Footy Fiasco

By DION HAYMAN

If he could have his time again, former West Adelaide captain Bob Loveday says he would not have called for the count that triggered pandemonium on what was supposed to be a day of celebration – the 313th and final game of much-loved West Torrens big man Fred Bills.

The infamous clash occurred 50 years ago next weekend and resulted in recriminations, accusations and vitriol for weeks – arguably decades.

West made the short trip to Thebarton Oval two wins and percentage adrift of fifth-placed North with four games to play. Torrens was fresh off a surprise 88-point win at Elizabeth, having lost its first 13 games of the season.

The game exploded midway through the final term when Bills unwittingly became Torrens’ 19th man on the ground, as John Cassin lay prostrate in the forward pocket having succumbed to an ankle injury.

Torrens coach Noel Teasdale, now 87, told the Football Budget he had no part in Bills’ premature arrival on the field.

“He ran on too quickly,” he declared. “I just put it down to Freddy playing his last game and sitting on the bench till nearly the end. He became a little bit excited, saw the stretcher go out and thought he’d run onto the ground. I can remember thinking, ‘What the bloody hell’s he doing on the ground?’”

Bills died in 2018 but that same year, umpire Robin Bennet told The Advertiser’s Michelangelo Rucci: “When he did run onto the ground, right to the middle, I did say to Fred, ‘Do you realise Johnny Cassin is not off yet and you should not be on the ground?’ Fred fired back at me, ‘I don’t give a stuff Robin. I’m completely stuffed just running out here – I’m not going back now’.”

With Torrens leading 12.10 to 10.7 and the home crowd still cheering Bills’ arrival, Loveday approached Bennet to request a count. But he said the idea was not his.

“My vice-captain John Hayes recommended I do it,” Loveday recalled. Hayes was in his lone season at West Adelaide, amid 271 games in the WAFL. “As soon as he saw what was going on, he jumped up and down and said ‘call the count, call the count’.”

That’s when all hell broke loose. Commentator Wally May observed, “There’s players running off the ground all over the place”.

Teasdale can be seen on video waving furiously towards the bench although he denied he was trying to call anyone from the ground.

Milan Faletic is seen near the boundary being heaved back into play by West’s Jim Buckley. Players and officials are involved in pushing and shoving as police gather to try to keep the calm.

Torrens’ Norm Dare admitted his act of subterfuge to The Advertiser in 2017, declaring: “I jumped over the fence and sat between a couple of Torrens supporters. They were taking Cassin off and Billsy ran on the ground. You would think with 300 games under your belt you wouldn’t do that!”

Eagles forward David Raggatt has long been accused of trying to hide under the floggers.

“That never happened,” Raggatt said. “What I did do was I stood behind the goal-line. Lance Holden was the goal umpire and I said, ‘Lance, if there’s a count here, I’m not on the ground, I’m behind the goal-line’ and we didn’t have an interchange gate back then.”

At that point, Holden left his post to advise Bennet he thought Cassin was off the field when the count was called.

That’s about when the West skipper decided to abandon it. “It was becoming mayhem out there and it could have led to a lot of trouble so, eventually, I said, ‘let’s just get on with the game’,” Loveday said.

Teasdale recalled his anger at the count being called during a break in play after a goal had been scored.

“There wasn’t any effort to disguise what had been going on. I knew Freddy had made a mistake. I was pissed off about being placed in that situation,” Teasdale said.

“They tried to line us up and they had no right. I can remember having some mixed feelings and thinking, ‘You bastards West Adelaide, we haven’t won too many games, why would you want to win a game like this when it was obvious we had an injured player?’”

West Adelaide president Ken Eustice called for the SANFL to take the premiership points from Torrens and later instructed club lawyers to prepare an appeal to the NFL.

The League investigated and threatened to sanction both clubs but could not consider video evidence from the game because rules of the day deemed it inadmissible.

The Umpires Selection Board eventually found Bennet and Holden “had not erred in football law” and the board accepted their actions.

The tribunal couldn’t sustain a charge that “any of the players or officials of the West Torrens Football Club deliberately sought to frustrate the taking of the count of West Torrens players”.

Yet somewhat in contradiction, it declared the action of Torrens players “left much to be desired” and that they did not comply with the direction of umpire Bennet when asked to line up for a count.

Torrens was ultimately fined $300 for its part in the debacle – around $2600 based on today’s money. But the result stood and West fell one win short of playing finals that year.

The League introduced interchange stewards in a bid to prevent a repeat – yet North Adelaide did just that during the final quarter of the 2018 preliminary final against the Eagles.

Loveday remains gracious talking about the match today and said he was riled by the League’s findings which he believed implicated West in some wrongdoing.

“The thing that annoyed me is the League said it was ‘unsportsmanlike behaviour’ but they didn’t say on whose behalf,” Loveday said.

“I was doing the right thing by sucking up to the guys who wanted to have a count and when it all fell apart, I was the one left holding the baby. If I could do it again, I probably wouldn’t have had the count in the first place. It’s not like me. That’s over the top in anyone’s game. I don’t agree with it.”

He also noted the passing of a once-bitter rivalry. “Westies and Torrens were always emotional games, we used to have so many fights.” Loveday was spat on despite the presence of a police escort to leave the ground that day in 1975 – one he concedes was “his worst day in footy”. “I’ll never forget it,” he said.

WEST TORRENS  6.1  8.6  11.9  15.10 (100)

WEST ADELAIDE  5.1  7.2  10.5  12.10 (82)

BEST – Torrens: Faletic, P. Cousins, Cassin, Dabrowski, Noonan, G. White. West: Loveday, G. Hewitt, Grimwood, Deards, Kennedy, Papst.

SCORERS – Torrens: Noonan 5.0, Cassin 4.0, Raggatt 2.0, Fielke, White, Homan 1.1, Inglis 1.0, Faletic 0.3, Wallace 0.2, Dare 0.1, rushed 0.1. West: G. Hewitt 4.2, Buckley 3.2, Gurney 1.2, Kennedy, Humphrey, Papst, Boston 1.0, Kellett 0.1, rushed 0.3.

UMPIRE – Robin Bennet.

CROWD – 5422 at Thebarton Oval.