Hey Blues! It’s Hailey Brownlow Winslow – back for Round 2 of Brownlow’s Blues!

Today we’re talking about the history of the club – something as an American I don’t claim to be an expert in. But I have the right people in the studio with me who do, here to give a behind-the-scenes look at how the Blues have blossomed over the years. We will get to them in just a minute.
 
But first, as I was starting this second blog a couple days ago, sitting at the desk I share with Club Historian Tony De Bolfo, a navy blue book called “The Carlton Story” caught my eye. As I reached for it, accidentally knocking over a couple 250th-game Kade Simpson paper statues and De Bolfo’s Dall’Italia All’Australia DVD, I opened right to the oldest known photograph of a Carlton football team. It was taken before a match at Royal Park in 1868, the fifth year of the club’s existence and only 34 years after the foundation of Melbourne. Although “blurred and battered” and in black-and-white, the caption reveals Carlton’s first uniform – merely an orange cap with a blue band.
 
Flipping back to the first page painted a more colourful picture of “How it All Began.” – with teams recruiting players through newspaper advertisements (or “ad-vurt-iss-mints” as Australians call them :). One ad in particular read, “all those interested, turn up at the ‘Richmond Paddock,’ now Yarra Park, on a certain Sunday afternoon for a game of football.” The book says this particular article also reported, “a mixed crowd assembled, but they were a slashing lot generally. They included Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotsmen who had been drawn to Victoria in search of wealth, and a number of athletic, native-born Victorians.” The Englishmen followed the rules of Rugby and the Irishmen, Scotsmen, and Australians played, “go as you please.” Games were “little more than a fierce rough and tumble” it says, with “more emphasis on brawn and barrel chests than skill,” and “boundaries so sketchy,” spectators sometimes spilled onto the playing area.”  Through what might be called “the dark ages” of the sport and what likely saved it in ravenous rivalry between Carlton and early Melbourne teams, Carlton pioneered. The book credits Carlton with founding “the coaching system we know today with the appointment of the first coach, Jack Worrall, who moulded the first team of specialists the League has known – a ‘champion team,’ as opposed to ‘a team of champions.’” It says Carlton, more so than any other league “fashioned the tactical measures to hold and master that telling ‘loose man’ short passing game of Collingwood – a power in the League from 1900.”
 
But it was what I found folded up inside the front cover of this 1958 book by Hugh Buggy and Harry Bell that made it click for me. On a wrinkly sheet of sheer white paper, was an invitation to Carlton Great Newton Chandler’s 100th birthday party. This “Hall of Fame” occasion that was celebrated on September 19th 1993, to me, is what Australian-rules Football is all about – comradery, tradition, legacy. And over the years and through the thick and thin of it, it’s what Carlton continues to pride itself on. It’s most recently represented in our #BoundByBlue mantra, (OK TO REPORT REST OF SENTENCE?) that tapers off into three motivational slogan signs seen around the club; “Brutal Blues,” “True Blues,” and “Blue Skies.”
 
But to veer off from reading what you can read for yourself in this or another book or quick Google or Wikipedia search, I want talk about what people don’t know about the club, and get right down to the heart of it.
 
So that’s why I have caught up with two Carlton greats, Football Administration Manager Shane O’Sullivan and Head of Football Andrew McKay. 

Thank you both Shane O’Sullivan and Andrew McKay very much for a bit of a more in-depth look at Carlton from two people who have been at the club, not quite since the 1860’s, but longer than practically anyone else here – two “true Blues.” I feel like I’ve gained a better understanding of what’s behind this great game and the people who make it so exceptional…hopefully a few others have as well.

Thank you to those who listened to Round 2 of Brownlow’s Blues – a crazy American’s take on an incredible sport! If you have an idea for an episode or would like to hear about what goes on behind-the-scenes in a certain area of the Carlton FC, please feel free to send me an email, I would love to hear from you! It’s hailey.winslow@carltonfc.com.au

Thank you for making me feel welcome! And GO NAVY BLUES!!!!!