The day the Murray League beat St Kilda
In 1960, a Murray League team defeated St Kilda at Tocumwal. In those days VFL clubs would play local leagues on the weekend when the Australian Carnival was played -- no concern about byes then!!
Can you imagine this happening now and what would the result be?
Tocumwal had two players in the side in winger Ivan Bryan, who would later be Tocumwal's first 200 game player and 1967 premiership player and ruck-rover Keith Thompson, who had previously played for the South-West League against a VFL representative team at Narrandera in 1952--the VFL team won comfortably on that occasion.
The following article was written in 2010 by Paul Daffey
This Friday marks a special occasion for the Murray Football League: it’s the 50th anniversary of the day a hastily cobbled-together team of Murray League players became one of the few country teams to defeat a VFL visitor.
Practice matches between country teams and VFL teams were common from footy’s earliest days right up until about 1970. It often happened that a VFL team headed bush on the weekend that Victoria played an interstate match.
The Murray League’s feat in knocking off St Kilda was rare. AFL stats guru Col Hutchinson combed through club annual reports and checked with club historians for victories by country teams against VFL visitors.
He could verify only two: in 1901 the Rutherglen Football Club defeated South Melbourne by 13 points at Rutherglen; in 1914 a Goulburn Valley League representative team defeated Carlton by 12 points at Tatura.
The match between the Murray League and St Kilda in 1960 is significant because it was Allan Jeans’s last game. Jeans played for Murray League clubs Tocumwal and Finley before joining the Saints.
In 1960, when he was 26, Jeans was battling to overcome strained rib cartilages but he was determined to go home to play against the Murray League. After the game, he gave in to his injuries and became St Kilda’s non-playing reserves coach.
In 2006, Murray League stalwart Tom Danaher and his wife Vanessa tracked down all members of the 1960 team with a view to inviting them to that season’s Murray League grand final. Seventeen were able to make it; the other three, Laurie Murdoch, Ron Walsh and Graeme Sutton, had passed away.
The players were all set to enjoy a cavalcade around the boundary when Wayne Burrows, the Murray League general manager, ruled out the idea at the last minute for insurance reasons. Effectively, he was worried about the old players’ chairs toppling off the backs of their utes.
No celebrations have been planned for this weekend, but the 1960 feat lives on for Murray League fans. The team was led by Cobram captain-coach Les Mogg, who had played on a wing for North Melbourne in the 1950 VFL grand final.
Mogg said this week that the Murray League players did not even have a training run before the St Kilda match. Some players were unfamiliar to each other. In the first quarter, Mogg was amused to hear Finley teenager Ted Maher call for the ball using honorifics: “Over here, Mr Mogg, over here.”
St Kilda was without several stars, including Neil Roberts, Verdun Howell, Lance Oswald and Bill Stephenson, but took advantage of their hosts’ nervousness to shoot out to a seven-goal lead at quarter-time.
In the second quarter, Mogg shifted himself from full-forward to ruck-rover and put his Cobram teammate, George Hocking (the uncle of former Geelong stars Steve and Garry), into the goalsquare. The Murray League worked into the game. St Kilda led by four goals at half-time and two goals at the final break.
In the last quarter the lead changed four times. Mogg said the decisive moment was when the Murray League’s former Essendon centre half-back Jim McColl and his St Kilda opponent Laurie Stephenson (Bill’s brother) set themselves for a marking duel. Murray League half-back Phil Lewis, a builder from Finley, flew over the hefty pair to take a screamer.
Lewis’s mark fuelled his teammates. The Murray League overcame the Saints to win by 14 points. Hocking was the highest goalkicker, with four. According to newspaper reports, Mogg was best on ground.
After the match, players from the two teams adjourned to a Tocumwal hotel. Mogg was having a beer with Lindsay Fox, St Kilda’s 23-year-old ruckman, when he asked Fox what he did for a living.
Fox replied that he had a small trucking business in Melbourne. He drove one truck and another bloke drove the other one. Mogg, who at 80 continues to head into his old accounting practice in Cobram to help his son, still loves that story.
Murray Football League 18.9 (117) d St Kilda Football Club 15.13 (103), 25 June 1960, at Tocumwal
Murray FL—B: Laurie Murdoch (Numurkah), Evan Thomas (Deniliquin), Graeme Sutton (Strathmerton); HB: Phil Lewis (Finley), Jim McColl (Strathmerton), Col Barton (Cobram); C: Barry Allen (Deniliquin), Lyle Stuart (Cobram), Ivan Bryan (Tocumwal); HF: Keith Platfuss (Deniliquin), John Ryan (Strathmerton), George Hocking (Cobram); F: Herbie Tasker (Deniliquin), Les Mogg (Cobram), Ted Maher (Finley); Foll: Peter Brown (Nathalia), Keith Thompson (Tocumwal), Len Sexton (Berrigan); 19th: Ron Walsh (Numurkah); 20th: Russ Milne (Berrigan).
St Kilda—B: John Delanty, John Kilpatrick, Brian Muir; HB: Jim Guyatt, Ray Walton, Eric Guy; C: Leo Garlick, Allan Jeans, Bruce Sellick; HF: Kevin Roberts, Laurie Stephenson, Graeme Lee; F: Ian Rowland, Bill Coady, Bob Hay; Foll: John McMillan, Lindsay Fox, Gary Holmes; 19th: Peter Burns; 20th: Brian McCarthy.
