THE recent passing after a long illness of Bill Stapleton - the former Carlton reserve grade runner of the mid-1980s and friend and confidante of the Club’s players of the day - has given light to a classic story involving a curtain-raiser once staged at the long-gone VFL Park.

The tale relates to the opening round seconds game of 1986 against Hawthorn, when Stapleton ran for the-then reserve grade coach Col Kinnear. Carlton emerged 17-point victors over the Hawks in that one, with a future premiership player Adrian Gleeson booting four goals in his first appearance in dark Navy.

Mark Kleiman, these days an athlete manager for Kapital Sports Group but back then a Carlton match-day waterboy, recounted the story this week.

“Bill Stapleton was running messages to the players and I was running water off a wing on the opposite side of the ground to the dugout,” Kleiman recalled.

“Suddenly the head trainer, I think it was Steven Tuohy, came over to me saying ‘You better put the fluorescent top on’. It turned out that Col (Kinnear) had given Bill too many messages, and Bill cracked the s….s and walked off.

“It happened just before half time and I ran the entire second half. I remember ‘Goughy’ (the-then Carlton Football Manager Stephen Gough) wasn’t overly impressed at the time, but in the end he saw the funny side.

“I’d always wanted to be a runner too, but that was the one and only time I ever ran.”

Kinnear corroborated Kleiman’s recollections, but with his own unique take on his association with Stapleton and THAT relayed telephone message from the coach’s box which fell on deaf ears late in the second term.

“Bill was running for me in the game at VFL Park and all of a sudden he wasn’t there,” Kinnear said.

“I said ‘Where’s Billy?’ and someone said ‘He’s gone up the race’, so ‘Climax’ (Kleiman) was asked to put on the runner’s top. This was at about the time they were starting to fine runners for running too many messages, which is why ‘Goughy’ gave ‘Climax’ the greatest spray - something along the lines of ‘What the bloody hell are you doing on the ground?’.

“In the rooms at half-time I again asked ‘Where’s Billy?’ and was told ‘He’s gone’. I said ‘Where’s he gone?’ and the comment was that he’d had enough. I took that to mean that he was crook because VFL Park was a big ground, but it seemed he might have got one too many messages - and when I later turned up to the after-match function there was Billy having a beer.”

Kinnear recalled that at the following Tuesday night’s training session, Stapleton was conspicuous by his presence at Princes Park, where the likes of Harmes, Maclure, Marcou and Sheldon each handed the runner a baby’s dummy to suck on.

“And they never let him forget it either,” Kinnear said. “Whenever Billy crossed paths with a former player he was always asked ‘Are you going to spit the dummy today?’ - and that happened for years.”

Stapleton was one of Carlton’s much-valued support staffers – “the bread and butter of the Club”, as he put it.

“Not only did Billy run for me in the reserves, but he helped put out the markers on training nights,” Kinnear said. “He was one of four of us out on the ground, with ‘Parko’, myself and Serge Silvagni as the assistant.

“Billy and Serge used to lay out all the markers for different drills, whether kicking or shepherding or whatever, but halfway through ‘Parko’ would change his mind and they’d have to rearrange them. In the end Billy gave each of the markers a name and within earshot of ‘Parko’ would say ‘Don’t worry Harry,’ or ‘Don’t worry Charlie, I’ll be back to move you on’.

“Bill was a mate of Jimmy (Buckley), and when ‘Sticks’ (Stephen Kernahan) and ‘Braddles’ (Craig Bradley) first came to Melbourne they both lived with Jimmy, so Billy was always around. He was good fun and a good bloke.”

Buckley, the three-time Carlton premiership player and club best and fairest, considered Stapleton - the owner of Ararat Meat Exports and Montara Estate Wines - “one of my best mates”.

“I got Bill down to the Club. I knew him from the meat game. He was a highly respected fellow and a great friend of the Buckley family,” Buckley said.

“Bill ran for the reserves, but was an integral part of the Club. I reckon he was the only runner to be invited on an end-of-season trip, and he joined us in Hawaii because all the boys knew him and liked him. You ask ‘Pera’ (Val Perovic) and any of the other players from that time. They’ll tell you that Bill was like a mentor to them. He was also a good friend of ‘Parko’s’.”

David Rhys-Jones, Carlton’s 1987 premiership player and Norm Smith Medallist, concurred with Buckley’s character assessment of Stapleton - a brother to the dental mechanic Bob Stapleton and the noted Melbourne pop singer Wendy Stapleton.

“No-one had a bad word to say about Bill,” Rhys-Jones said. “You wouldn’t have wanted to get on the wrong side of him because I heard he could go a bit, but I never saw it.

Bill Stapleton’s funeral is to be held at the Essendon Football Club’s Windy Hill venue (“of all places” according to Buckley), from 2.30pm next Monday (October 17) - and already the tributes are flowing.

A notice recently placed by the St. Bernard’s Old Collegians Football Club reads in part – “A man’s man with a cheeky sense of humour, Bill will be very sadly missed by us all. The St Bernards OCFC community sends its deepest condolences to his wife Robyn, daughters Billie and Angie, sons Michael, James, Andrew, Matthew & the extended Stapleton family”.