Demons Nation – Connected Where it Matters the Most.

Nigel Dawe

It’s no exaggeration to say that I’m a fanatical Demons fan, but one thing that forms a keen intertwining feature in this one-eyed fanaticism of mine is the fact that we truly live in a Demons nation. I know, you’re probably thinking where’s he going with this, but one thing I bet you haven’t known prior to now is what our iconic little foot-soldier of Lucifer has in common with so many different places across this wide-brown land.

From Surface Paradise to Mildura, Moonta to Pennant Hills, Alice Springs to North Hobart, Corryong to Casey, Perth to Canberra, Koo Wee Rup to Yarram – they all have a local Demons football team.

And that’s just to name a few, not to mention we also have red and blue coloured demon sides raising hell with their leather projectiles in cities as far-flung as Toronto, Boston and London. So on the topic of keeping exaggeration to a minimum, it’s fair to say that on any given weekend during winter – ‘A Grand Old Flag’ is being sung by a bunch of 18 sweaty combatants, somewhere in not just this country of ours, but right across the entire globe. And I can’t tell you how much the thought of this brings me an outright deep-seated peace and relief.

But the interconnections don’t just end there, the Perth Demons (even though they wear red and black) are coached by none other than Earl ‘Duke’ Spalding, the lovable bloke we all held our collective breaths when he took his set shots at goal back in the 80s, to say he had one of the more ‘interesting’ or outright elegantly wasted kicking styles, would be an understatement.

Then there’s our 2013 runner up best and fairest winner – Col Garland doing his bit to make the North Hobart Demons the best team in Tasmania, not that they need all that much help, seeing they’ve notched a whopping 27 premierships and finished runners-up 17 times in their overall club history.

One of the more little known cross-overs in the game is the fact a former Melbourne player, Lou Suhard answered a call to meet up at a pub in Adelaide one Thursday night in 1878 to form the Norwood Football Club. And of course, Lou suggested what an aesthetically pleasing and no less formidable combo of colours red and blue were for a football team, not to mention the moniker ‘Redlegs’, as Melbourne were then also known, and thus the rest is history.

Whilst in South Australia, I have to make mention of a little town and a football team very dear to my heart – Moonta and their Moonta Demons, who have quite possibly the most sublime red and blue guernsey you’ve ever seen, it actually features a pitch-folk wielding demon on the front.

As some background, my entire family and I used to holiday for three weeks at a time each Christmas in the early 80s in this beautiful old Cornish influenced mining town, come idyllic tourist mecca.

So recently, I got in touch with Mark Durin, Moonta’s club president and Andrew Pearson, the secretary to find out what impact the Covid period has had on their town and club. Unfortunately, I couldn’t have reached them at a tougher time and yet they were the last to complain, as their entire league has been canceled for the first time ever, and the whole region has suffered quite a down-turn.

Having grown up in a small country town I know how devastating this would be, and so on behalf of the broader Demon community I’d like to extend our heartfelt best wishes and sincere hope that come next season the Moonta Demons go on to claim their 14th premiership, the most recent coming in 2018.

For a club that boasted an evergreen (ex-Brownlow medallist) Gavin Wanganeen in their team last year, the boys are surely well placed to do themselves and us all proud. As an excellent and ever-apt promo from the Norwood Football Club hammered home in the early 90s – ‘Times don’t stay tough forever, but tough clubs do!’

Jack Mueller – The Unrivalled Colossus

Nigel Dawe

The early Greek, pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus once said: “No man ever steps into the same river twice.” Well, he never met the #12 wearing Jack Mueller, the greatest big game player in the history of not just our club, but the entire sport. (A claim that won me an Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers about 20 years ago, when Inside Football magazine ran a competition under the banner: ‘Mr September – Who is the greatest September specialist of all-time?)

Thus, in one of the most incredible feats in football, Mueller kicked 8 goals in both of the prelim finals of 1946 and 1948 against Collingwood (both times), the following week (that being the Grand Final of each season) he kicked 6 goals against Essendon (both times), while Melbourne fell short of victory in ’46, they eventually triumphed in ‘48 (after the first game was a draw) and to script, Mueller put through 6 goals the following week in the Grand Final ‘replay’. Amassing a club record 20 majors in the one finals campaign.

And so, that’s the numbers caroled and crunched for just these two seasons, the bigger picture paints an even more breath-taking fresco. Overall, Jack Mueller scored 62 goals in the 18 finals he played for the club, which is nearly twice as many as the next placed player and teammate Norm Smith, who kicked 36 majors in finals matches. It was also a rather ominous sign, not to mention poetically fitting, that Jack Mueller was born on the 9th of September, 1915.

If all the above were not enough to score me that encyclopedia, then comparing Jack’s record to anyone you want to name in the history of the game in finals, practically addressed the envelope from Inside Football for me.

Because Mueller, incredibly featured in Melbourne’s top two best players on nine occasions in which he entered the finals fray, no-one comes even close to this level of impact or dominance: to say that he was a big game player borders on an outright understatement.

Keeping in mind, that the Echuca-born Mueller, who debuted in 1934 was an absolute linchpin in the Melbourne premiership sides of 1939-40-41, and had club best & fairest winning seasons in 1937, ‘39 and ‘46, proof that he was performing consistently high at an elite level for well over a decade; all with two fingers practically missing and a third badly damaged as a result of a work related accident that he sustained after having only played his first season of senior football.

To put Jack Mueller and his playing era into full context and perspective, no less than Norm Smith is on the record as having stated the Melbourne side of 1940 was the greatest team he ever saw (having grown up a magpie fan and seeing the record setting 4-peat Collingwood sides of the late ’20s and of course coaching the Demons in the ‘50s and ‘60s, such a call from Smith is perhaps the most definitive and informed of anyone in the history of the game).

Little wonder then, Mueller played in all 21 games of that history making 1940 season, a year that also saw the team score over 100 points in a club record 16 games, one of which – the round 10 match against Geelong remains our team’s highest ever ‘losing’ score. Incredibly that day the Demons lost (given the chance of winning with a kick after the siren by Ron Barassi Snr that unfortunately drifted through for a behind) but the final score was 22.19 (151) to Geelong’s 24.10 (154).

From a numbers perspective, the ultimate reflection of the Demons of Mueller’s day can be gained when you see how they stack up against the club’s golden boys of the ‘50s; and incredibly of the 61 games Melbourne played between 1939 and ‘41 the side kicked a score of over 100 points on 46 occasions, compared to the 42 times during the entire 141 games played between 1954 and ‘60.

If that weren’t distinguishing enough, then consider the club record statistic of six consecutive finals match wins between 1940-46 and you start to get a sense of just where Mueller and the sides he played in, reside within the overall history and soul of the club.

It’s also quite heart-warming to think that right up until the end of his life, apparently every time Jack Mueller walked into the MCG his eyes would fully light up and he’d always say something along the lines: “Ah, I’ve arrived home again!” If that doesn’t say how much this man utterly belonged on the big stage, then I don’t know what does. Relatedly, he earned the nickname ‘Melba’ (after the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba) because like her, he’d keep coming out of retirement for that ‘one final performance.’

And so, when it comes to conveying the legend and gleaming legacy of the one-out and one-off type of player that Jack Mueller was, it is quite the tension-fraught task to know exactly where to either start or finish; but an insight that best suffices for the later is a comment, albeit glowing endorsement made by Richmond’s ‘Captain Blood’ Dyer, whereby he once simply said:
“Mueller was the colossus of the football field. Many of the greatest players the game has produced have declared him the most outstanding player Australian Rules has seen… Big Jack was the devil himself. You could search the world and not find a better Satan. He personified arrogance, an easy going self-confidence by which he radiated authority over all he surveyed.”

Nigel Dawe

I’m not sure who actually said it, though I think it might’ve been Robert Harvey, or maybe someone else in the footy caper around the time that he won his second Brownlow on the trot. Anyway, it’s a notion that beautifully fits the overall bill whether you’re talking the Coolamon Hoppers or our beloved Melbourne Demons. It went along the lines: “No matter how good you are or what you do around a footy club, you’re never anything more than a match-head in a biscuit tin!”

Not to over elevate this wondrous treat-filled receptacle in all of our kitchens, or to push the analogy too far; but clubs or in this case ‘biscuit tins’ are where all the delectable magic happens – where all the mystique and memories of past triumphs and club legends are stored albeit kept safe, where that certain allure ever-resides that keeps your Robbie Flower’s and Garry Lyon’s in the team colours when other clubs are waving blank cheque-books and promises of success in their face.

Clubs are almost like the ultimate expressions of inverse algebra – where one specific thing on one hand doesn’t necessarily equate to anything of relative or even increased value on the other. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the little things can (and often do) mean infinitely more than what they ‘logically’ seem or simply appear to be in themselves.

Rather like the easily missed, bright red demon tail that artist Jamie Cooper worked onto the floor directly below a seated Robbie Flower in the club’s Team of the Century portrait. If you’ve never noticed, take a look, it’s there for all to see – no other ‘great’ gets the same treatment, it is the ultimate of tributes to the most loyal Demon of them all. As Robbie used to weave into his autographs, as if they were one of his dashes down the wing of the MCG – ‘Demons Forever’, and so, I sincerely hope that the gleaming memory of some things truly never fade.

Relatedly, in his first pre-season with the senior Melbourne side, none other than the reigning club captain Robbie Flower drove a young Garry Lyon and future fellow Hall of Famer to each of the team’s gruelling crack of dawn training sessions. Little wonder that Lyon much later reflected after his playing days had finished: “I ended up falling in love with the Melbourne Football Club from a really early age.” Going on to say: “I am part of a former era, but I hope that every group of players that wears the jumper will love the club and have as much respect for their teammates as I did.”

It’s a monumental reflection and one of the most red and blue rendered yardsticks for the love of this club, that Robbie Flower was always immensely proud and would often make mention of the fact that he was not only born in the Demons premiership year of 1955, but also barracked for Melbourne as a kid. Throw in the fact he had to pay to get into the ground for his first game in ‘73 (because he misplaced his player access pass) and never sought reimbursement; and it is right there through this non-fabricatable combination of events – that you have a certified club legend.

Whilst getting up-close and personal with our Team of the Century (and the commemorative artwork in particular), how’s another wonderful tribute that goes largely overlooked within its focused locker room surrounds. It is a generous and gracious gesture of respect to that other integral, essential feature of every football club – the loyal fan. After all, what would any flickering flame be without a robust ‘fan’ to create the necessary draft for it to rise above a certain height so as to fully blaze and reach its maximum ferocity, or to simply cool things down when it all goes wrong?

As such, peering through the doorway (in the artwork) from the stands into the Smithy captivated change room of the oldest footy club in the world is one Marjorie Whitehead, who saw ‘in person’ every premiership win the club achieved (except for that of 1900) which amounted to 11 witnessed triumphs in all, for this absolutely one-eyed Dee-votee.

Thus, when you think what Marjorie experienced it is no wonder and rightfully so, that she was considered and celebrated as an outright living treasure of the club. And if you hadn’t already joined the dots, this remarkable woman would’ve actually cheered at some stage each and every player in that ‘once in a century’ side – all the way from Warne-Smith and Chadwick, Barassi and Beckwith through to Lyon and Stynes!

On the topic of dyed-in-the-wool fans, we have some absolute troopers of our own in the ranks of the NSW Demons. I’d like to thank and give a ‘shout out’ to Jim Cattlin for getting in touch and recounting so many great memories of following Melbourne from the Grand Final of ‘48 through to the present day.

Nothing beats his yarn about how his dad would try to beat the steam train back to Melbourne in the car from Geelong when the boys played down there; or how he still pines for his long lost ‘55-56-57 winning Weg poster, not to mention the tears he shed one afternoon at the ‘G having to sit through a fired-up John Coleman rip through the defenses of our side back in the late 40’s.

Nigel Dawe

Nigel’s latest story on Harry Davie which continues our NSW Demons series promoting and shining a light on the greatest and oldest footy team in the world!

It’s funny, in every field of human endeavour (except for our form of footy and numerous other sports like soccer and hockey) a ‘goal’ is something that is set as a departure point of sorts, something to keep your eye on, work towards – never an endpoint in itself as such.

I’ve often thought, it’s a wonder the pioneers of our game didn’t coin something like claims, aims, targets or objectives – even ‘gets’ or ‘jects’ for short, as opposed to ‘goal’ which almost leaves you hanging in some way with the feeling that something still remains to be done. Maybe it’s just a simple case where the goal is the overall goal of the goal of a goal.

I think it’s now very clear that I’ve been spending way too much time in Covid-isolation, to be pondering the meaning and semantics behind the scoring of ‘sausage rolls’; but that said, what compares to the response in a packed MCG to a well threaded six-pointer at a crucial turn in a match!?

Cast your mind back to that beautiful moment in the finals of 2018 when Nate Jones dobbed that ripper against Geelong, in that one instant all his pent-up agony and frustration (along with ours too) just evaporated into the night sky like released volcanic steam above the ‘G. Or remember that absolute howler by Garry Lyon from almost the exact same spot against the Crows in the finals of ‘98, a full twenty years prior.

There’s something about the interest and aura that surrounds the game’s sharpshooters. Think even of their nicknames – ‘the Wizard’ for example, now you don’t get a tag like that from your mates and fans unless you’re not half bad at what you do! It’s the explosive brilliance of forwards, they are the ‘spearheads’ and absolute focal points that are there to convert a whole team’s endeavour into scoreboard gold.

One of the most unheralded forward line aces in the Melbourne Football Club’s history is the 1920’s Harry Davie, a small diminutive player who weighed a meagre 60kg and looked more like a slick little kitchen hand – which was quite apt, seeing he absolutely cleaned up in the goal-square. His perceived weakness (in terms of a distinct lack of size and weight) became his absolute weapon when it came to opponents who underestimated either his ticker or tenacity.

No player in the red and blue has scored more goals on debut than the #24 wearing Davie – slotting a casual six straight ones against Richmond in Rd 16 – 1924; which was no mean feat seeing his opponent that day was Vic Thorp (the league’s most respected and feared backman of that time). And so, if you’re going to announce yourself in your first outing in the Big League, then why not make an absolute example of the best going around.

Another feather in Davie’s cap (and this one is not just a club record but an all-time league record, held alongside none other than Gordon Coventry and Bob Pratt – two of the game’s absolute goal-square immortals). Each of these men put through 8 majors in one quarter of football! The day Davie notched his two less than 10 in the last quarter was against Carlton at Princes Park in Rd 14 – 1925, he ended that afternoon with an overall bag of 13.5 (with 3 out of bounds), the most goals scored by anyone at that ground in history.

Not until Fred Fanning went to work with 18.1 goals against St. Kilda in the final round of 1947 would any Melbourne player score more in the one match. To this day these two absolute thunderbolt bags by Fanning and Davie, constitute the top two efforts in front of the sticks by an individual in the entire history of the club.

Sadly for Davie, he would miss the 1926 premiership winning decider because of injury, but he did feature in a 3-way development that year which has only ever happened twice in Melbourne’s history, whereby he, Harry Moyes and Bob Johnson Snr all kicked over 50 goals in the same season.

Such a star-aligning achievement would not occur again for the red and blue until Garry Lyon, Allen Jakovich and David Schwartz all achieved the same 50-plus feat in the free-flowing, Neil Balme inspired season of 1994.

Whilst Harry Davie only played the 49 games for Melbourne and left the club at the end of 1927 to play with Carlton and then finally with the Roy Cazaly-led Preston Bullants in the VFA, his dynamic exploits in front of goal will no doubt linger long in the record books of the MFC.

** Whilst the footy card has Harry Davie featured in a Preston strip, I haven’t ever seen anything pertaining to him in the form of a Melbourne related card, but the up-closeness and quality of the snap seeing it’s near on 90 years old is a ripper and very exciting!

Checker Hughes – “start playing like demons!”

Nigel Dawe

It’s not an exaggeration to say, that Frank ‘Checker’ Hughes’ now infamous rant at his players (in which he implored them – to put it nicely – “to start playing like demons!”) during a match in his first year at the club in 1933, has always fascinated me.

Both in terms of how it was actually delivered, to whom and exactly when it occurred. Was it a pre-planned missive by the master coach or are we talking one of the great off-the-cuff moments in the history of the club?

One thing I’ve never been able to find out, was in which game it actually took place, and also there are a few different versions as to what transpired. Though I think this facet of the tale has much to do with there being a more mild-friendly, or shall we say a contemporary version of events, as opposed to an ‘actual version’ of how it all unfolded.

For a start, it’s hard to imagine our team known by any other moniker now, than ‘the Demons’, doubly so, seeing this tag has accompanied 10 of the club’s overall 12 premiership successes since the triple treat seasons of ‘39-40-41 (and excepting the massive disruption caused by WWII, many an old-timer has suggested that this golden sequence could well have stretched on for at least two to three seasons more, given the dominance and depth of talent at the club).

I personally think Checker’s demonic ‘christening’ of our team was an iron-willed masterstroke, not to mention a firmly set stamp of authority on a club he’d just taken the reins of; it was his Cortés moment (Cortés being the Spaniard who led an expedition to South America once, and famously announced when they all got there: “Burn the ships, we’re marching to Mexico City!”)

Keep in mind, Checker also famously sent 13 players packing and wore his old Richmond guernsey to his first training session at Melbourne (a psychological card-trick Barassi himself would play when he took over the Kangaroos decades later, by wearing his very own fire-forged red and blue #31, just to subtly announce: “What I’m asking you to do boys, I’ve already done!”).

On the topic of guernseys, Checker was also instrumental in altering Melbourne’s strip, getting rid of a thin red horizontal line at the base and making the upper red section more stark and pronounced (like the new coach himself, who apparently spoke commandingly out of the side of his mouth as would a mob boss or a gangster). It could even be argued that no figure has introduced more wholesale change, in terms of both the look and feel of a club in the entire history of the game.

The key to how the one-time Fuchsias became the modern-day Demons though (which wasn’t unusual for teams to have floral emblems of this kind – think of the Waratahs in Rugby even to this day – remembering our guernsey once had a red vertical stripe right down the middle of it, thus conjuring the spectre of this particular type of flower) resides very much with the late Checker Hughes, who passed away in 1978.

But the other smoking gun (aside from Captain Blood Dyer’s account of what ‘took place’, which I’ll return to soon) is the future celebrated newspaper scribe and best on ground in each of the three premiership wins – Percy Beames; out of all the celebrated stars of the Melbourne team at that time, like Jack Mueller, Norm Smith and Allan La Fontaine (who each commenced their careers in 1934) Beames was the only one on-deck at the club from 1931.

So conceivably, he was very much privy to and knew the story behind the original rant that resulted in the team becoming known as the Demons, doubly so, that he had the classic journo’s bent – of a refined eye and a great ear for the easily missed.

Unfortunately Percy Beames is no longer with us, having passed away in 2004. Which leaves the tale as told by Richmond’s Captain Blood, who revered and knew better than anyone, his first coach at League level – Checker Hughes. And so, according to Dyer, his wily old mentor let loose on his inherited batch of boys in ‘33, with perhaps the most red-hot roast of all-time: “You take pride in being called the Fuchsias – that’s the nearest thing I’ve heard to a pansy. You’re a laughing stock, now lift your heads and start playing like Demons!”

With that said, and this being the spot where the tale typically ends, I returned one last time to an array of record books and trawled through each game Melbourne played in season 1933, for the final ‘missing’ piece of the jigsaw; and Round 11 at the MCG v Hawthorn (July 8th) emerges as the most likely moment in time for Checker’s demonic spray.

Whereby, it’s no wonder the inferno-tinged nickname stuck, as there was a 50 point turnaround to proceedings post three-quarter time! This being the only game Melbourne trailed at three-quarter time that whole season to then reverse the deficit for a win – as every account of the story testifies. So, from being 12 points down at the last break, by the final siren, less than half an hour later ‘the Demons’ were thus surely born, not to mention winners to the tune of 38 points.

What’s more, something that afternoon clearly sent our boys absolutely berserk – Big Bob Johnson Sr in his last season (the oldest man on the ground) ended the day with a career best 12 goals, and a then 22 year-old Percy Beames hit the score sheet with four majors of his own; both players doing their bit to baptise and embolden our pitchfork-brandishing name, that will surely remain in the annals of Australian sport forever.