WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Paul Rowe swept into the Goulburn Valley League like a breath of fresh air in the early 1960s.
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In 1962, a relative of his at Tongala had approached him to take on the coaching job with the Blues in the following season. He jumped at it and it eventually led to him spending two stints as coach of the Blues in their GVL days.
But at the time he took his first coaching role at Tongala he was suffering a chronic groin injury, which had ended his career with VFL (now AFL) side North Melbourne. There were also some personal doubts about whether he could do justice to the role with Tongala as a playing coach.
Three seasons with North Melbourne, starting as a 17-year-old in 1960, had yielded 15 senior games on a back flank.
Paul chuckles as he reflects on those years with the ’Roos.
‘‘When I was there I was a little more than a skinny runt of a kid with not too many footy smarts,“ he said.
“We got the unwanted hat-trick of finishing last each year I was there, which some of my so-called mates keep reminding me of today.”
Paul said he owes the fact that his playing days were far from washed up when took the Tongala coaching reins to the principal at the Girgarre school at the time, Alan Greene.
It was Paul’s first appointment as a teacher in the Goulburn Valley and he also taught at Girgarre.
‘‘Alan had had similar groin problems as I had and had overcome them with certain exercises, which I decided to try,“ Paul said.
“I had a March deadline to start training with Tongala and I was able to meet that only because I did what Alan told me to do.
“I often did them (exercises) when I was taking a class, which raised a few eyebrows from the students.”
In what was a miraculous recovery Paul missed only one game in three years coaching Tongala in two separate stints and that was due to concussion after a run-in with Tatura legend Freddo McMahon.
Paul was immediately able to stamp his authority in the GVL as a defender, with his mobility and ability to read the play making him one of the standout defenders in the league.
So much so that in the three years he initially coached Tongala he won every Shepparton News award for the league’s best player voted on by journalists covering the games.
After he finished his first stint as Tongala coach in 1965 his journey took him to a one-season coaching stint with Hampden League club Cobden and then on an overseas trip that resulted in a whirlwind courtship and marriage to his English wife of 52 years, Patricia.
‘‘I even had to leave her in England for a while to get home for a teaching appointment,’’ Paul said with a laugh.
After a season with VFL cub Coburg on his return to Australia in 1969 Tongala officials were on the phone and he spent 1970, ’71 and ’72 back coaching the Blues and then a season coaching Letichville and a year playing with Kyabram before the curtain came down on his playing career.
Tongala played finals regularly in his years at he club, once missing a grand final berth in the preliminary final at Kyabram against Euroa in agonising circumstances.
‘‘We were down a couple of points and big Garth Honey marked the ball for us in the last few seconds straight in front. He needed only to kick the goal and we were in the grand final but he missed,’’ Paul said.
It has been often said that Paul was one of the best players in the Goulburn Valley League never to have won the Morrison Medal, the league’s best and fairest award.
But Paul thinks he knows the reason why.
‘‘I used to tell, diplomatically mind you, the umpires what they were doing wrong,’’ he said with a chuckle.
Ironically after his playing days he turned his hand to umpiring, initially with the Kyabram Umpires Association and then with the GV Umpires Association after the two bodies had amalgamated in the early 1970s.
One of his biggest thrills in football was umpiring with his son Corin in his first senior game appointment.
Corin went on to be a top AFL umpire, officiating in 123 games.
Paul rates Kyabram players Charlie Stewart, Dick Clay and Ross Dillon among his toughest opponents in his GVL days.
‘‘Charlie was a beauty,“ Paul said.
“Dick and Ross were just starting off at the time but you could see both had the potential to become stars at a higher level, which of course they were.’’
Since his playing and umpiring days Paul and Patricia haven’t ventured far.
He spent 13 years as headmaster at the Kyvalley school and after his teaching days ran the Top of the Town fish and chippery in Echuca.
Now 80, Paul still lives in Echuca today with Patricia. He said his thoughts often drifted back to his playing days and the enjoyment he had derived from then.
And likewise GVL fans of long standing continue to bring up Paul’s name when mentioning the elite players in the GVL over the years.
First winner for Clements
A galloper he bought online for $2000 gave Lancaster hobby trainer Brendan Clements his first Victorian win and a profitable pay day at last Thursday’s Kilmore race meeting.
The former champion jockey produced Steady Jam, who was ridden by veteran jockey John Keating, for a dominating all-the-way win in a $25,000 race for maidens.
It was the first start Clements had given the four-year-old gelding since purchasing him online three months ago.
Clements was a household racing name in the 1980s and 1990s, riding eight Group 1 winners including the champions Placid Ark and Grosvenor, before the effects of a heavy fall in the mid-1990s ended his riding days.
Clements, who was the leading Victorian apprentice in 1979 after moving from New Zealand, has a 10-hectare property at Lancaster and trains two gallopers on a homemade track on the property. He does fast work and jump-outs on the Tatura track and does the riding on both the horses he trains.
He was confident that Steady Jam was going well enough to be right in the Kilmore race.
‘‘He was dropping about 20 stone from the jump-outs when I rode him so I thought he would have to go pretty well, particularly as he is bred to go in heavy going,’’ Clements said.
His judgment was spot on as Steady Jam worked to the front at barrier rise and led his rivals a merry dance over the 1100m trip, winning by several lengths at odds of just over 10/1.
Clements said he had a hiccup with Steady Jam in the lead-up to the race when he cast a shoe.
He couldn’t get a farrier so summoned Kyabram trots trainer Mick Blackmore to tack the plate back on.
A friendship from their apprentice days led Clements to book veteran jockey John Keating to ride Steady Jam.
Clements trained for a time in Western Australia where he had enjoyed metropolitan success before moving back to Melbourne, where he worked for 14 years driving trams for a living.
He moved to live on his Lancaster property in 2020 after winning $50,000 on the quiz show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.
He plans to give Steady Jam his next start at an Echuca meeting in a couple of weeks
Ray was a sporting all-star
The sporting community has been saddened to hear of the death of Ray Manley in Melbourne at the weekend.
He died suddenly after a short illness aged 77.
Merrigum-raised Ray was a gifted sportsman who excelled at golf, cricket and football.
But he was probably best known for his time as general manager of the Melbourne Football Club, a position he held from 1977 to July 1980 and again in 1985 and 1986. He also worked in a number of roles in between, with stints as football manger and on the selection committee that appointed Neil Balme as coach of the Demons for the 1993 season.
A former Merrigum, Kyabram and Numurkah footballer he served as secretary of the Goulburn Valley League before being recruited by Melbourne.
In his playing days he finished third in the Kyabram District Football League‘s McNamara Medal playing for Merrigum in 1963.
He was also an accomplished cricketer and represented a Victorian Country XI against New Zealand in a game at the Kyabram Recreation Reserve in 1967. He was also a prolific run-scorer for Merrigum Cricket Club, with a double century on his resume.
Ray was also a gifted golfer who played off a low handicap and hit the ball a mile.
I can vouch for this after playing a round of golf with him one day at Valley View when we were teenagers. His shot along a south-eastern boundary of the course went over an adjoining road.
Ray is survived by his wife, Lynne, and three daughters, Joanne, Rachael and Karen.
Funeral arrangements were still being made at the time of going to press.
Unfamiliar feeling for Newman
Kyabram’s loss to Echuca in Saturday night’s GVL clash at Kyabram was just the second loss Paul Newman has experienced as coach of the Bombers.
When he stepped down from coach in 2019 he had coached Kyabram to three flags and 83 wins from 84 games, including a record Victorian winning steak of 62.
Echuca fghts for points
Echuca Football Netball Club has appealed against the Goulburn Valley League’s decision to strip it of premiership points for playing ineligible players in both the senior and reserves games in the opening round on April 9.
The club also copped suspended fines of $500 for each breach.
But Echuca president Ash Byrne believes his club has been hard done by given his club had owned up to its mistakes and raised the teething problems experienced by club volunteers adapting to the new league PlayHQ system in presenting and sourcing game details.
‘‘It was all a honest mistake,’’ Byrne said.
Nagambie to field women’s team
Nagambie will have a women’s football side representing the town in the Northern Country Women’s League next year.
Nagambie Football Netball Club’s Rylee Alderton has initiated the move after time training and playing with the Shepparton Bears women’s side.
With other players from Nagambie and Seymour in a similar situation in regards to having challenging distances to play and train, Rylee is looking to provide an easier opportunity for these players to have a local base.
She has been blown away by the response to her plan and is now looking for the right people to make it all happen.
Hall of Fame set for launch
Picola District League club Tocumwal is preparing to unveil its first Hall of Fame inductees.
They will be announced at a function on Saturday night, May 21.
Already legendary club name such as Jim and Barbara Cullen, Robert Crow, A. J. Bligh, Brian Kelly and Ern ‘Nugget’ Fuller have been pencilled in as inaugural members.
Tickets are $50 a head, which includes dinner, and can be purchased from the club’s website: www.tfnc.com.au
Sports reporter