Norm Brown

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the baseball player, see Norm Brown (baseball).
Norm Brown
Personal information
Date of birth (1943-08-06) 6 August 1943 (age 78)
Original team(s) North Heidelberg
Height 191 cm (6 ft 3 in)
Weight 94 kg (207 lb)
Playing career1
Years Club Games (Goals)
1962–1973 Fitzroy 181 (77)
1 Playing statistics correct to the end of 1973.
Career highlights
Sources: AFL Tables, AustralianFootball.com

Norman Brown (born 6 August 1943) is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Fitzroy in the VFL.

Fitzroy (VFL)[]

Brown joined Fitzroy from North Heidelberg in 1962. Known for his size (191 cm), physical strength and courage, he was not particularly pretty to watch.[1] However, playing in an era when Fitzroy sides were not very strong, Brown, along with Kevin Murray, where outstanding players. Between them, they won all possible 10 best and fairest awards during the 1960s.[2]

Saturday, 6 July 1963[]

Predictions[]

With the team having lost the first nine home-and-away matches in the 1963 season, and with its opponents on the day (the second week-end of the split round 10) being the powerful Geelong side that would go on to win the 1963 VFL premiership,[3] nobody gave the Fitzroy team a chance.[4]

The selected team[]

With its captain-coach, Kevin Murray, and its regular first rover, Graham Campbell, absent in South Australia with the Victorian Interstate side -- and with Geoff Doubleday, Joe Dixon, and Ted Lovett unavailable (each had returned to their country clubs) -- the selectors made eight changes to the preceding round's team (and in the process, dropped both Stewart Duncan and Brett Pollock, and relegated Ray Slocum to the bench as 20th man) and, as well, appointed the (then) Second XVIII coach, Wally Clark, as the team's stand-in coach (it was the only time that Clark ever coached the First XVIII).

With seven teenagers, and only six of the twenty chosen having played more than 20 First XVIII games,[5] the team was very inexperienced:

The Fitzroy Team (6 July 1963)
B: Brian Carroll
22yrs; 2 games 		Allen Lynch
24yrs; 53 games 		Norm Brown
19yrs; 12 games
HB: Brian Pert
27yrs; 94 games 		David Sykes
20yrs; 15 games 		Bob Beattie
19yrs; 16 games
C: Wayne Eastman
21yrs; 12 games 		John Bahen
19yrs; 18 games 		Colin Sleep
18yrs; 6 games
HF: Tony Hirst
18yrs; 1 game 		Ron Harvey
27yrs; 118 games 		Brian Beers
24yrs; 69 games
F: Max Miers
22yrs; 17 games 		Gary Lazarus
17yrs; 9 games 		Ian McCrae
19yrs; 10 games
Foll: Bryan Clements
20yrs; 11 games 		Ron Fry
26yrs; 4 games 		John Hayes
23yrs; 38 games
Res: Barry Fitzgerald
24yrs; debut 		Ray Slocum
25yrs; 83 games
Coach: Wally Clark: Debut as First XVIII coach

The match[]

The match, played at the Brunswick Street Oval -- with Geelong having already won the Under 19s game, 10.11 (71) to 6.10 (46), and the Second XVIII's match, 8.13 (61) to 4.8 (32) in the curtain raisers[6] -- provided "one of the biggest upsets in that decade of VFL football" (Spaull, 2014), when the Fitzroy team thrashed the Geelong side 9.13 (67) to 3.13 (31), not only leading Geelong 3.7 (25) to 1.6 (12) at half time, but, also -- following an inspiring half-time address by Wally Clark, delivered to the players in room packed with Fitzroy supporters (whom regular coach Kevin Murray routinely excluded from the change-rooms)[7] -- scoring 5.4 (34) to Geelong's 1.3 (9) in the third quarter.[8][9][10][11]

Remainder of the 1963 season[]

This extraordinary performance strongly contrasts with the fact that Fitzroy did not win another match during the entire 1963 home-and-away season, failed to win a single match in the 1964 season, and did not experience another victory until the second round of the 1965 season.

Port Melbourne (VFA)[]

In 1974, Brown transferred to Port Melbourne in the Victorian Football Association as captain-coach. Brown served in this position for four seasons, and led the club to premierships in 1974, 1976 and 1977, plus the 1977 Centenary Cup competition. He retired from playing at the end of 1977, and spent one more season as non-playing coach of Port Melbourne in 1978. He was also the inaugural VFA coach of the 1980s incarnation of the Moorabbin Football Club in 1983.[1]

Career highlights[]

Playing career: 1962 - 1973 (181 games; 77 goals; 21 Brownlow votes) [2][12]

Honours[]

A 191 cm ruckman, Brown won three successive Fitzroy best and fairest awards and was named in the forward line in their Team of the Century.[13]

  • Fitzroy Best and Fairest: 1965, 1966, 1967.[2]
  • Fitzroy Team of the Century.[13]
  • Victorian representative: 8 games.

Notes[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b "Norm Brown". Australian Football.com. Retrieved 17 May 2014.
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b c Brisbane Lions (2008). Fitzroy Football Club Honour Board 1897 - 1996 Archived 10 May 2008 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved on 5 May 2008.
  3. ^ With both its Grand Final centreman, Alistair Lord, and its Grand Final full-forward, Doug Wade, unavailable (they were in South Australia with the interstate side), 14 of Geelong's remaining 18 Grand Final team members took the field against Fitzroy that day.
  4. ^ Geelong Set for Easy Win, The Age, (Saturday, 6 July 1963), p.16.
  5. ^ This was a significant difference from the experienced Geelong team, eleven of whom (including Graham "Polly" Farmer, with a total of 176 WAFL and VFL games) had played more than 35 First XVIII games over a number of seasons: namely, Terry Callan (51 games), John Devine (53 games), "Polly" Farmer (176 games), Bill Goggin (77 games), Ken Goodland (40 games), Stewart Lord (43 games), Bill Miller (36 games), Paul Vinar (73 games), Roy West (48 games), Fred Wooller (104 games), and John Yeates (57 games).
  6. ^ V.F.L. Statistics, The Age, (Monday, 8 July 1963), p.19.
  7. ^ See Lord (2014), Peisse (2014), and Spaull, 2014.
  8. ^ Upset by Fitzroy, The (Sydney) Sun-Herald, (Sunday, 7 July 1963), p.55.
  9. ^ Fitzroy Scores Shock Win in V.F.L. Game, The Canberra Times, (Monday, 8 July), p.18.
  10. ^ Wells (), "The Ups and Downs of Sport", The Age, (Monday, 8 July 1963), p.17.
  11. ^ Mitchell, Tim (2014), "Momentous Fitzroy Victorian Football League win chronicled by sports writer Ken Piesse", The Melbourne Leader, Thursday, 10 July 2014.
  12. ^ AFL Stats (2008). Fitzroy Players: Norm Brown. Retrieved on 5 May 2008.
  13. ^ Jump up to: a b Footy Stamps (2006). Fitzroy Team of the Century. Retrieved on 5 May 2008.

References[]
Retrieved from ""