Kevin Hall, the three-time Carlton Premiership player and long-serving Director, this week paid a welcome visit to the place that was home for so much of his life.
Hall’s most recent return was for sentimental reasons, to join his eight year-old grandson “Teddy” by the old No.3 locker – the locker which carries his name and those of a Stawell Gift winner, the AFL Commission Chairman and the current Carlton captain amongst others.
Accompanying his wife Ann, Hall talked with genuine passion about this football club and what it meant and continues to mean to him.
“It’s wonderful to be back,” Hall said. “I’m very proud of the time I had at Carlton as a player and the 25 years on the board. My life was about driving to and from Princes Park for a long, long time.”
A 169-game Carlton player in 11 seasons ending with the 1973 Grand Final, Hall, like all Members and supporters, lamented his football club’s recent fortunes.
“But let’s hope the new coach, who seems like a lovely fellow and carries a lot of passion with him, can get the absolute best out of everybody,” he said.
“Time will tell, but the appointment is positive and I think it’s a good decision.”
Reflecting on his playing days at Carlton through one of the great golden eras under the presidency of George Harris, Hall cited on-field stability as the key.
Kevin Hall (centre) with John Nicholls and Percy Jones during his playing days. (Photo: Carlton Football Club)
“There were seven or eight years where we had a solid core of players who basically started together – the likes of ‘Perc’ Jones and ‘Jezza’ – which gave the team the opportunity to be good, then very good and finally Premiers,” Hall said.
“Geelong is now facing the prospect of having to clear out some of the great names and there are always going to be times when that’s going to happen, but ideally you want to keep the core together and maybe change two or three.
“David Parkin used to say that even the Premiership teams require two or three changes to keep the pot boiling and there’s no doubt about that.”
A keen observer of today’s playing group, Hall is genuinely upbeat in seeing the emergence of the likes of Patrick Cripps “and another half a dozen of him would be handy”.
“We’ve just got to continue to get good players in, and things will pick up,” Hall said.
“Everyone who ever came to this club was so proud of the place. I remember players coming in like Hunter and Blackwell from the west, and Kernahan and Bradley from the south all used to say ‘There’s something in the air here’. That was the culture of winning – and you can get it back.”
