NEW INTERVIEW: Neil Whyte (EFFC / Applecross) talks about East Fremantle FC's modern-day problems.

Jack Frost1 (WAFL Golden Era website): What do you think explains East Freo's lack of premiership success since 1998?

Neil Whyte1: Many used to say that it was the number of players lost to the draft into the AFL, but this is no longer an excuse as it has been going on for way too long. There was a great crop of talent when I was designing the EF Football Academy conditioning program which started in 2005. My theory is that, if there is significant talent in the pool, then surely there is a spillover that can be utilized naturally at League level. Then it is up to coaching staff to unify the group with a common goal, to set standards etc. What I noticed was the club was not functioning as a team. Staff were disconnected from one another. i.e. I didn't know what the Physio was doing or saying to players and vice versa...he wouldn't know what I was doing either. I was gobsmacked on my first day at the club seeing colts guys doing weight training in the gym before skills training on the oval. Now, in my world as a pro trainer, this is a cardinal sin just asking for trouble. It's a bit like somebody is running a study to see how many injuries could be sustained...how many hamstrings they could tear etc ha ha. The senior coach at the time did not see eye to eye with my approach...especially when I extracted the colts players out of the weights room who had terrible form...and they were being overseen by a strength and conditioning coach!!! David wanted the boys in the gym to put on muscle, but I had to explain to him it's not that simple...and there is a process...and requires an individual plan. Anyway, I don't know how the club has been functioning since I left...but I would say it is still struggling for cohesion based on the results. Overall though...I really don't understand how the club has struggled for many years now. I can appreciate how the facilities are a bit run down...but this has nothing to do with football ability and training...it does have something to do with a certain percentage of players maybe not wanting to play for EF if the facilities are not up to scratch or if people start talking. So I think it is important for the club to either upgrade the facilities or agree to co-lease Fremantle Oval which appears to be an option at the moment.

I would like to add that Australian Rules football training methods can often be 'old school', particularly at WAFL level. The methods I tried to introduce to EF were much more cutting edge, but they were not ready for it. AFL are much more responsive to change and growth. So I also think that, when clubs are not prepared for progressive change, they can be stuck in the same old same old. This is what I sensed at EFFC in terms of its conditioning for its players.

JF2: What was your experience doing the 1991-92 pre-season at EFFC under head coach Ken Judge?

NW2: I was attempting to make a comeback into football after missing five seasons of football. I was 23 years of age. I kept myself quite healthy and reasonably fit, so that was a help. I got into playing drums and music as a teen which tended to get in the way of my sport. I suppose I was gifted with good motor skill coordination that was developing a lot during my teens...I spent a lot of time playing sport (cricket and football) and athletics. I still knew a lot of guys and some of the staff knew me, i.e. Rod Lester Smith, who knew my older brother Greg, who looked destined for league when he copped some injuries. Greg was fairest and best in first year at Colts and was more than competitive against Brian Peake in intra-club scratch matches...in fact he beat him convincingly on at least one occasion. Anyway...so pre-season was going well until I badly sprained my ankle..it was nearly a break...took me a month till I could walk on it again. Ken couldn't understand how long it was taking. Pre-season was your typical Aussie rules 'old school' pre-season training. I couldn't believe that once we were made to do exercises on the concrete in a car park at Wireless Hill, including 'crunches'. I saw players' backs for the next week with red marks down their spines, ha ha. To cut a long story short, I nearly got in the squad after the intra-club scratch matches, but he advised me to play for Applecross Sunday League as they were based at EF Oval. He was going to watch games and, if I was performing, he said he would be prepared to pull me out of Sunday League. However, I never got my Mojo...I think missing five seasons made a significant difference to my feel and spatial awareness. I still had some skill..but it wasn't quite the same along with my fitness level. And I just couldn't get going at Sunday League and get any momentum. This was very disappointing seeing as I had been a strong Junior - I won the 17's competition best player and was runner up in 16's. I was frustrated because I saw players at the club that I used to play with and against in juniors...some had progressed significantly, others not so much.

Neil Whyte (aka Whitey).

JF3: Has East Freo lost that culture of success and how can it be brought back?

NW3: The club has certainly lost the culture of success, and yes, of course, they can get it back. The club has a magnificent history. Going back in history they had a low point in the 1960's for only about six seasons, probably their lowest results ever up until that point, before they bounced back at the beginning of the 1970's. It is a reminder of how successful and consistent the club has been since it started in 1898. In the 70's, 80's and 90's they were a solid consistent club. But it has been an absolutely woeful and humiliating period for best part of the last 20 years (since late 90's). I suppose I see this as a new era and nothing lasts forever mentality. The world is changing and evolving rapidly and I think EFFC is fully immersed within all of this change. I think Subiaco in recent years have developed a winning culture...and hopefully EFFC can develop a similar version in their own style and way in the future.

JF4: Is East Freo's zone good enough now given aging of the population in the traditional heartland suburbs plus multiculturalism?

NW4: It is hard to keep up with zoning because they keep changing it, ha ha. For sure, my area that I grew up in of Ardross, Applecross, Brentwood, Mt Pleasant...was beginning to struggle for numbers even when I was playing back in the 1980's. I couldn't believe that in 1978 Brentwood had an under 18's side, which my brother played for and won the competition fairest and best with. By 1982, Brentwood struggled for numbers and combined with Ardross to form Karoonda, which then eventually changed to what is now known as Booragoon. On another note, I never could work out or find out who was behind changing the quarter lengths from 25 min in 16's and 17's to 20 min which in recent years applies to 14's, 15's, 16's and 17's. It still makes no sense to me...surely 16's and 17's should have longer quarters??? Anyway, I feel the club has plenty of potential talent coming through...it is what you do with the talent that counts. We also have to remember the country regions as well, so numbers aren't the problem. I think every WAFL club will be going through similar circumstances. Of course there are more options for kids now. When I was a kid and teen, there was a strong tradition of Aussie Rules football in winter and cricket in the summer. And athletics was in between. Nowadays it is more diverse including soccer (Perth Glory inspired), basketball (Wildcats inspired), Rugby (Western force inspired), Baseball (Perth Heat inspired), extreme sports (X games inspired) etc. Multiculturalism has certainly played a part in this new movement in recent years with other sports. This has made it much tougher now for funding, volunteers and sponsorships across the board in all of these sports. We don't have a big enough population to allow all of these sports to thrive, and this has been proven to be true. However, there is one massive incentive for parents to send their kids to AFL...their pay is potentially much grander than other sports, and 40 players are listed on a senior list at AFL level. Other sports have much smaller numbers such as Cricket, Basketball, soccer, baseball etc. This is why the AFL have paid attention to attempting to make the game 'cleaner' and less violent to parents to encourage them to play Aussie rules. So the entire issue is quite complex now and extends much further and beyond simply 'aging suburbs'...however, yes, multiculturalism has played a significant role in a changing landscape.

[Note: Neil Whyte started the EF Football Academy in 2005; was the colts fitness coach; and was the fitness coach for development squads. He developed a time-line of development for 14-18-year-olds predominantly. After a stellar junior career (not a Stella career - that would be me!), he played a few colts games in 1984 whilst also playing 17's juniors at Melville. Then he completed pre-season 1984-85 when Graham Melrose was coaching the colts team. At the age of 23, he returned to EFFC and completed the 1991-92 pre-season with the senior team under coach Ken Judge before drifting across to Applecross in the then Sunday Football League.]

ARTICLE: "Did the Spirit of Football die when Roy George moved from Applecross JFC to Karoonda?"

Applecross JFC stalwarts Roy "The Spoon" George (centre) and Doug "Dougie" Stirling (right), 23 years on.

Did the spirit of football die when Roy George moved from Applecross JFC to Karoonda?

Karoonda Reserve, Booragoon.

Back in the 1970s, Perth was still a traditional and very much mono-cultural city. Each primary-school had a local junior football club which was independent of the school but, in most cases, used the primary-school oval for training. It was almost compulsory for boys to play Aussie Rules football in the winter and cricket in the summer (as well as possibly Little Athletics). However, even then, times were beginning to change and a few junior football clubs, namely the smallest ones attached to the smallest primary-schools, were beginning to struggle for numbers. As a result, in East Fremantle Football Club heartland, just to the west of the Canning River, Ardross JFC (with its red-and-white South Fremantle guernseys) merged with Brentwood (with its red, blue, and white guernseys similar to the Footscray guernseys of the early-1970s with one red and one white horizontal stripe against a royal blue background). This merger created an early junior mega- or super-club which lacked the same connection to district as the other junior clubs and the two original merged clubs had. This merged entity was called Karoonda JFC, and it kept the red, blue, and white of the two merged clubs in a new and trendy guernsey design. It was called Karoonda JFC because its home ground was Karoonda Reserve, located on Karoonda Road, Booragoon. Although its players and officials might deny this, it became something of an upper middle-class club because that part of Booragoon had opened up for housing only a few years before and was home to upwardly mobile upper middle-class families. The section of Booragoon on the western side of Riseley Street was even newer, having mostly opened up in the early-1980s. By 1983-84, Karoonda had begun to attract the more serious footballers who were aiming at a professional career, including, most notably, Mike Broadbridge (although it was also his local junior club).

I played for Mount Pleasant JFC (the Mounties) Under-14s in 1982 under the legendary coach Craig “Craigo” Campbell, who was a charismatic and flamboyant Malcolm Brown type personality. He would do unheard-of things, at junior level, like host rowdy and fun players’ teas at his home in Mount Pleasant, a few blocks from the river. I think he needed that male-bonding environment especially because he had two daughters and no sons. However, by Year 10 of high-school (1983), Mount Pleasant could no longer field a team. They may have had an Under-16s in 1983, I can’t recall.

Applecross JFC was going to field an Under-15s team, so I joined up, perhaps recruited by my high-school friend, Roy “The Spoon” George. Applecross JFC, with its red, black, and white St. Kilda guernseys, was also a small club catering only to the small suburb of Applecross which, even then, boasted an aging population and was showing the first signs of gentrification. Under-15s was different from primary-school football, which was relatively even and egalitarian with most players not being too dissimilar to one another in playing skill and fitness; most young people then lived active outdoor lives at least while in primary-school. At primary-school level, all clubs were roughly equal in strength (just as in sprints racing) and any club could pretty much beat any other club on any given day.

By contrast, by Under-15s, a big gap had emerged between those footballers who were fit and saw football as a possible career path and those who were regular smokers and casual drinkers and who were just in it for mate-ship and enjoyment. Players of the first type tended to be attracted to Karoonda while players of the second type were recruited that year to play for Applecross. As a result, there was a massive gap between the quality and ability of these two teams although Applecross had five or six reasonable footballers and everyone who pulled on that underdog St. Kilda guernsey (a poor-performing VFL/AFL club at the time) tried their very hardest every single minute of action. There was one game, Applecross versus Karoonda, at our home ground of Gairloch Reserve (named after an obscure Scottish lake), when the home ground advantage counted for nothing, and Karoonda beat us by about 40 goals to one point (say 40.25 to 0.1 or similar). The great Mike Broadbridge played on the half-back flank and still kicked ten goals against me that day. Years later, I was surprised Mike never made it to the VFL/AFL; I guess a VFL/AFL player would have scored more goals against me! We had just enough players to field a team each week, but we struggled for numbers and so we had to accept even the very weakest of players (and I include myself in that category). We might have gone one or two men short for certain games.

Gairloch Reserve, looking south to Macrae Road.

We had Scott “The Fish” Herring as first ruck-man, and I knew him well from primary-school days at Mount Pleasant; in those days he lived in Davenport Road, Booragoon, and I lived nearby in Hewitt Way, and we would sometimes play cricket and football at the local Layman Park at the foot of my street. In high-school, Fish was one of the tough guys, and a heavy smoker, but he always maintained a good heart and he did not forget primary-school friendships. He had charisma but he also had a good set of values. He was short for a ruck-man at Unde-15s level and I remember him struggling manfully against taller, fitter, and faster opponents all season. Scott grew up in Booragoon and attended Mount Pleasant Primary School so he was one of the very few Applecross JFC players (I was another) who lived outside of Applecross proper and had not gone to Applecross Primary School.

One of our best players was Roy “The Spoon” George, a strong and aggressive key-position player who could play at centre-half-forward or in the ruck. He was a Malcolm Brown / Jason Dunstall / Tony Lockett / Dermott Brereton / Stephen Kernahan type footballer. He was one of our very few players who could have held down a regular spot at a club like Karoonda (which is exactly what did happen, as we will see).

The other Applecross JFC players I can remember are Craig Wright (full-back), Doug Stirling (wing), and David “Blackie” Black. Blackie was probably my best friend in the team, along with Roy, as we had sat next to each other for a few weeks in Science class in Year 9 and I think we were in Photography class together in Year 10.

Craig was a good full-back; reliable, and a strong mark and kick. However, he could not do much to stop the tide of opposition goals as these would be initiated in the midfield and the ball would always be sailing over his head. He was a great kick out from goal; he had a majestic and righteous drop-punt which was accurate and deadly in flight. It would drop suddenly, like an expert’s volleyball serve, and his teammates knew about this and could often mark his kick outs from the goal-square. I remember taking at least one mark from one of his kicks; it was on the half-back flank at Gairloch Reserve in the south-west corner of the ground (the Gairloch Street side but at the Macrae Road end). Maybe that was my only mark for the year! Craig’s kicks could deceive the opposition as they would float magnificently, in the usual textbook way, and then drop suddenly as if shot by a pistol. Wrightie had the integrity of being a guy who had come up through Applecross Primary School, Applecross JFC, and Applecross Senior High School.

Then we had Douglas “Dougie” Stirling on the wing who was one of our top six players without a shadow of doubt. Looking back, I guess we were stacking the back-line which was a common sense thing to do given our team’s shortcomings. There was no-one of quality forward of the wing and especially after Roy left. Doug was slim, fast, and agile; he had pace and was a thinking person’s footballer. It seemed like he was running on tiptoes as he had no presence and could move quickly into empty space without seemingly making any noise. A good comparison would be the Carlton wingman, David Glascott, who was at his peak during the Carlton back-to-back premiership years of 1981-82. The soccer player, Shunsuke Nakamura, who played for Glasgow Celtic, was similar in that, if you watch videos of his goal-scoring efforts, you will see him silently and quickly moving into just the right positions to outwit the defence and score often with a single touch from a teammate’s pass. Doug was in the unenviable position of often getting the ball and not knowing what to do with it as he was always under pressure and we had no-one of any talent forward of the wing.

Roy “The Spoon” George’s departure from Applecross JFC to join Karoonda mid-season 1983 was massive news among our group of mates in high-school and beyond. It caused almost as much of a sensation as when Maurice “Mo” Johnston became the first high-profile Roman Catholic player to join Glasgow Rangers in 1989 (well, perhaps not). It felt, deep down, like a betrayal of sorts. It shook my faith in the spirit of football and the goodness of the world. No wonder that Metallica released an album called …And Justice for All. Applecross needed all the good players it could get whereas Karoonda was already spoiled for choice. Imagine the legendary Doug “Dougie” Hawkins leaving struggling Footscray in the mid-season of 1981 to join a premiership-quality team at Carlton or Tony Lockett leaving St Kilda in mid-season 1985 for Essendon. It felt like that. There was something very depressing, if not morally questionable, about the whole sad affair. It shook your faith in humanity. I played one year for Karoonda Under-16s in 1984 as Applecross didn’t field a team. It wasn’t very enjoyable. Applecross should have demanded a transfer fee from Karoonda for Roy’s services in 1983 and shared the cash out among the players! A free pie and chips and a free ticket to a WAFL game would have been very much appreciated! [By Jack Frost, 5 October 2018.]

Gairloch Reserve looking south towards Macrae Road from Gairloch Street. The view would have been very similar in 1983.

Karoonda Reserve in Booragoon (bottom four pictures). The children's playground replaces the double cricket nets which used to stand here in the late-1970s and 1980s. The club-room is the same as in 1983-84 except for the new section on the far western end which juts forward compared to the rest of the structure (and has no veranda section).