Australia and the World Past and Present

This week I went for a walk around the MCG.

My interest was not what was going on inside the stadium but the larger-than-life statues surrounding the ground.

If Australia has a religion, it is sport. People can come to the MCG and stare up at these great sporting figures and wonder at their amazing sporting feats.

The figures depicted at the MCG represent more than one sporting code. But they certainly do not represent a wide array of sports. Two sports stand out – AFL and cricket. One is a winter sport; the other takes over in summer.

Cricket is well represented, but AFL dominates.

There are figures that reach across time. Many were instantly recognisable to me, but some weren’t. I think this is a good thing. These statues play an important role in educating people as to what went on before the present, in periods that were not experienced directly by the viewer.

Here are some of the figures that I knew less about.

Norm Smith:

A famous coach for the Melbourne Football Club. He played between 1935 and 1950 and won six premierships. He was selected as the coach of the AFL Team of the Century.

John Coleman

He played football between 1949 and 1954. Coleman kicked twelve goals in his first game and he led the VFL goal tally on four occasions.

His playing career was cut short due a knee injury. What would he have achieved if he hadn’t had his knee injury and had kept on playing? It is one of those questions that people speculate about. There is a sense of lost opportunity surrounding John Coleman. His arrival in football was swift and spectacular. Many are convinced that that he would have continued to shine if he had had more time to play.

He coached Essendon for seven seasons in which they won two premierships. He packed a lot into a short life. He passed away at the age of 44.

Neil Harvey

Cricketer from Victoria. He played for around two decades. Harvey played in 79 tests for Australia. He made a debut century with Bradman’s ‘Invincibles’. He made 6149 runs at 48.41. This included 21 centuries.

Bill Ponsford

Cricketer. The only player to score over 400 two times. He was the first to make more than 1000 runs in a domestic season. Ponsford was always an opening batsman. He was around for the 1932-3 Bodyline series.

Haydn Bunton

Bunton started playing football for Fitzroy in 1931. He won three Brownlow medals, played 119 games and kicked 207 goals.

Dick Reynolds

Essendon football player. Reynolds played 320 games and kicked 442 goals. He earnt the Brownlow medal three times. He was active in the 1930s and ’40s. He was captain-coach in the Bombers premierships of 1942, ’46, ’49 and ’50.

Women

It is a common refrain these days that there are not enough statues of women. There are some women among the men at the MCG. But, unsurprisingly, they are not from the football or cricket worlds. Rather, they are from the world of athletics, which is fitting given the MCG’s role at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.

Betty Cuthbert

Betty won gold in the 100 metres, 200 metres and 4 x 100 metres relay at the ’56 Olympics in Melbourne. She was the first Australian athelete to win three gold medals at one Olympics.

She also won a gold medal at the ’64 Tokyo Olympics for the women’s 400 metres.

Shirley Strickland

She won seven gold Olypic medals. She competed at the 1948 London Olympics, the 1952 Helsinki Olympics and the 1956 Olympics. She held world records in the hurdles in 1948 and 1952.

If sport is your thing, do yourself a favour and go and take a stroll around the MCG.