Making his mark

My grandfather, Fred Dummett, was rushed to hospital yesterday – he’s 95. It’s not the first time this year but this time his heart stopped twice. Amazingly, they got it going again and implanted a pacemaker. We’re not sure if he’s out of the woods yet. He looked pretty good when I saw him in the hospital today – apart from the black and blue arms and the slightly grey pallor. I asked him what the hell he’d been up to. “You look like you just played a tough game of footy”. He laughed. “Not as bad as that” he said.

Pa was a terrific footballer, a six foot ruckman who played in the 1930′s for Sandringham and the Holeproof factory team. He says he would just tap it down to the little blokes and let them do the rest. I suspect he is being modest. He saw his first game of VFL when he was taken by his uncle Harry Dummett in 1919 to watch Fitzroy play Collingwood at the Brunswick Street Oval. His Uncle Harry would later become a Mayor of Collingwood but he barracked for Fitzroy at the time and made the young Fred promise to do the same. Fred says he crossed his fingers behind his back and promised. But when he got to the ground, he let loose with a ‘Go Magpies’. The Pies won the flag that year and pa, like Digger of Coodabeens fame, can actually claim to have barracked for the Pies for over 89 years.

A host of Dummetts have had successful VFL careers. Alf ‘Rosie’ Dummett played 118 games for Collingwood between 1901-10. Recruited locally, he was a star defender in Collingwood’s earliest league era, played in the 1902-03 Magpie premiership sides, and captained the club for part of the 1906 season. After his playing career ended he served as the Vice President of the Collingwood Football Club and from 1936 to 1952 was the Victorian chairman of selectors. Charlie Dummett also played for Collingwood but only managed 4 games between 1909 and 1911. Arthur ‘Bob’ Dummett played for 77 games for Richmond between 1954 and 1961. He was Richmond’s leading goalkicker in 1956, 1957 and 1959 and played in two Reserves premierships for the Tigers.

Fred’s football career was, in a sense, determined by his circumstances. Born the same year that his father died at Gallopoli, Fred spent a good deal of time with his cousins and uncles in Clifton Hill, away from his mother in Fairfield, who took to the bottle after the death of her 19 year old husband. She later married again, to a peanut farmer from Kingaroy, and Fred lived for a while on the farm in Queensland until a tragic accident saw his step-father lose both his leg and his livelihood. The family returned to Melbourne and Fred grew up around Collingwood and Clifton Hill.

As a young man in the 1930′s, Pa was incredibly industrious. He had various jobs, running for an SP bookie, working on the machine at Holeproof textile factory in Brunswick and playing football. He was paid more his football that his work at Holeproof. He was offered four pounds a week (a princely sum) to play for Collingwood but turned it down to play for Sandringham for five pounds a week. His boss at Holeproof got wind of his footballing prowess and asked him to set up a team for the men at Holeproof to play in the in the VFA Thirds competition. This entry from the Northern Bullants website provides more details:

Several V.F.A. clubs had fielded Thirds and Fourths sides in junior competitions, but 1939 saw the formation of the first Preston Thirds team, and after competing against other teams that had existed for some years, they did a fine job to finish fourth, losing narrowly to Brunswick in the semi-final.

The rules under which the clubs played have been lost over time, but it doesn’t appear to have been a competition restricted to a specific age group as there are references to a couple of well-known former senior players amongst the ranks of other teams. The following season provided undoubtedly the wackiest score-line ever recorded by a Preston team when they missed out on a “premiership” by just eight points despite outscoring their opponents by 12 goals!

The Thirds competition consisted of teams directly linked to several senior clubs (Port Melbourne, Prahran, Preston and Brunswick), a couple of teams sponsored by V.F.A. clubs (West Coburg/Coburg and Northcote Sons of Soldiers/Northcote), and a mixture of local and industrial teams.

In 1940, a new team from Holeproof, the well-known clothing manufacturer, joined the ranks. Although they didn’t win many games, Holeproof’s early efforts were competitive, but became rather more modest (although perhaps by design) late in the season.

The year was dominated by Newmarket, West Coburg, Brunswick and Prahran and a quick check of remaining records suggests that none of them dropped a game against a non-final four team.

Perhaps the strength of the leading clubs was behind a decision by the competition’s organisers to augment the normal final series with a second “handicap premiership” for the next four clubs that did not make the normal finals. Just when the series was organised is not clear from the few snippets remaining, but perhaps the Holeproof team saw an opportunity to “run dead” to help their chances of slipping under the handicapper’s guard.

From what can be traced of the known scores, Preston missed the regular finals narrowly and were eventually handicapped on minus 20 points with Port Melbourne on “scratch”, Northcote on plus 20 and the dark horses from Holeproof awarded a whopping 60 points start!

Preston’s 32 (or 12) point win over Port in the second semi-final was enough to get them to the Grand Final, but Northcote’s 12.13.85 “victory” over Holeproof 10.7.67 left them well short of the 40 point margin required.

The absurdity of the handicapping became obvious when Holeproof, although receiving 60 points from Port Melbourne, actually won the preliminary final outright,13.10.88 to 11.18.82 (realistically a 66 point victory).

I’m not sure what the outcome was but it does smack of a certain canniness I see very clearly in my grandfather. While I certainly wouldn’t ever accuse him of tanking, I can imagine him being pleased to create a situation where his factory bosses were pleased with his efforts and the efforts of the team. It was the Depression after all.

Pa would be happy now to accomplish just two goals – to make the tonne and to see his beloved Pies win another premiership. Well, pa, I’m with you on the first one…

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