Richard Jones
From Snoutslouts
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Biographical
- Born: 5 June 1926, Goomalling (WA)
- Height: 173 cm
- Weight: 72 kg
- Recruited from: South Melbourne
- Previous Club: East Fremantle, Boulder
- GFC League Debut: 1952
Guernsey Number:
Richard "Dick" Jones was a skilled rover, originally from Kalgoorlie, who came to Glenelg from South Melbourne in 1952. Injuries were not kind to him in his time with the Bays, and he is perhaps best known in South Australian football as the coach who sacked legendary West Torrens footballer Bob Hank. He also commentated widely in the media in the 1970's and 1980's.
Career
Born in Goomalling and raised in Dowerin in country Western Australia, north-east of Perth, Jones left home as a 16-year-old in 1942 to work for the PMG in Kalgoorlie.
Unsatisfied with the wages, however, he soon left to take up work as a miner in Boulder, where he played junior-level and, later, A-grade football.
When he turned 18 in 1944, he joined the AIF and undertook jungle training in Canungra, just south of Brisbane. But, before he could take the opportunity he had wanted, to head overseas and fight for his country, the war came to an end.
So Jones went back to working in the mines and playing football for Boulder, until he joined a junior competition in Perth. Within seemingly no time, West Australian Football League club East Fremantle had noticed his ability.
“East Fremantle took me down every weekend during the finals series to play with them,” Jones says. “I suppose they knew about me through football scouts they probably had.”
Then, in 1948, former West Adelaide and Richmond (VFL) player Jack Broadstock turned up in Western Australia to coach Boulder. He suggested to Jones that he think about a football career in Melbourne. At the same time, a South Melbourne Football Club official happened to be visiting the WA goldfields. Broadstock introduced him to Jones, who ended up signing an agreement to play for South Melbourne – if he made the move to Victoria.
In 1949, Jones did make the move, and stuck to his agreement to play for the club. By the end of the season, the then 23-year-old had served as acting vice-captain, scored the most goals as a rover, and received six Brownlow Medal votes. Behind him in the count were VFL legends Jack Dyer (Richmond) and Norm Smith (Fitzroy). But, in 1950, Jones went back to Western Australia, where he coached Boulder to a premiership. Passing through Kalgoorlie on its way to Perth to play a game that year was the South Melbourne Football Club, whose officials asked Jones to return to the club.
Jones had left the club after his first season because he had found it impossible to secure decent accommodation in Melbourne. He and Betty, also from Western Australia, had married in 1949, and had had to live in one-bedroom units.
Nonetheless, the young couple went back to Victoria, where Jones resumed his career with South Melbourne in 1951. He supplemented his football earnings, of around £9 per game, with work in a mattress factory and, later, as a truck-driver.
But after the season, Jones and his wife were headed back home again. On the way, they stopped off in Adelaide, intending to stay for only a few weeks, as East Fremantle coach Jerry Dolan had asked Jones back to the club. However, the in-demand footballer ran into former South Melbourne and Glenelg player Don Taylor, who convinced Jones to stay in Adelaide. He ended up playing for the Glenelg Football Club, and scored accommodation with legendary Glenelg ruckman and police officer Blue Johnston.
From his friendship with Johnston came an interest in police work, strong enough to prompt him to join SAPOL in 1952. As he settled into his new career that year, he continued to play for Glenelg, notching up around nine games before injuring his knee.
Over the next four years, Jones concentrated on his police career and associated law studies. He coached the SAPOL football team to two premierships in two years, but not until 1956 did he play again – around four games for Glenelg.
In 1957, after the West Torrens Football Club advertised for a playing coach, Jones applied for the job. The club interviewed the then 31-year-old candidate, and appointed him its new captain-coach. The dual role, however, was not long-lasting. Jones suffered a shocking injury in a game against South Adelaide. “I went down to pick up the ball,” he explains, “and a South player came in to soccer it. It was completely unintentional, but he missed the ball and hit me in the face. It (the blow) fractured my eye socket in three places and broke my nose, and that put me out of the game for a while.”
In 1958, Jones switched to a coach-only role, but controversy loomed well ahead of the season opener when club officials handed him a list of players for culling. Among them was Bob Hank, a revered nine-time best-and-fairest winner and member of the first-ever All Australian side.
Jones had deeply admired him as a player, but agreed that the time had come for him to retire. But when the team fronted up to play in the first round against West Adelaide, Hank was in the squad.
A club official, who had made a commitment to break the news of his delisting to him, had failed to act. Jones, and others, thought it clear that Hank struggled in the game against West. And the next weekend’s game was against Norwood at Norwood Oval.
When the selectors met to choose their side, Jones told them that, if they picked Hank, and he played poorly, he would drag him at halftime.
Says Jones: “One of them said: ‘You wouldn’t be game to do it.’ I said: ‘You pick him and find out.’ “The rest is history. I went to him in the rooms at halftime and said: ‘Bob, I want you to come off.’ “Naturally he was upset about it, but we were three or four goals down, and the young fellow I put on, 19-year-old Ray Hanrahan, certainly gave us a lift in attack.
“We got beaten by a few points, and that was the end of the story.”
But, in reality, the story was far from over. Hank issued a press statement in which he insisted that he would never again play for West Torrens while Jones was the club’s coach. When the players met for their next training session, they held a special meeting at which they resolved to give Jones their full support.
And club committee members made their views clear at their own meeting, to which they summoned Jones. “The committee backed me,” he says, “and I walked out into the West Torrens change-rooms. All the players were still there, and I just said to them: ‘I’m still your coach,’ and that was it.”
But the scorn that Hank had shown publicly for his coach had disappointed Jones. “I realised how much service he’d given the club,” he insists. “But what you’ve got to realise is that the club was paying me to win games; and, if I wasn’t fair dinkum, I shouldn’t have been there.”
A further disappointment to Jones was that he and Hank never spoke again, and still have not, even 50 years after the upheaval. “I don’t know whether Bob holds a grudge,” he says. “He was a magnificent sportsman. I don’t think it would be in his portfolio to hold a grudge.”
By 1960, Jones had decided that, to make something of his life, he would need a better-paid job than the one he had in SAPOL. As a Homicide Squad investigator, he earned only £28 per fortnight for his regular hours, and nothing for his frequent overtime.
So the 34-year-old husband and father of one resigned from SAPOL and took on a Peterborough pub. The move marked the beginning of a string of successful ventures for him in private enterprise.
Three years later, he left the hotel business to build and run a block of holiday flats in Victor Harbor, where he also bought a newsagency.
And, in the early 1970s, Jones ventured into the media, after an approach from the ABC to join its Around the Grounds programme. His role later expanded into ABC radio, for which he called league footy matches.
Demand for his services grew quickly among other networks, until he ended up working for both the ABC and Channel 10, and writing for Football Times.
To meet his commitments, Jones had to undertake much travel between Victor Harbor and Adelaide. When that became a burden, he gave up all his media work.
In the mid-1980s, however, a Channel 7 news editor – who had worked with Jones at Channel 10 – lured him back into media work. At his new station, he continued the hard-hitting football editorials he had delivered on other nightly news services.
Jones “liked life in the media” but eventually gave it up again. And, after selling his business interests in Victor Harbor, he moved to Maryborough in country Victoria, to take on another pub.
Finally, back in South Australia as a 63-year-old in 1989, he and his wife settled in West Lakes – as retirees rather than business people.
References
1. Pride of the Bay
