ARTICLE: "Perth Oval: Chestnuts, plane flights and Royal rumbles fro East Perth", by John Townsend, 14/9/2017

ARTICLE: The tale of Charlie Chandler’s tree blossomed in the late 1950s but it was the chestnut’s failure to flower in 1961 that made the myth a legend.

The famous tree was a Perth Oval landmark for many decades, but the significance of its rare blooming was not recognised until Chandler, a returned World War II soldier and rabid East Perth supporter, identified several serendipitous events.

Chandler made the tree a barometer of East Perth premiership chances when he pointed out that, after many years without a flower, it had blossomed in 1956, 1958 and a year later.

They were all seasons that the Royals won the flag as a cohort of outstanding players in Graham “Polly” Farmer, Ted “Square” Kilmurray and John K. Watts combined superbly under inspirational coach Jack Sheedy.

East Perth were red-hot favourites in 1961, having beaten Swan Districts four times in the season, but the tree would not flower.

The bare tree proved a powerful omen.

Swans would go on to win the premiership, while the fact that Chandler’s tree had refused to blossom soon became a totem of the club’s rotten decade in which it made the grand final six times but lost each one of them.

The 1960s were a period of lost opportunities and a stark contrast to East Perth’s early days at Perth Oval when the ground regularly hosted the grand final and interstate matches.

Accepted into the competition in 1906 — with only West Perth voting against their inclusion to ignite a bitter rivalry that exists to this day — East Perth soon moved to the then Loton’s Park on the outskirts of the CBD where they would build a WAFL empire.

Phil Matson, a brilliant player at four WAFL clubs who would prove an even more formidable coach, was the catalyst.

He steered the club to five consecutive premierships from 1919, had a successful year in Victoria before returning to win two more flags and could have achieved anything in the game but for his death in a car crash at the age of 43.

Sheedy won three flags and returned for one season in 1969 when Perth Oval witnessed a series of remarkable events only two years after it was passed over in favour of Subiaco Oval as the site of WA football’s headquarters.

It was the year the mercurial Mal Brown won the Sandover Medal to make the first of a series of indelible marks on the game, while East Perth’s standing as the league’s most popular club was underlined when more than 20,000 fans packed the ground early in the season.

The Foundation Day match against West Perth then drew a remarkable 26,760 spectators to smash the WAFL home-and- away attendance record.

It was the biggest crowd at the ground since 1928 when it appeared most of Perth turned out to watch Bert Hinkler take off on the first solo flight from Australia to England.

Chandler’s tree did not flower when East Perth won the 1972 flag, though there was plenty of colour that night when captain-coach Brown led a player walk-out during the celebrations because the recently retired Derek Chadwick was denied access to the official function.

East Perth would remain at the ground for two more decades but the glory days were over.

After a period at the WACA Ground, the Royals shifted to Leederville.

Perth Oval would be redeveloped as a rectangular stadium that would host the Perth Glory soccer club and the Western Force rugby union club.

[By John Townsend for The West Australian. This article was first published at the following link: https://thewest.com.au/news/wa/uncanny-chestnut-predicted-the-royals-highs-and-lows-ng-b88599502z]

East Perth versus East Fremantle, 1965

Centre-man Syd Jackson and other players at training, 1964

Mal Atwell and happy schoolboys

East Perth's Phil Tierney after an incident with East Fremantle's Con Regan in May 1962.

An air-raid demonstration at the oval in 1940.

John Watts, Ralph Rogerson, Ray Rowlles, and Brian Grant, March 1962.

Perth Oval as a rectangular stadium. This picture shows the kick-off of the friendly match between Glasgow Celtic and Perth Glory on 9 July 2011 which was won 2-0 by the Scottish giants.

East Perth Cheer Squad which was active from the years 1982-88 according to David Lockhart. That ROYALS 82 banner indeed became very well-known to WAFL fans back in the day (photo courtesy of David Lockhart / Lost WAFL Facebook page). I'm only guessing but this picture might be from early in the day of the 1982 First Semi-Final East Perth versus West Perth (when you had to arrive very early to obtain seats directly behind the fence).

TRIBUTE: My tribute to John K. Watts (East Perth and Geelong) (21 January 1937 – 3 June 2017)

"His other great contribution was to build up the self-esteem of fat people by telling them that being fat was socially acceptable and that shopping at Kingsize Menswear was far beyond cool". 

Graham "Polly" Farmer and John K. Watts

TRIBUTE: John K. Watts was an East Perth full-back in the great teams of the late-fifties at Perth Oval, which featured players such as Jack Sheedy (captain-coach), Mal Atwell, Graham "Polly" Farmer, Ted "Square" Kilmurray, and Derek "Chaddy" Chadwick. This team won for the club premierships in the 1956, 1958, and 1959 seasons; and Charlie Chandler's Tree blossomed every season to acknowledge those great victories. My father's family used to often watch East Perth play in the late-fifties, and my father remembers Watts' fast attacking dashes out from the full-back position which was a playing move years ahead of its time. Watts was a policeman during his years with East Perth (1954-62) and he resigned as a policeman only when he moved to VFL/AFL club Geelong for the 1963 season (one year after Farmer joined Geelong). Overall Watts played 166 games for East Perth from 1954-62; 52 games for Geelong from 1963-65; and 53 games for Hobart from 1966-68. He played 12 state games for Western Australia and two for the TANFL. He was born in East Perth on 21 January 1937 to parents Western Australian Police Superintendent James Albert Watts and Eileen Sylvia Watts; grew up in the heart of Royals' territory in Maylands; attended Maylands State School; and was recruited by East Perth from Bayswater Juniors.

How do I remember Watts? His playing career was long over by the time I started following WAFL football as a seven-year-old in 1976. The first WAFL game I ever attended was West Perth versus Subiaco at Leederville Oval on 19 June 1976. Like most people of my generation who grew up in Perth I remember "Wattsy" from his "World of Football" days and from his TV commercial appearances especially those for FAI Insurance and Kingsize Menswear. He was known for his sincere joviality; cheerfulness; good humour and good vibes; huge size especially across the chest; and deep booming voice. He was a figure who probably surprised many by growing in fame and public-profile long after his playing career ended which is not a common occurrence. For most ex-players they are well known for a few years after retirement and then they slowly disappear back into obscurity. It was Wattsy's good vibes and genuine warmth (in an era of superficiality and insincerity) which allowed Wattsy to surprise many people by becoming a Perth cultural and media icon beyond football. With Wattsy everything was from his heart unlike those others who, it is often said in crime novels, have a smile which never reaches their eyes.

Wattsy represented, to many people, both tradition and progress. He had played in the elite VFL/AFL with Geelong but he was probably better remembered for his East Perth playing days in that old era when the WAFL was King in Perth from April until September and the VFL was just a Melbourne suburban competition not much better than ours. He was involved in suggesting East Perth and then a composite Western Australian side (later to become West Coast Eagles) join the VFL/AFL. In this matter too he was on the side of progress. 

I should mention one last thing which Wattsy achieved in his last decades. Unlike nearly every other current and former footballer, he was able to rise above the old animosity between West Perth and East Perth (West Perth fans loved him too) and, in more recent years, he rose above the new divide in WA football between AFL fans and WAFL supporters. He was seen as a unifying figure, neither belonging to one camp or to the other camp, but rising above both camps, and joining them together momentarily in unity. In a time when football is divided amongst itself, with few people supporting both AFL and WAFL, he represents that bygone romantic era of unity when we all went to Subiaco Oval on those long-ago Tuesday afternoons to cheer on WA versus the Vics (united in our naughtiness in skipping school and work for the day but doing it all for the love of the game). 

Wattsy deserves to be remembered not only for his playing career but for the role he played in the media as a cultural icon for many years. His other great contribution was to build up the self-esteem of fat people by telling them that being fat was socially acceptable and that shopping at Kingsize Menswear was far beyond cool. A non-politically correct icon was the perfect person to deliver such a message [by Kieran James, 17 August 2017].

Please add your tributes to John K. Watts as a comment to this article.