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New light shed on Brighton's flag men

Brighton Football Club's 1948 VFA premiership team is having a reunion on Saturday.
FROM a call for old football footage has emerged a light on lives long past and a reunion of the surviving players from Brighton Football Club’s 1948 VFA premiership.

Three years ago Channel 31’s The Local Footy Show asked viewers to send in film of long-ago matches.

It set in train a search for premiership Penguins from more than 60 years ago.

Those who have been contacted will gather at Mordialloc Sporting Club on Saturday, March 26, from noon. They are elderly gentlemen but the idea of getting together with their former teammates has put a bounce in their step.

One, Bob McAsey, lives in Maroochydore, but told The Local Footy Show host Ian Bennett: “If you’re having a reunion I’ll be there.”

Bill Dooley took up the football show’s invitation to submit old footage.

His mother-in-law’s brother, Brighton resident Wally Bail, was a Brighton Football Club committeeman and handy with a hand-held camera.

He followed the Penguins’ unlikely run to the flag as they defeated Northcote, Brunswick and finally Williamstown in the grand final at the Junction Oval.

He also captured later VFA finals and the 1950 ANFC carnival at a waterlogged ground in Brisbane.

On the way to the carnival the VFA team stopped in Canberra to play the Australian amateurs. Sir Robert Menzies was there to greet the players.

It’s on the film reels, which The Local Footy Show converted to DVD.

“They (the reels) were in a cupboard and were in pretty good condition,” Bennett said.

Major General Alan Stretton, later to oversee the reconstruction of Darwin after Cyclone Tracy, was one of the Brighton premiership players, and Bennett thought he would make a great interview.

He tracked him to Bateman’s Bay and put in a call. Mr Stretton wasn’t home but phoned back in 15 minutes.

“We’ve got colour footage of you playing for Brighton,” Bennett told a surprised Major General.

Two days later Bennett flew to Canberra, hopped in a hire car and drove to Mr Stretton’s house. The decorated Army officer made him toasted ham and tomatoe sandwiches as they talked over old football times.

Inspired, Bennett and co-host Daryl Pitman decided to try to contact other ex-Penguins.

They found Keith Warburton in Echuca, then sought Tommy New and other players with less common surnames.

Putting the name Wally Pinder into a search engine, Bennett found a Wally Pinder played in the Ovens and King competition, winning the best and fairest in 1957.

The White Pages for country Victoria listed a mobile number for a C Pinder. A woman answered and said Wally Pinder was her father.

“She said, ‘He’s still alive and my sister and I would love to get him together with a few of the other players’,” Bennett said.

Bennett and Pitman later interviewed Pinder, who related how he’d lived through having 12 tonnes of steel dropped on him.

He was delighted to learn of the footage and speak about his time at Brighton.

Ditto for Geoff Turner, who was living in Colac and was a wealth of information.

Bennett read somewhere that 1948 JJ Liston Trophy winner Russ McIndoe had gone from Brighton to Heywood in country Victoria. Picking up the phone, he spoke to a man who identified himself as McIndoe’s son.

Keith McIndoe, a butcher, was moved to receive the call. He explained that his father had coached Heywood to premierships in 1953-54, then died suddenly of leukemia in February, 1955.

After viewing the footage, Keith McIndoe told Bennett: “You’ve brought my father back to life. I don’t know him apart from the photo on the wall.”

His only memory of his father, he said, was visiting him as he lay ill in hospital.

Brighton entered the VFA in 1908 and folded in 1964.

Anyone with information about the players can contact Ian Bennett on 0411 513 071.