Rhodes to footy glory

by PAUL DAFFEY

AFL Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick will be in the Macquarie Bank boardroom at 101 Collins Street this evening. Give that he moves easily in the world of high finance, theres no surprise there.

But his task in the Macquarie boardroom is to launch a history of football at Melbourne University, called Black and Blue, and there is some surprise there.

Fitzpatrick did not play university football. After leaving school in Perth, he pursued his footy career at WAFL club Subiaco, where he played in a premiership in 1973 at the age of 20. In Melbourne, he played only with Carlton, where he was a member of the 1979 premiership team as well as the captain of the 1981 and '82 premiership teams.

Fitzpatrick will perform his function at the Macquarie boardroom tonight as a representative of the AFL and as a friend of Ray Wilson, a prominent figure within the Melbourne University Football Club, with whom Fitzpatrick built up a multi-million dollar funds management company called Hastings. Aside from these reasons, however, he's often had a link with university football.

During his undergraduate days as an electrical engineering student at the University of Western Australia, Fitzpatrick had many friends who played for the University Football Club in the WA amateur competition and he himself started in a match for one of the university's residential colleges, only to abandon the project as a dangerous exercise. His brother Paul played for the university's amateur football club for almost a decade.

In England, where Fitzpatrick studied at Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship from 1975 to '78, a period that included returning to Carlton amid much hoopla to play the second half of the VFL season in 1976, he represented Oxford in three of the annual Australian football matches against Cambridge University. He returned to Carlton for good after the northern academic year had finished midway through 1978.

Fitzpatrick's friend and fellow former Rhodes Scholar, Chris "Frosty" Cordner, played alongside Fitzpatrick in a few matches against Cambridge. The pair once shared the ruck in the infamous "ice rink match", held on the grounds of Oxford's New College, where the ice was so hard that players could barely stand up.

"I took a very, very conservative view to it," Fitzpatrick said of his performance. "Chris was going pretty well early. I just let him go."

Fitzpatrick, who is 54, and Cordner, 57, met recently at the request of The Age to discuss university football as a lead-up to tonight's launch. Cordner, the son of Melbourne's 1946 Brownlow medallist Don, was the captain in the early 1970s of University Blacks, which comprise one stream of the Melbourne University Football Club; University Blues comprise the other stream.

Both Blues and Blacks play in the Victorian Amateur Football Association, as does Fitzroy Reds, which, as University Reds, was once the third stream of the university football club.

Cordner won the University Blacks' best-and-fairest award in 1970 and '71 before embarking on his Rhodes Scholarship after the 1972 season. Like most Rhodes Scholars, who are chosen on sporting and academic ability, he began studying politics, philosophy and economics but, unlike Fitzpatrick, who completed his degree with honours in the three disciplines, he went on to concentrate on philosophy.

A sporting quirk of these years was the result of Cordner's return from Oxford to Melbourne for a holiday late in the 1974 football season. He played the final two home-and-away games and a month later he was a member of the Blacks' A-section premiership team, the most recent A-grade premiership in the Blacks' one-time glorious history.

After returning to Melbourne in 1977 with most of the work done towards a doctorate in philosophy, Cordner was still good enough to be chosen in a Victorian squad to play in the 1979 Australian amateur football carnival, only to sprain his ankle before the carnival. In his academic life, he settled into life as a philosopher and is now an associate professor in philosophy at Melbourne University.

The interview for this article was held in the boardroom of Fitzpatrick's family investment company, Squitchy Lane Holdings, at the top of Collins Street. In the mid-1970s, Fitzpatrick took over Cordner's room at 16 Squitchey Lane in north Oxford. The address (albeit without the "e") provided the inspiration for the company name.

Legend has it that Cordner and Fitzpatrick practised ruck work on the grounds of one of the colleges at Oxford. However, after much scratching of heads, the pair could recall only one practice session, in which fellow Rhodes Scholar Peter King kicked the ball to them and they tried to outmark each other.

King, who in 2004 was ousted as the Liberal member for Wentworth by Malcolm Turnbull, was typical of the Oxford team of Rhodes Scholars in that he was a talented sportsman who had not necessarily played Australian football. According to Fitzpatrick and Cordner, the Queensland Rhodes Scholars usually had a bit of Australian football in their past, while NSW players had never seen a Sherrin.

King had played rugby union for NSW and acquitted himself well enough during his attempts at the indigenous code. Not that his performances mattered.

The Oxford team usually had eight or nine accomplished footballers. One of the Oxford players in the 1970s was Chris Maxwell, a former centreman with University Blues who, in recent years, has been the president of Liberty Victoria and a judge on the Victorian Court of Appeal.

The Cambridge team, without the advantage of Rhodes Scholars, generally had only one or two decent footballers. The Cambridge players often were ring-ins from London's Australian community or internationals with no idea of the game.

In one of the matches between Oxford and Cambridge, which are held during the northern winter, an umpire was so bad that he had to be replaced. "It's the only time I've seen an umpire sent off," Fitzpatrick said.

Another memory of Fitzpatrick was pinpointing the fast-leading Joe Santamaria, the son of the late BA Santamaria and now a Melbourne Queens Counsel. "The ball hit him on the chest with a boom and bounced straight back to me," Fitzpatrick said. "I gathered it up and had a shot for goal."

Cordner recalled asking a groundsman at Oxford's University College to insert posts at either end and then acknowledging the thinking of the groundsman when the behind posts were placed well forward of the goal posts, in keeping with the contours of an oval.

As an illustration of divergent lives from shared beginnings, it's interesting to compare the diaries of Fitzpatrick and Cordner on the day of the interview. In the morning, Cordner went to the Uniting Church in Diamond Creek to deliver the eulogy of a family friend. His afternoon involved delivering a lecture on the novel Notes From Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky to his politics and philosophy class.

Fitzpatrick's day had begun with a meeting about a biotech investment followed by a coffee with a friend who was an executive at Hastings. He also had a meeting about family investments and chaired a meeting of the Victorian Funds Management Corporation.

In the early afternoon, he had a meeting about a proposed extension at the Melbourne University's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, of which he's chairman of the building committee.

Fitzpatrick and Cordner still see other socially and they enjoy watching their sons play footy. Fitzpatrick last year watched his son Will play for University Blues, to which Will is expected to return next season after a year in Boston, while Cordner watches the University Blacks' under-19 team, of which his son James is co-captain.

Fitzpatrick said part of his role in launching the university football book tonight was promoting the AFL's keenness to be involved at all levels of the game. "We just like to see people play footy," he said.

Footnote: Black and Blue: The Story of Football at Melbourne University is available through melbunifootball.com Paul Daffey is one of five writers who contributed to the book. He wrote the chapters covering the period from 1975 to the present.

This article first appeared in The Age on 15 August 2007.

15 August 2007

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