PICTURED in this impromptu team photograph are eight Carlton premiership greats brought together at IKON Park for a memorial to their late former teammate the 1970 Grand Final hero Ted Hopkins.
Standing from left to right is Bryan Quirk, Phillip Pinnell, David McKay and Peter ‘Percy' Jones; seated is Ian Robertson, John Nicholls, Garry Crane and Geoff Southby (picture above).
The eight former players, together with Carlton’s 1972 premiership player Andy Lukas, joined family and friends at IKON Park’s Pavilion in paying tribute to Hopkins, a man of many parts - junior water skiing champion, conservationist, conscientious objector, publisher, author, poet and data analyst included.
Football and fate brought Crane, Quirk and Hopkins to Princes Park from the Latrobe Valley – Crane from Yallourn in 1964, Quirk from Morwell in ’65 and Hopkins from Moe in ’66.
Quirk and Crane would later feature with Nicholls and Jones in the drought-breaking 1968 Grand Final victory (with less goals kicked) over Essendon; and Crane, Jones, McKay, Nicholls (as captain), Pinnell and Robertson would - together with Hopkins - savour what probably remains the greatest victory of them all, the 1970 Grand Final triumph over Collingwood.
Southby’s first senior game for Carlton would coincide with Hopkins’ 29th and last – Round 1 of 1971 versus North Melbourne at Arden Street.
All former players listened intently to the tributes paid, amongst them Hopkins’ older sister Judith and daughter Erica.
The memorial ended with Van Morrison’s Into The Mystic – a song perhaps reflecting Ted’s life journey, which took him to different places including football’s grandest stage, but always home to where the heart was.
