by Daley, Paul
The 29th Battalion, which Percy and Doc had joined as privates, would see action in horrific battles on the European Western Front, the daily casualties of which would dwarf those at Gallipoli. The battalion became known as the ‘Black and Gold’ because of the colour patches that its soldiers wore on the sleeves of their tunics. One officer of the 29th wrote that the rank-and-file men were a ‘splendid’ bunch who
set a very high standard for those who were to follow. The comradeship and esprit de corps, even at this early stage, was very pronounced, and it lasted right throughout our service. The training was severe but all stood up to it well. There was a keenness and a determination in all our ranks to make our unit one of the best.
Doc had joined up even though his family had already seen one son commit himself to the tragedy of Gallipoli. Doc’s 21-year-old younger brother, Walter, a carpenter’s labourer who had a bird carrying a letter tattooed on his forearm, had enlisted in late August 1914, just weeks after Britain had declared war. He had joined the Victorian-raised 6th Battalion, part of the 2nd Division. On the afternoon of Sunday 25 April 1915, while Doc and his fellow Magpies were strolling around their neighbourhood, basking in the previous afternoon’s 26-point defeat of Essendon in the opening round of the footy season, Walter Seddon, in the light of a new dawn half a world away, was fighting his way ashore at the vanguard of the Australian landing at Gallipoli. Walter made it up the beach and fought for several months before being seriously wounded while ferrying water and other supplies to his 6th Battalion mates in the forward trenches.
After recuperating in hospital in Egypt for some months, Walter was declared unfit for further duty and sent back to Australia to be discharged. He went absent without leave after arriving in Fremantle and was sentenced to three days’ detention for his trouble, before being shipped off to Melbourne. He arrived home on 23 November 1915. The next day, his big brother Doc shipped out for the war. (Walter died barely twenty years later, aged in his early forties.)
Despite their fame—or infamy—on the football field, Doc and Percy were viewed as nothing more than equals in their battalion. The men of the 29th Battalion undertook rigorous training that emphasised great physical fitness, endurance—as evidenced by the number of long night-and-day marches the men undertook with full packs—and marksmanship. These were skills that would equip the men well for the horrors that, at that stage unknown to them, awaited in France and Belgium.
Writing home to his mum from Broadmeadows, the 29th’s Private Otway Carter said:
Just the same squad and platoon drill practically all the time with a bit of extended drill thrown in. Last half hour of the day we get charging, reinforcing, signaling. They have to give us something to liven us up. We must be going very soon because the majors keep us running practically all day and all night—our feet are that tender.
Despite having a drill sergeant who supported Carlton, Percy and Doc were given leave to play their matches and meet their twice-weekly training commitments. It is also clear that the Army gave Percy leave so that he could get married; similarly, Doc was permitted to go off-base to be best man.
It seems unlikely that the Collingwood Football Club knew that Percy was marrying Louie, well known though she was as a lifelong supporter of the team and a companion, as far back as anyone could recall, to Doc, so hastily were the wedding arrangements made. In the club’s 1915 annual report, under the heading ‘Cupid Has Been Busy’, it was noted that PE Rowan, among others, had ‘been brought into subjection’. The club later made sure a wedding present was sent to Louie, but possibly not until she was heavily pregnant, and more than likely well after Percy had embarked for the war.
Such niceties would have been subservient to Collingwood’s preoccupation with fielding a strong team each week from a dramatically depleted wartime list, and, first and foremost, with winning the upcoming Grand Final. Although Saturday football attendances were well down throughout the 1915 season, public interest in the hotly contested finals series was intense and comparatively strong crowds turned out to watch it.
Collingwood, the minor premiers, had finished the season with fourteen wins and two losses, just ahead of fellow finalists Carlton (thirteen wins, two losses and one draw), Fitzroy (eleven wins, four losses and one draw) and Melbourne (nine wins and seven losses). Under the amended ‘Argus system’ that determined the home-and-away matches and finals schedules, the minor premier gained a distinct advantage: two chances at the premiership—if the minor premier appeared in and won the preliminary final, it would be declared that year’s premiership team, while a loss in the preliminary final would take the minor premier into a grand final for a second tilt at the flag. The other teams in the finals played on an elimination basis. The last home-and-away match of the season had, therefore, been critical for Collingwood. Had the Magpies lost to South Melbourne at the Lakeside Oval on 21 September, then Carlton—which, as anticipated, had trounced St Kilda in the same round—and not Collingwood would have gone into the finals series with a double advantage.
The 1915 home-and-away season was consistent with the three preceding seasons in that the Seddon–Rowe centre combination proved critical to Collingwood’s performance. So it was a big blow when the Army, having given the pair leave for all of the matches that had taken place since they’d signed up in early July, suddenly and apparently inexplicably refused to make them available for the final-round home-and-away game against South Melbourne. Furthermore, as part of the VFL’s wartime austerity measures, the 1915 season had been played without the use of reserves. So if a player was missing for any reason, the club could not substitute him. The absence of Percy and Doc had therefore left a gaping hole in the Magpies’ line-up.
While Sporting Judge’s ‘Free Kick’ somewhat ambiguously read some sort of personal intrigue into their absences, other commentators noted simply that Collingwood’s game was wanting without its dynamic duo. The Argus’ football commentator, who wrote under the by-line ‘Notes by an Observer’, said:
As events proved there was more interest in the finish than anyone expected a few weeks ago … Carlton had come on and was challenging Collingwood for its first place. As a result … one game had a double issue. If South Melbourne could defeat Collingwood it meant that Carlton would lead [the final ladder] and would have the double chance in the finals.
The ‘Observer’ went on to note: ‘For the final trial, with conditions altogether favourable, Collingwood were heavily handicapped in the absence of their second ruck, for Rowan and Seddon were unable to leave camp.’
The conspiracy theorists were having a field day. But had they just asked the Army what the story was, they’d have been told that the whole camp at Broadmeadows had been confined to barracks that weekend due to an outbreak of meningitis throughout the state, which had killed a number of Victorians, including one member of the 29th Battalion.
Publicly, at least, Collingwood was willing to bear the compromises that war would bring to its game and to its success on the field. As one club executive explained at the time: ‘The players’ and executives’ actions throughout the season was influenced by the unsettled war conditions prevailing … and whilst doing their utmost to maintain Collingwood’s prestige in the football world, they unselfishly made their desires and ambitions to the national interest.’ But there’s little doubt that, with- in the club, a conspiracy was embraced—its proponents believed that, the meningitis outbreak not-withstanding, Carlton had somehow orchestrated the absence of Doc and Percy in the hope that Collingwood would then lose against South Melbourne.
Doc, in uniform, as he prepared to ship out to war. Collingwood Football Club Archive
In a sense, the match that took place a fortnight later on Percy’s wedding day was something of a formality for Collingwood, which, win or lose against third-placed Fitzroy, would go on to contest for the Premiership regardless. Collingwood went into the match as the favourite, having beaten
Fitzroy on the two occasions the teams had met that year. (In fact, the only side to beat Collingwood during the 1915 home-and-away season was the hated Carlton—by 2 points in round 7 and 1 point in round 16.) But, in wet conditions, Fitzroy gave Collingwood a 34-point hiding.
Louie’s coupling with and pregnancy to Percy may have caused tensions between him and Doc. But if this or the wedding at St Philip’s had distracted the two mates prior to the second Semi-Final, they apparently didn’t show it on the ground. ‘Seddon was playing in first-rate style in the ruck,’ the Argus noted. ‘For Collingwood three of the best men were Minogue, Anderson and Rowan. Very close up was Seddon, who played extremely well, both placed and in the ruck.’
If the playing coach McHale and chief trainer Lee had known what was going on, including the wedding on the morning of the match, they certainly would have viewed it as an unwelcome distraction for two of their star players. But it was simply a fact that players sometimes made room for life outside football. One Saturday earlier in the 1915 season, Essendon centreman Cyril Gave rode the horse Menthe to third place in a race at Mooney Valley and then caught a cab to the MCG for a game against South Melbourne, before boxing in a torrid bout at John Wren’s West Melbourne stadium that evening.
All of this aside, it was now clear that, whether Collingwood faced Carlton or Fitzroy in the Grand Final on 18 September, it was in for a very tough contest.
The Army would ultimately give Collingwood’s two star followers leave to play against Carlton in the Grand Final, but not before causing Doc and Percy to be in no fit condition to play. The Magpies would go on to lose the game, and the 1915 Premiership, to the Blues.
Collingwood, which habitually viewed itself as the wronged underdog, would not blame the Army for the Grand Final loss. They would blame a conspiracy, with Carlton at its centre.
11
The Great Carlton Conspiracy
As a boy of six or seven, Allan Monohan channelled his child’s eye through a lead pencil to form, without deference to depth or detail, the figure of a small man in the corner of a page. From the man’s box-like torso spring two solid legs, with blobs hastily scribbled under them to represent football boots. Stick arms come out at right angles from the body and join at a ball that hovers over one boot. A child’s absence of perspective has put the goals—four perfectly equidistant sticks—next to the player who, on closer inspection, has a black stripe running down the front of his guernsey. An opposing player has been depicted, almost as an afterthought, as a butterfly-like figure with barely defined human characteristics. He teeters on the far edge of the page, too distant and facing the wrong way to be truly in the game.
Despite its rudimentary form, the Collingwood player on the page before me is defined by a fluidity of movement that lends the drawing a sense of anticipation as he lines up in front of the big sticks. It will be a goal for sure. His boy creator has quite clearly watched a great deal of football very, very carefully.
Above the drawing, Allan has written in a neat, semicursive hand: ‘My mums Pa played for Collingwood for ten years. He was also Chairman of Selectors. Dad and I go to every football game we can go to. I love football.’
It is a splendid spring afternoon in Mansfield, the picturesque farming town that sits at the foot of Victoria’s majestic snow country. We are sitting on Allan’s back verandah, looking out on a vista of bush. The light dapples through the new leaves above us and a golden luminescence has taken hold of the horizon as day segues into evening. Allan’s dog snorts and growls around the verandah, a sentinel against the snakes—big blacks and browns and tigers—that linger in the depths of the yard.
Allan has just handed me that picture of a footballer that he drew as a child more than fifty years ago. It is as if he is showing me his credentials—not just as a mad devotee of Australian Rules, but as a passionate lover of a football club that has defined his family for three generations.
His younger cousin, David Seddon, who is sitting nearby, declares: ‘Yeah, it’s a ripper drawing, hey? He did it about two weeks ago.’
More beer is called for as the discussion turns to ‘the Club’ and the serious matters before it, not the least of which is the planned transition from the enigmatic coach of the past decade, Mick Malthouse, to his assistant, the much-loved former club captain and now assistant coach Nathan Buckley. The men’s enthusiasm is infectious. I find myself offering a detailed description of the intensely emotional experience of being in the crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground when Collingwood drew the first 2010 Grand Final against St Kilda, of how I had to frantically reschedule my life and beg for tickets so that my son Joe and I could attend the replay the following week, and of the jubilation I felt—the absolute and utter elation, something akin to attending the births of my children—at the turning point in the replay, when Heath Shaw performed his desperate, diving smother of Nick Riewoldt’s kick inside the goal square at the end of the first quarter, and how that—that—said everything about what it meant to love the Collingwood Football Club.
I am stating the absolutely obvious, as I am deep inside friendly territory.
David and Allan are Doc Seddon’s grandsons. David is the child of Malcolm Seddon Junior, while Allan’s mother, Shirley, is Doc Seddon’s daughter. In terms of Collingwood royalty—yes, the club really does think in such terms—Allan Monohan is right up there. Shirley married Jim Monohan, whose father, Cliff, was the younger brother of the legendary Collingwood player and tough man Jack Monohan. When you look at the famous picture of Jack Monohan being rubbed down after training by Wal Lee, the similarity with Allan, a firefighter, is striking. Also apparent is the physical likeness between the barrel-chested, broad-shouldered David Seddon and Doc.
Cliff Monohan played for North Melbourne in the VFA and Allan’s dad, Jim, was a handy player, too—he knocked back invitations to train with a number of VFA clubs, opting instead to play for Rye on the Mornington Peninsula in the Victorian amateur league. Percy Edward Rowe—young Perc—would, in his thirties, play in the same Rye team. So would his half-brother, Malcolm Seddon Junior, after rejecting overtures from a number of professional clubs. Malcolm even turned his back on an opportunity to play for the Seddons’ beloved Collingwood, for reasons that had more to do with the bitter fall-out between Doc and the Magpies in 1939, discussed later in this book, than any lack of ambition on his part.
‘Mate,’ says Allan, ‘we are black and white around here—and you are welcome.’
Ironically, given the conversation that we are about to have, Allan’s wife Lyn is a Carlton supporter. It’s a fact I have to recheck later when I’m leafing through my beery notes and find I can’t quite remember if she follows the Magpies, or another semi-‘acceptable’, reasonably Collingwood-friendly club such as Richmond or North Melbourne. Allan later writes to me: ‘Believe it or not, Lyn barracks for the Blues, although she keeps pretty quiet about it around this place when they play the Maggies. See, I can’t even bring myself to call them by name.’
And so, as the beer flows, we move on to a delicate matter involving the story of Doc and Percy—the great conspiracy surrounding the 1915 Grand Final.
Around the Magpies it has always been said that, on the morning of the big match, Doc and Percy, stationed at the Broadmeadows camp, were sent on a 10-mile march so that they would be exhausted by the time they ran onto the MCG at the opening siren. The Collingwood historian Michael Roberts probably tells the story most succinctly in his book A Century of the Best:
Both Seddon and Rowan were by now based at the AIF camp in Broadmeadows and in that game [the Grand Final] they lined up alongside each other on the half-forward line. They only just made it, though, having in the morning endured a 10-mile route march suddenly and suspiciously ordered by their adjutant—who just happened to be a Carlton supporter.
By the final siren, Carlton (11.12.78) had defeated Collingwood (6.9.45). The ‘Observer’ in the Argus noted:
The scores make it look like an easy victory, but that was not the case. Well into the last quarter there was only a point separating the combatants and Collingwood, who had looked a beaten side for the greater part of the game, made such a wonderful rally that for a time Carlton seemed to be demoralized. It was just a question of which could last longest and the survivor was Carlton. Once they had got a goal or so in their favour at that critical stage of the match, it was simply a question of getting almost as many goals as they wished because the other side had shot its bolt.
Collingwood had rallied in the third quarter with nine scoring shots, including a goal from the half-forward line by Doc, who had missed another, easier goal in the second quarter. ‘In the third quarter Rowan was absolutely at his best,’ the Argus also reported. In the last quarter, Dick Lee’s third goal of the match and a surge by his teammates had given the Collingwood supporters hope. But then the Magpies had simply run out of puff, especially in the forward line.
To the chagrin of Wal Lee and Jock McHale, who played an ordinary game in the ruck, Doc and Percy had arrived by taxi at the ground just minutes before the game had begun, both men inexplicably exhausted. That they had managed to play so well for three quarters was testimony to their fitness. But there was understandable anger in the change rooms after the match when the pair explained what had happened to them at the Army camp that morning.
I first heard this story a few years ago on an internet chat forum for Collingwood supporters, and later it was repeated to me in person by the club president, Eddie McGuire. I pretty much dismissed the story of the route march as a tall Magpies tale, a classic case of the eternally wronged underdog putting external conspiracy ahead of self-evaluation when it came to understanding and coping with a devastating loss. It was, I thought, fabulous club folklore, a terrific yarn for the likes of McGuire, a first-class raconteur, to spin and to verbally belt the hated Carlton with, but one with little basis in fact.
