THE CARLTON Football Club has seen fit to acknowledge the achievements of two Premiership captains and a Premiership captain-coach in the tumultuous years between two World Wars.
Accordingly, Billy Dick and Alf Baud, who led their teams to the respective back-to-back Premierships of 1914 and ’15 respectively – and Brighton Diggins, who commandeered the drought-breaking Premiership team of 1938 – have each been inducted into the Carlton Football Hall of Fame.
The Inductions of Dick, Baud and Diggins bring to 21 the number of Inductees so honoured in 2024 to mark the 160th year of Carlton’s existence.
Back in May, Carlton saw fit to Induct ten prominent figures of the 19th century Challenge Cup/pre-VFA period - Jack Baker, Jack Conway, John Donovan, John Gardiner, Billy Goer, Harry Guy, Robert Heatley, Tommy Leydin, Orlando O’Brien and George Robertson.
Then in June, the Club Inducted eight members of each of its famed Premiership teams of 1906, ’07 and ’08 under Coach/Secretary Jack Worrall’s watch – Les Beck, Jim Flynn, Fred Jinks, George ‘Mallee’ Johnson, Edwin Kennedy, Alexander Lang, Billy Payne and George Topping.
All Inductions were ratified by the Club’s Board on the recommendation of its Heritage Sub-Committee – as were the Inductions of Jack Carney, Neil Chandler and Brendan Fevola (the only surviving member of the coveted 24) in March.
Alf Baud
Born Nagambie, Victoria, September 20, 1892 – died West Heidelberg, Victoria, December 5, 1986
Recruited to Carlton from Eaglehawk (Bendigo Football League)
Carlton Player No. 276
At Carlton
53 matches, 16 goals 1913-1915
Premiership Player 1914 & 1915
Captain 1915
The legendary Roy Cazaly, in an article penned for The Sporting Globe newspaper in June 1937, wrote of Alfred Miller Baud: “He (Baud) could play anywhere. I think that Baud by comparison would have made (Haydn) Bunton look ordinary. Baud would have been a football sensation had it not been for the war.”.
Cazaly’s view reflected the universal respect Baud commanded, in a playing career interrupted by global conflict.
Baud made his way to Princes Park in 1913, on the end of a brief but beneficial period with Eaglehawk. He was adjudged best afield for the Hawks in the 1911 Bendigo Football League Grand Final – which in turned piqued the interest of a Carlton talent scouts - and by early 1913 Baud was fronting for training at the old Carlton ground.
Baud completed his Carlton senior debut in May 1913 – the 5th round match with the long gone University team at the MCG – and was prominent in the Blues’ 16-point victory. Finding his nice as a half-forward flanker (with the occasional run in the centre), Baud impacted significantly in his maiden season, contributing 12 goals from 14 matches and earning selection in the Victorian state squad.
However, Baud was relocated to half-back on the sayso of the three-time Premiership player Norman ‘Hackenschmidt’ Clark, who was appointed Carlton Senior Coach in 1914. Clark’s canny call proved correct, as Baud, playing alongside his captain Billy Dick, contributed to his team’s steady rise up the ladder.
Carlton accounted for Fitzroy by 20 points in the 1914 Semi-Final, but a bout of influenza cost Baud his place in the Preliminary Final team which surprisingly lost to South Melbourne the following weekend.
Under the then competition rules, Carlton, as minor Premier, was entitled to challenge South in the Grand Final, and when Baud was pronounced fit he earned an automatic recall.
Carlton set a League record by naming nine first-year players in that 1914 Grand Final, and famously prevailed by six points in a low-scoring thriller.
That Jubilee Premiership was, however, tinged with apprehension and uncertainty. Only three weeks previous, Great Britain and France had declared war on Germany, and as a consequence Australia and the rest of the British Empire followed suit.
As thousands of young men answered the call of King and country through 1915, the VFL found itself in crisis, with attendances plummeting and all clubs struggling to field competitive teams.
Carlton was not untouched - and in Round 10 of that troubled season also lost its captain Billy Dick for a mammoth ten-match ban imposed after he appeared on report for striking Fitzroy’s Jack Cooper. Suddenly Baud, at just 22, found himself captain of the reigning Premiership team.
That September, as Carlton prepared to defend its title, Baud, a telegraphist by profession, enlisted in the Army Signals section. Whilst waiting for the inevitable call-up, Baud magnificently led his contemporaries to a first-up semi-final victory over Melbourne and a tough Preliminary final win over Fitzroy – thereby ensuring a second successive Grand Final outing, only this time involving the competition minor Premiers and unbackable flag favourites Collingwood.
When Carlton toppled Collingwood by 33 points in the 1915 Grand Final - a contest described as “one of the grandest that had ever been seen in the finals,” it set the seal on Baud’s reputation as a player and leader of the highest calibre. Two days shy of his 23rd birthday, he etched his name into the record books as the youngest player to captain any club to a League Premiership – a record that would endure for 43 years until Collingwood’s Murray Weideman, at 22 years 216 days, completed the deed in the Grand Final of ’58.
The 1915 Grand Final would be the first of five won by Carlton at Collingwood’s expense, with the conquests of 1938, ’70, ’79 and ’81 to follow.
But the 1915 Grand Final would also prove to be Baud’s swansong. He was called into uniform in 1916, and by March of that year was on his way to war.
Mercifully, Sergeant Baud survived the horror – but only just.
In September 1917, his battery was locked in combat at a feature later known as ANZAC Ridge, when an enemy shell exploded nearby. A shrapnel splinter smashed into the side of Baud’s head, fracturing his skull and severely impacting the sight in his left eye. Quickly ferried to hospital, his life hung in the balance for some days – and were it not for his vim and vigor he wouldn’t have made it. But make it he did, and in March of 1918 he was repatriated to Australia and duly participated in the Armistice celebrations that November.
Baud died in December 1986 at the ripe old age of 94, having maintained a great connection with the game as a member of the Australian Football Council and a much-respected Tribunal panelist.
He is remembered as a modest, humble man who maintained a great love for Carlton and the game, and he thought much of both.
Billy Dick
Born Stawell, Victoria, July 16, 1889 - died Cheltenham, Victoria, November 18, 1960
Recruited to Carlton from Fitzroy (VFL)
Carlton player No. 255
At Carlton
100 matches, 35 goals 1911-1918
Premiership player 1914
Captain 1914-1917
William John (‘Billy’) Dick to this day remains a poster boy for the player who overcame physical disability to compete in the highest level of League competition. A renowned high mark, Dick was noted for his curious habit of turning his face side-on to the right as he leapt for the football – a perfectly understandable trait considering he lost sight in his left eye as the result of an accident in his schooldays.
Despite that obvious physical handicap, Dick strung together 153 senior League appearances (the first 53 of them for Fitzroy) topped the goalkicking tables at each club, and ultimately led Carlton to the 1914 Grand Final triumph.
It’s a little known football fact that when Dick was playing with bayside outfit Brighton at the time of Carlton’s 1906-07-08 Premiership three-peat, he actually wrote to the club requesting an opportunity to test himself at the highest level by way of a trial – only to be turned down by the then powers that be.
Following up with Fitzroy, Dick was quickly welcomed, and rewarded the Maroons’ faith with his aerial strength, versatility and competitive drive in three seasons through to 1910.
Carlton then launched a spirited effort to land the player it had effectively overlooked, and in 1911 it got its man.
By 1912, Dick’s leadership qualities were recognised with his appointment as Carlton Vice-Captain to Jack Wells – and he was called upon by Coach Norman Clark to take over the key defensive post at centre half-back. This was the making of Dick – an outstanding contributor in Carlton’s dramatic six-point win over South Melbourne on Grand Final day 1914. The Argus correspondent covering that contest noted that throughout the torrid encounter, Dick was “cool and sure in defence’ and clearly the Blues most effective player.
Six months later, during Carlton’s round 10, 1915 clash with the Maroons at Brunswick Street oval, Dick was reported for striking Fitzroy’s Jack Cooper, and for using insulting language to the field umpire. At the subsequent VFL hearing, the second count brought a reprimand – but the first charge resulted in a 10-week suspension that effectively ruled Carlton’s captain out of the 1915 finals series. Club delegates were incensed by the penalty, and vigorously appealed the suspension on the grounds that it was unconstitutional - all to no avail. The League stood its ground, forcing Dick to watch on from the stands on Grand Final day as his Blueboys went back-to-back with an emphatic win over arch-rivals Collingwood.
Though the loss of vision put paid to his wartime enlistment aspirations, Dick continued to turn out for Carlton through those wartime years – and in July 1918, after handing the Club captaincy to Rod McGregor, Dick ended his on-field career where it had begun – at the Junction Oval.
In 1919, Dick chased the leather for VFA club Brunswick, in a landmark player swap that involved a talented wingman named Newton Chandler heading to Princes Park.
Forty-one years later, Chandler was still very much a part of Carlton when Dick passed away at the age of 71.
Brighton Diggins
Born Victoria Park, Western Australia, December 26, 1906 - died Mt Eliza, Victoria, July 14, 1971
Recruited to Carlton from South Melbourne (VFL)
Carlton player No. 540
At Carlton
31 matches, six goals 1938-1940
Debut : Round 1, 1938 vs Hawthorn, aged 31 years, 118 days
Carlton Player No. 540
Premiership player 1938
Captain-Coach 1938-1940
Brighton Diggins represented Carlton in just 31 matches through three seasons - yet he is forever remembered as one of the most influential football figures of his time.
He was born John Bryton Diggins in the inner Perth suburb of Victoria Park on Boxing Day 1906. He adopted his middle name after his family started using it, and he preferred the spelling of ‘Brighton’ after an uncle of the same name.
Diggins reportedly led a carefree, typical bush kid existence and grew into a tall, superbly fit physical specimen.
After representing his local junior club Jolimont, Diggins was invited to train with Subiaco, and first ran out in 1927. By 1929, the budding ruckman was universally considered a star of the WAFL – and when the Depression hit he accepted an overture to join South Melbourne, and he crossed the Nullarbor in late 1931.
Diggins joined a club on the rise as part of its famed ‘Foreign Legion’ of players recruited from all parts of the country. Not surprisingly, South swept to the 1933 Premiership, knocking Richmond over by 18 points, and Diggins and Bob Pratt were listed amongst the best afield.
The Swans continued as a footballing force, but through the ensuing three seasons stumbled at the last hurdle to be beaten in successive Grand Finals by Richmond and Collingwood (twice). Their cause wasn’t helped through injuries to key players – amongst them Diggins who broke a leg above the ankle – and as a consequence they went into a tailspin.
Carlton’s then Vice-President Kenneth Luke identified Diggins as a future club leader and set out to get his man. Luke’s doggedness was ultimately rewarded when Diggins overlooked a more lucrative offer from the Perth Football Club, and agreed to terms to Captain and Coach the Blues in 1938.
Diggins’ positive presence impacted from the outset. A teammate Creswell (‘Micky’) Crisp observed that “from the moment he walked into that training room, he showed himself a gentleman”.
“He (Diggins) was determined. He was forceful if needed. He never was a bully. His soft way of speaking might have suggested to some a lack of leadership (but) that was their funeral. Diggins was a man’s man – that’s where he succeeded. He drove us, he led us, but he always went with us. He was game. He never once asked us to go in where he would not go himself. I might have said in a shorter fashion that he won our confidence”.
By this time, Diggins was 31 years old, but he pushed himself as hard as he pushed his team. Training was relentless, yet innovative and when the ’38 season rolled around the Blues were fit and ready. The turning point came mid-season, when Carlton rallied late in the game to snatch a one point win over arch-rivals Richmond in a fierce, physical encounter. Brimming with confidence, the Blues completed the home and aways on top of the ladder and three weeks later faced Collingwood in the Grand Final.
Before the encounter, Diggins told his players: “Every man has a job to do and will not let Carlton down. We have no champions. Every player helps his teammate and puts the team first”. In the end, and before a record crowd of 96,834, Diggins’ team won a thriller by 13 points – securing a drought-break Premiership after 23 years.
Prior to the ’38 Grand Final, Diggins had declared that win or lose, it would be his last game. Luke would not hear of it however, and convinced his on-field leader to push on for two more seasons. In the end, he managed just five more matches before World War 2 intervened, and duty called, and his brief but successful time at Carlton was over.
During the war, Diggins served as a Warrant Officer with the Army. At war’s end he coached Mornington Peninsula League outfit Frankston, commandeering his teams to three successive Grand Finals. For a time he also covered League football as a correspondent for The Argus.
Brighton passed away in Mt Eliza at the age of 64 in 1971. Forty-one years later his daughter the late Lauraine Diggins became the first female to be elected to the Carlton Football Club Board of Directors.
