The Dog Father

The Sunday Age

Sunday April 4, 2004

Greg Baum

Charlie Sutton is the quintessential son of the 'Scray who became the father figure at

Whitten Oval. He spoke to Greg Baum.

The truest that can be said about Charlie Sutton and the Footscray team he led to the 1954 premiership is that each is one of a kind. Blessedly this is so of Sutton, who turned 80 yesterday and celebrated at a function at the club he has embodied for a lifetime.

He is still hale, still hearty and still oversees his interests in several hotels, but drinks moderately. "Bit of light, that's about all now," he said."

Bit too risky. At 80, you couldn't expect to get your licence back if you was up for the wrong thing."

For Footscray's premiership, sadly, there have been no happy returns.

This year is its 50th anniversary, and Sutton will be back among the boys of the Bulldog breed again for a fully subscribed gala celebration at the casino on Thursday.

Only 14 of the chosen remain now, and one, Brownlow medallist Peter Box, is a recluse and will not attend.

But they are all still alive and ever present in the mind of Sutton, and his still-blue eyes sparkled as he did what the club theme song no longer does for fear of living in the past: he remembered '54.

Footscray under captain-coach Sutton was powerful from goal to goal, fast and utterly driven. Many of the team were recently returned from national service, which Sutton said bred confidence in the unsure, humility in the cocksure and broad shoulders in them all. Jack Collins was at full-forward, a young Ted Whitten at centre half-back, Box in the ruck.

The nuggety Sutton set the standard by bowling over Melbourne stars Ron Barassi and John Beckwith in the first quarter, and would not relent even when the game was safely in the Bulldogs' keeping, leaving the reserves on the bench all day. The margin was a thumping 51 points.

Sutton remembered chatting to Melbourne coach Norm Smith later."

Jokingly, I said: 'We showed you how to win finals, didn't we?'," he said."

Norm said: 'Now, watch us'." The Demons won five of the next six premierships.

The Dogs' day was short-lived."

We were on the right tram," said Sutton. "The first game the next year, we played against Collingwood. Oh, it was a beautiful exhibition of football. We thrashed Collingwood that day."

But as they left the ground Sutton said to club secretary Roy Russell: "I think that's the worst thing that could have happened to us." The Bulldogs have played in only one grand final since.

Sutton was a son of the 'Scray who became its patriarch. He grew up "wherever we could pay the rent", but played football for Spotswood. At a given midnight, the local zone was to revert to South Melbourne. "At 10 o'clock that night, Footscray came down, got us out to the picture theatre and signed me," he said.

Sutton was married to Eileen, who insists still on "Chub", a childhood nickname that has stuck. They lived in pubs and then in a weekender's shack on the foreshore in faraway Altona, which presented a logistical problem."

The trains from Altona used to run every hour," Sutton said. "I had a bike at one stage. The north winds used to knock you about going up and down Millers Road."

To go to training on a Sunday sometimes, I'd saddle up the horse and put it in the jinker."

This lasted until the day when practical jokers - he suspects Whitten and Collins - put the horse on one side of a fence and the jinker on the other.

Sutton laughs now to see players drive to training in smart cars, and then ride bikes in the gym anyway, to get fit. Sutton steeled himself for football by working in local quarries.

He was irritated to have softened while waiting to be released from national service. "I went back to the quarries to harden myself up," he said.

Footscray was what it was, no more, no less. Sutton was befriended by cyclists, boxers and their trainers - the rugged men of sport - as well as many painters and dockers, and trouble kept its distance.

Legend had it that one recruit was passed over because he had crossed a picket line. Sutton played 173 games for the club as well as 18 for Victoria, all the while epitomising the Bulldog spirit. He was named as coach and back pocket in the Bulldogs' team of the century.

The Dogs had joined the VFL in 1925, made the finals for the first time in 1938 and were on the rise in 1954. Whitten was new and so eager that Sutton sometimes had to rein him in."

He would do in 20 or 30 minutes on a Tuesday night what the average fellow would do in an hour," he said."

You had to watch that."

The Bulldogs were direct. "We always put the ball where the player was going to be," said Sutton. "Not where he was, where he was going to be." They did handball. "We used it to get out of trouble, not into trouble," Sutton said.

The low grandstand along what is now the Hawkins wing was considered ultra-modern, providing the unprecedented luxury of shelter for outer patrons. Footscray arranged for the only ever Sydney-Melbourne cycle race to finish at the Western Oval on the Sunday before the grand final, coinciding with the Bulldogs' training.

So it was that 18,500 watched training, counted not by Footscray, but cycling authorities at the turnstiles."

To see them training that day, you would have said they was a better horse than Phar Lap when he won the Melbourne Cup," said Sutton."

They excelled."

Training was light midweek. "We reckoned we had them at their peak, so we held them at that," he said.

The MCG on grand final day was under renovation for the forthcoming Olympic Games and looked gap-toothed, as it does now.

Still, 80,000 came, many sitting inside the fence along the boundary line. The atmosphere was charged.

Recently, Barassi said to Sutton: "Gee, that was football at its best."

Melbourne had come from fourth, and Footscray was hell-bent on using its fresher legs to jump the Demons.

Soon, Barassi, Beckwith and a third Demon were down."

Oh, they ran into me!" said Sutton, his eyes twinkling. His instructions were plain: "I'll do the heavy stuff. I want youse to concentrate on playing football, all day."

The Bulldogs kicked six goals to one in the first quarter, and steadily increased their lead. There were no passengers. "The fellows who have been getting the write-ups all the years, they played their parts," he said."

But the games that Johnny Kerr, Dave Bryden and Dougie Reynolds put in that day were exceptional.

They were our best players." Sutton kicked three goals, Collins seven.

Sutton rode his team all the way to the final siren. "I was that determined to keep the boys firing," he said. "They went on the whole game. That's why I never brought on the 19th and 20th men that day. I didn't want to take a risk in that last minute." Neither, he said, was begrudging.

At the end, there was no presentation, nor a cup - cups were not introduced until 1959 - just a plaque each, meagre spoils. Sutton said he got #5, including his captain's bonus. "There might have been a tarp taken around," he said.

He swapped guernseys with Melbourne's Brian Dixon, who recently revealed that he still had Sutton's. "He told me he wore it out wearing it to work, and now I find he's still got it," Sutton said. "I've still got his here." He showed it, thick, woollen, long-sleeved and surprisingly small.

Sutton's guernsey was swiped out of Dixon's hands that day by a spectator who ran out of the ground."

He was a big lump of a fellow," said Sutton. "It got back to me who had it.

He was from Newport. He was big, but he only had a heart as big as a cherry."

I rang him up. I said he'd better get it back within 24 hours. He did.

He was a painter and docker." Dixon is to lend the guernsey to Footscray for the anniversary.

The Bulldogs celebrated at a crowded Elizabeth Street hotel, then at the Western Oval, each bringing his own glass, as licensing laws dictated. The next morning, Sutton complained to his wife that he was sore across his shoulders."

Then it dawned on me," he said."

It was people slapping me on the shoulders and saying: 'Good on you mate'."

That night, the Bulldogs lit a big bonfire on a vacant block near Sutton's home. "Then he went away with his mates and didn't come back for three days!" said Chub.

The Suttons live there still, and their shack and family and suburb have grown up around them. So have the seedlings on the foreshore they overlook, a jewel hidden behind the smokestacks and haze.

They have five children, aged up to 60. One son works on the tug boats they see from their lounge room window. They also have - Sutton pauses to count - 10 grandchildren and 10 great grandchildren, and most live locally. To their astonishment, a nearby block of land sold recently for $1 million.

Sutton retired in 1956, but never left the Bulldogs. He was a committeeman, president and coach again in the late 1960s, succeeding his successor, Whitten.

He has had his moments with the club, but they never lasted, and he remains the most loyal and recognisable old Dog of all. He rejoices still in the passions of the fans and volunteers, unchanging from generation to generation.

He sometimes misses games in August when he and Chub go to Surfers Paradise, but has never missed a season, and thinks the start of the finals series is like the first ball of a Test match, not to be missed.

The thrill has never left him.

He regards himself as "just another player, one of the lucky ones". He regrets that the Bulldogs have not won another premiership, blames erratic recruiting, but is impressed by Jade Rawlings as a player and clubman, and can see a team building."

All the players in the 1954 side, they don't want to be the only ones that played in a grand final and won it," he said. "We're looking forward to the day when another side wins a premiership for us."

In the meantime, a little sentimentality is forgivable every half-century or so. For next Sunday's match against Melbourne at the MCG, the Bulldogs will wear their old tricolour jumper.

Preceding the match, there will be a motorcade for the 1954 team, followed by a presentation of a newly minted cup by Barassi to Sutton, and for a moment at least, everything old will be new again."

THE CHARLIE SUTTON FILE

Born: April 3, 1924.

Playing career: 1942, 1946-1956.

Games: 173. Goals: 65.

Player honours: Third in Brownlow Medal 1950; club best and fairest 1950; club leading goalkicker (equal) 1951; captain 1951-1956; premiership 1954 (captcoach); All-Australian 1950.

Coaching record: 19511957, 1967-1968 (162 games, 81 wins, 79 losses, 2 draws), premiership 1954.

Also served on the club's committee and as president.

Played for Victoria 18 times, and was captaincoach in 1952.

Inducted into AFL Hall of Fame in 1996.