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| Leederville Oval, 6/7/2011, with the tasteful new Subiaco FC building at centre between the old main grandstand and the tin shed. |
Subiaco v Hawthorn, Subiaco Oval, 4 October 1986
This long forgotten match pitted the WAFL premiers of 1986 Subiaco Lions against the VFL premiers Hawthorn Hawks. As can be seen from the newspaper article cited below, the clash of playing jerseys was resolved by a last-minute compromise. The thrilling last ten minutes of this match has recently been uploaded to YouTube.com (see link below). The victors received a prize of $20,000. The good crowd of approximately 20,600 shows perhaps that this type of match (played between two traditional club teams) was a never-explored national-league alternative concept to the formation of composite and generic super-clubs such as West Coast Eagles and Adelaide Crows. Therefore, this match represents a genuine “road not travelled by” (to cite the late American poet Robert Frost, 1874-1963). There is the possibility Subiaco could have done better than West Coast Eagles in the VFL in the 1987 season since Subiaco was able to enjoy a normal club support structure and had experienced three plus years of performing together and gelling as a team prior to 1987. Ken Spillman, author of the Subiaco FC official club history book Diehards: The Story of the Subiaco Football Club Volume 2: 1946-2000, writes as follows about this game on page 229: "The quality of that football club [Subiaco FC] and its 1986 team had already been proven but, if some outsiders remained sceptical, they were condemned to silence after the Lions clashed with the Victorian premiers at Subiaco Oval on Saturday, 4 October 1986. A week earlier, Allan Jeans' star-studded Hawthorn team had defeated Carlton by seven goals in the V.F.L. Grand Final, but Subiaco applied extraordinary pressure and was unfortunate to lose by two points, 18.11 (119) to 17.15 (117)". Spillman also mentions on page 226 of Diehards Volume 2 the results of a 15 March 1986 pre-season game at Subiaco Oval where Subiaco defeated St Kilda 25.25 (175) to 17.11 (113) [by Jack Frost, 14 February 2012].
Likely line-up:
(Source: The West Australian, Friday, 3 October, 1986, p. 80, country edition)
Subiaco FC
Backs: B Taylor, Crutchfield, Brown
Half-backs: Willett, Zanotti, P Lamb
Centres: Carpenter, MacNish, Dargie
Half-Forwards: Georgiades, Dean, Langdon
Forwards: Keene, Breman, N Taylor
Ruck: Scott, D Lamb, O’Loughlin
Interchange from: Sells, Wilkinson, Lee, Sparks, Gray, Roberts
(Hawthorn FC's likely line-up was not published in The West Australian.)
(Hawthorn FC's likely line-up was not published in The West Australian.)
Playing uniforms: Hawthorn FC: Gold training jumper with HFC logo on front, brown shorts, brown socks.
Subiaco FC: Regular jumper, white shorts, maroon and gold hooped socks.
(Source: The West Australian, Friday, 3 October, 1986, p. 80, country edition)
Match results – Saturday, 4 October, 1986, Subiaco Oval
Hawthorn FC 3.3 7.5 13.9 18.11 (119) d Subiaco FC 5.1 11.4 13.11 17.15 (117)
Scorers: HFC: Dunstall 4.1, Curran, Russo 4.0, Greene 2.2, Brereton 2.1, Buckenara 1.2, Jenke 1.1, Platten 0.2, Loveridge, Eade 0.1.
SFC: Sells 4.2, Keene 3.2, Breman 2.1, Georgiades 2.0, Scott 1.2, Willet 1.1, Macnish 1.1, Lee 1.1, Carpenter, Langdon 1.0, N Taylor 0.1, Forced 0.4.
Weather: Mainly fine with light and variable winds.
Attendance: 20,600.
(Source: The West Australian, Monday, 6 October, 1986, p. 96)
Team rankings GEOFF CHRISTIAN:
HFC: P Russo 1, R Morris 2, J Dunstall 3, G Dear 4, R Lester-Smith 5, R Eade 6.
SFC: N Taylor 1, P Scott 2, D Lamb 3, M Zanotti 4, A Macnish 5, G O’Loughlin 6.
GARY STOCKS:
HFC: P Russo 1, R Morris 2, J Dunstall 3, C Langford 4, P Curran 5, R Lester-Smith 6.
SFC: D Lamb 1, N Taylor 2, G O’Loughlin 3, P Scott 4, M Zanotti 5, A Macnish 6.
(Source: The West Australian, Monday, 6 October, 1986, p. 96)
Watch the last ten minutes of this SFC v HFC (1986) match on YouTube at the following link:
Coach’s Comment:
Hadyn Bunton Junior (Subiaco FC):
“The important thing about this game is that we proved we are well and truly up to VFL standard”.
“The important thing about this game is that we proved we are well and truly up to VFL standard”.
(Source: Anonymous (1986), “Bunton looks on bright side”, The West Australian, Monday, 6 October, 1986, p. 96)
Match analysis
Quote from the late GEOFF CHRISTIAN:
“It was a superb effort from Subiaco based, to a large degree, on the individual excellence of captain Neil Taylor, ruckman Phil Scott, ruck-rover Dwayne Lamb and centre-half-back Mark Zanotti”.
(Source: Geoff Christian (1986), “Thriller a sign of next season”, The West Australian, Monday, 6 October, 1986, p. 96) [archival research by Jack Frost].
The late GEOFF CHRISTIAN was a remarkable sports-writer who wrote in an excellent, masterful, and charming prose style that few could duplicate today. He could make a Round 13 match between the two bottom-placed clubs played in pouring rain in front of 4,000 people sound as important, exciting, and earth-shattering as the Russian Revolution or the Arab Spring! His genuine enthusiasm for the WAFL and later for West Coast Eagles was authentic, genuine, and infectious. I love the descriptions, still in place in 1984, of the VFL, SANFL, and WAFL all as “league football” and, by implication, worthy to be called tier-one status [brief bio by Jack Frost].
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