 1970s, it was a very profitable operation.

“One thing that doesn’t get said too often about Coburg was that out of Coburg came a number of powerful blokes who made major contributions in the 1970s and 1980s. Maurie Brophy, Monty Milson and Bruce Lalor went on our committee and had a VFA culture where they would put in and get their hands dirty.”

Aylett was asked to speak at the inaugural dinner of the new social club and summed up his feelings on the Coburg experiment by saying, “A mistake is never an error until you refuse to rectify it. That’s what rubbers and pencils are for.”

He said in his autobiography: “My view was to forget Coburg had ever happened. Forget the bickering of who was right and who was wrong.”

So the sorry Coburg experiment was put to bed for North Melbourne, but in the long run it had hugely positive effects that weren’t apparent at the time.

 

[gokangas]

I remember well sitting with my mother and sister in our reserved seats in the grandstand at Coburg for another terrible onfield season. Living in Pascoe Vale it was a ripper move, or so we thought at the time. A few years later I would go to Arden Street and watch the roos on the Saturday and be a lolly boy at the VFL game on the Sunday at Coburg. By the time I was about 15 I would make enough money to buy a packet of cigarettes (10s), a heap of fish and chips and a little left for the week ahead.

 

[Twinkletoes]

.......and be a lolly boy at the VFL game on the Sunday at Coburg.

J/k mate. Love hearing the Coburg stories.

 

[Groucho]

I do too. Get nostalgic sometimes and really miss the place. So few photos of the ground seem to be around.

The very end of this clip shows a view towards the scoreboard from the grandstand



This clip below (from the same game) shows a panoramic shot from I believe that small scoreboard that was down the swimming pool end. About 25 seconds in



Unfortunately the quality isn't great but gives a sense of what the ground was like.

Thanks for posting this. I was at that game and for a time it looked as though we would post our first 30 goal game.Phil Krakouer was running into an open goal but decide to handball to someone in the goal square,unfortunately he was spoiled and a behind was rushed and the siren went. Great feeling nonetheless! I recall standing next to a young Carlton supporter and his father,at three quarter time the son was seriously panicky saying "its only three quarter time and they're already 21 goals!" Given they'd won 3 of the previous 4 flags I guess he was doing it tough. I had little sympathy.

 

[GarnerSmash]

NMFC Archives: Roy Eliason

Former North player Roy Eliason experienced the highs and lows during his short time at Arden Street in the late 1940s – and none more so than in his first game.

Eliason, who turned 89 last month and lives in the Victorian country town of Mooroopna, is the second-oldest living North player behind Keith McKenzie.

Although statistics show Eliason played a total of five games for North between 1948 and 1949, he is quick to downplay his involvement.

“I was on the ground for three games, I was 20th man in another game where I never got on the ground and I was an emergency in another game but had to get back to the seconds,” Eliason told NMFC.com.au.

More here: http://www.nmfc.com.au/news/2015-03-24/nmfc-archives-eliason

 

[Ularoo]

Not a great week for the Scott brothers.....

 

[royals1922]

An early very detailed article about NM from Table Talk of 20 July 1933

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article149548150

Don't know if it's been featured before.

 

[royals1922]

Some Williamstown versus NM action ( with photos) of 16 August 1924 from Tabletalk


http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page17425592

 

[royals1922]

Some Melbourne versus NM action of 4 June 1925 from Table talk

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-page17424035

 

[royals1922]

A write up about Dick taylor, our Captain Coach in 1932 from Table talk of 16 June 1932


http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article147289182

 

[royals1922]

A hanger from a NM game from 8 May 1930


http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article147567462

 

[royals1922]

A team photo of NM from 1930 taken from Tabletalk of 19 June 1930


http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article147568305