A lifetime at Princes Park

by TONY DE BOLFO

IN the lead-up to the last game Princes Park - The Last Days Of Chez Blue, as it were - it struck me that my family's association with the dear old girl has spanned some 75 years.

The link with Princes Park - the Carlton Recreation Reserve, as it was once known - was first forged on a Saturday afternoon sometime around 1930, when a kindly local gent persuaded my late grandfather - an Italian migrant, then boarding in neighbouring Canning Street - to take the short walk up Pigdon Street, veering left into Garton, across the little path by the date palms and through the old metallic turnstiles flanking the back pocket of what was once the outer.

Like so many of his fellow countrymen, Silvio De Bolfo was weaned on winter pastimes more suited to the snow-capped peaks of the Dolomites, which dwarfed his tiny northern Italian hometown. He knew nothing of this quaint little game called Australian football.

But after seeing "Mocca" Johnson, "Soapy" Vallence and his all-time favourite, Horrie Clover, ply their craft for Carlton on that first Saturday afternoon at Princes Park, my grandfather was hopelessly hooked. It mattered little to him that these were lean years for the football club, for as a socialist sympathiser who wanted nothing of Mussolini's Italy, he could empathise with his team's struggles long before Carlton's lofty successes earned it the silvertail tag.

For the next 45 years of his life, my grandfather would file through those same old turnstiles of a Saturday afternoon to bear witness to the only team old Carlton knows. In later years he would take my father along to the ground and by 1970 it was my turn - three generations of family all dedicated to the fortunes of their football team.

My grandfather was by profession a cabinetmaker, a craft he learned in those formative years before his 46-day voyage on a steamship to the far south. It was late 1927, and the cultural and linguistic difficulties he inevitably encountered, coupled with the harsh realities brought on by The Great Depression, hampered his efforts to put his skills to practical use until after the Second World War.

Little wonder, then, that the terraces at the Garton Street end of Princes Park not only provided my grandfather with a genuine escape from the ills of his early existence, but more importantly a real sense of belonging.

When the time came and my younger brother Paul and I were finally old enough to go to Princes Park, my grandfather summoned all his carpentry skills to fashion a small collapsible stool made of hardy Baltic pine, upon which both of us could confidently perch. Etched in my memory is that moment where, for the very first time, you tentatively peer over the heads of the grown-ups and out onto the field of dreams and see men of stature like John Nicholls, Sergio Silvagni and Alex Jesaulenko making Princes Park their own. I can still see Serge with his bandy legs and socks dangling around his ankles and I can also see the Sherrin stamp on the football as it spiralled over my head, courtesy of an Ian Robertson torp from what once was the outer wing.

Even half-time was an adventure. The family would hold court with fellow Carlton devotees such as Jack Bourke and his kids Jenny and Doug, in the days when you weren't competing with a garish loudspeaker flogging cans of fizz. And if you were a good boy you'd be treated to a brown paper bag chock-full of The Peanut Man's finest.

If you couldn't hear The Peanut Man's nasally spruik, "Peanuts, peanuts, shilling a bag" - which was unlikely - then you could easily see him. With his beerbottle glasses, leather moneypouch by his ample gut and nut-filled briquette sack slung over his right shoulder, The Peanut Man somehow managed to manouvre his frame through the vast hordes of supporters as he got to you with the goods.

Around about this time, Dad took the liberty of taking us to watch the Carlton players train. On one occasion we were introduced to Bob Edmond and Ricky McLean, who promptly escorted us into the players rooms. Edmond later eked out a career as a Commonwealth Games weightlifter, while McLean earned a fearsome reputation at Punt Road. But they were as gentle as lambs in our company. So, too, "Swan" McKay and Gary Crane, who kindly took the time to sign our autograph books.

As an impressionable kid you never forget these moments.

Just recently I interviewed Peter Bevilacqua, now in his 70s and living quietly just outside of Hobart. Peter represented Carlton in one solitary senior game - the last home and away game of 1953 against North Melbourne at Arden Street - but he also lays claim as the only known senior league footballer born in Italy.

After arriving in Melbourne from Foggia in 1938, Peter, then five, settled with his family in Carlton.

"I was always a Carlton supporter and memories of Carlton always come flooding back," he told me. "As kids, me and a few mates used to go to watch Carlton play every week. In the outer there used to be a double gate on the boundary line at the north-east corner of the ground where a policeman used to sit on a horse. We'd open the gate for him to ride onto the ground at quarter-time, three-quarter time and at the end of the game.

"At three-quarter time we'd follow the horse out and hear Perc Bentley address the Carlton players because the cop knew that when the huddle broke up we'd race off and open the gate for him.

"I was there for 'The Bloodbath' Grand Final of '45 between Carlton and South Melbourne, too. The crowd tore down 100 metres of fence to get in that day because the gates were locked. Back then, on the southern side of the ground, there was a stand and it had rafters, so on grand final day me and a few mates literally hung from the rafters and had a bird's eye of view. I can still see the 'ray of sunshine' that took Ken Hands out and I remember seeing was one of my heroes, Jimmy Mooring, the blond bombshell Ron Savage, and Bert Deacon playing. Deacon was fabulous, as was proven when he won the Brownlow Medal in 1947.

"When I joined Carlton, the club was first class compared with anywhere else... back then it was a real community involving the spectators, the players and the parents."

In later years, my profession as a football writer enabled me to further indulge my passion for Princes Park, by covering matches there for the daily newspapers, some of the early ones from behind the old weatherboards of the now-demolished press box (a piece of which I still have). I remember the day Essendon and Adelaide players took to the field at Princes Park in August 1997, just as news came through that Princess Di had been killed in a car accident in Paris. Old ladies could be seen crying into their transistors and, if memory serves, the late David Hookes was the first to stick his head into the press box to convey the grim tidings.

My work has also afforded me the rare privilege of meeting with those all time greats to whom I so fondly revere - "Nick", "Doully", "Jezza", "The Dominator", "Sticks" and "Sos" - each one of them making their mark at Princes Park and most other places. An honorable mention to "Percy" Jones here too, for his unforgettable post-goal histrionics at the Heatley Stand end which probably undervalued his worth as a ruckman in 249 games for Carlton, four of them premierships.

Another precious memory involves a comparatively unknown Carlton footballer named Gilbert Thornley. Bert was the man Ted Hopkins replaced at half-time of what was the greatest grand final, involving the two greatest adversaries before the game's greatest crowd.

Midway through 1995, Bert, a commercial fisherman living in Northern Queensland, made a fleeting visit to Carlton to join old teammates in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the 1970 grand final victory.

Having struck up a healthy rapport with Bert following an earlier newspaper interview, I offered to put him up at my house on the night before the function, an offer he promptly accepted. We agreed to meet at Princes Park once his plane had touched down at Tullamarine Airport - around tea-time on the Saturday evening after most of the punters had filed out of the place.

Suddenly Bert appeared in the foyer of the Carlton Social Club, sporting a pair of faded denims and a skyblue parker smeared with the blood and guts of a coral trout he'd probably hauled in just a few hours earlier. Returning to Princes Park was a precious moment for Bert, for it was the first time he'd set foot in the place since 1970.

After exchanging pleasantries in the JJ Higgins Bar, I asked Bert if he would like to venture into the dressing rooms to see his old No.13 locker. Before I could complete the question Bert was in there, scouring the names on the metal doors and privately reliving his glory days. Later, when he ventured upstairs to the weightroom and saw all the sophisticated equipment, Bert made the comment: "You know I bought the first set of dumbbells into this place". Fitness fanatic that he was, Bert first strode into Princes Park with his dumbbells when he and Syd Jackson crossed the Nullabor to join the Blues at the end of '67.

Today, I pray that Carlton wins the toss and kicks to Garton Street end. For if they do, it means they'll be kicking towards the Robert Heatley Stand in the last quarter of the last-ever game, for it was there, beneath the Heatley Stand, about 35 years ago that Dad accompanied me into the old administration block to buy my first season's ticket - a ticket that was personally handed to me by the then secretary and Carlton's first Brownlow Medallist, the late Bert Deacon.

As I watch the players walk from Princes Park for the last time from my vantage point in the Alderman Gardiner Stand - a graceful old structure which sadly seems destined for oblivion - I will also remember the very pleasant Sunday morning after the 1972 grand final when I heard Deacon introduce Big Nick to Carlton supporters flanking the Gardiner Stand as "The architect of one of this club's greatest-ever victories".

It saddens me that I won't be able to take my three-year-old son to Princes Park, to hoist him up onto that Baltic pine, collapsible stool upon which my brother and I first stood. I can't get my head around the fact that, after 109 seasons, Princes Park is no more a league footy venue.

Suburban football is now officially dead and the ghosts of Carlton greats such as "Pompey" Elliott and "Hackenschmidt" Clark are stirring. Ah, but the memories...

Big Nick. Man of stature. Mobil Football photo 1964.

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