Football: Old Dogs celebrate premiership bond

One of the great chapters in the Bunbury Football Club’s history will be celebrated on Sunday.

It is 50 years since the Bulldogs achieved an elusive premiership double, beating Harvey- Brunswick in the 1961 league grand final 15.14 (104) to 9.10 (64) and South Bunbury in the reserves 6.12 (48) to 3.6 (24).

Then in 1962 the league side won the flag again.

The 14 surviving members of the 1961 league team will all be getting together to celebrate that special premiership bond.

The captain-coach of the team, Graham Tidy, remembers a side studded with stars.

‘‘I took over a team in 1961 that already had some great footballers,’’ Tidy said.

‘‘It was a big thing for a club to put their faith in a 21-year-old with established stars like Aub Henning, Ross and Stan Wallrodt, Murray Edwards, Hugh Lockwood and Len Gray.

‘‘That was a great foundation but then we got some great recruits.

‘‘Max McGuire was the best footballer I ever saw in the country.

‘‘He came to the club with Kevin Miller, Rob Thomas, Kevin Cousins and Alan May.’’

Central to the club’s achievement is the remarkable story of the young captain-coach who turned his back on football at the highest level.

Tidy’s story paints a vivid picture of how different the game is today.

In 1953 Tidy made the West Australian schoolboys side.

Not long after he played his first league game for Swan Districts in 1956, aged 16.

Then in 1959, Tidy, 19, was rubbing shoulders with the likes of John Gerovich, Polly Farmer and John Todd in the WA side that played over two weeks in Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide.

Today’s football elite are fighting the AFL for more than $1 billion in player payments over the next three years.

But in 1959 Tidy earnt about $50 for a year as one of WA’s best players.

Football was not a career option and in 1960 Tidy played out the season with Swan Districts while travelling from Harvey where he had been transferred with the Railways.

Before the start of the 1962 season he decided to cut short his WAFL career and signed up as captain-coach of the Bunbury Football Club as a 21-year-old.

Incoming Swan Districts coach Haydn Bunton drove down to see Tidy, but the young captain-coach could not be talked out of his commitment to the Bulldogs.

Bunton went on to lead Swans to premierships in 1961, 62 and 63, but Tidy was carving out his own destiny with the Bulldogs.

‘‘I never forgot Swans,’’ Tidy said. ‘‘But I would never give up what we achieved at Bunbury.’’

Because footballers went where their jobs took them, there were many top WAFL players, including State representatives, in the South West.

Tidy believes it produced a standard of football in the South West not far short of Perth’s best.

‘‘The top side down here would have been competitive in the WAFL,’’ he said.

There is little chance Tidy would have been captain-coach of Bunbury if he had been born 20 years ago instead of 70 years ago.

He would have been identified for a career in football as a junior and then gone on to be a top draft pick with a lucrative career beckoning.

Like life, football can be strange sometimes.

But that won’t matter on Sunday when the 1961 and 62 premiers re-live their grand final glory — all that will count is that day in September 1961 when they made history together.