It’s doubtful that anyone ever worked the League’s old metropolitan zoning laws to greater effect than Denis Glascott, who recently passed awat at the age of 83 just five weeks after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
The incredible lengths to which Denis went to support his beloved Blues emerged in a funeral service held to honour the life of the lifelong Carlton supporter, who fathered two sons both destined to wear the dark navy.
In delivering Denis’s eulogy to an audience that included his former coaches David Parkin and Col Kinnear, the football manager Shane O’Sullivan and old teammates such as Thomastown’s own Alex Marcou, Carlton’s 173-game triple Premiership wingman David Glascott related the following tale.
“The story goes that my parents were living at my mother’s parents’ home in Murray Road, Preston, which was Collingwood’s zone. My father played football in that region with (Kevin) ‘Bulldog’ Murray (later recruited to Fitzroy under the father/son rule). Denis always reckoned he was a better player than ‘Bulldog’ but he had to choose between mum and footy,” Glascott said.
“Anyway, he and Mum used to say that when it came to buying a house it was always going to be in Thomastown, in the event that if they had sons who could play football they’d play for Carlton. So they bought in the Club’s zone on the Carlton side of the railway line as the other side of the line was Collingwood.
“I used to think that story was made up, but they stuck with it, insisting it was the absolute truth. They bought that house in ’61 and that’s where they stayed.”
David, Denis and Stuart Glascott circa 2000.
It’s history now that Denis realised his great dream, in seeing his sons David (the only Carlton player to have represented this club in under-19s, reserves, seniors and day and night Premiership teams) and Stuart (who turned out for the Club’s under-19s and reserves) wear the colours.
“When we were kids, Mum and Dad used to take Stuart, my sister Joanne and me to the old ground for Carlton home games. Together we stood in the outer in front of the Richard Pratt Stand,” Glascott said.
“One of his proudest moments was when he and Mum saw Stuart and I play for Carlton at Princes Park in the same seconds side. It was 1985 and I was coming back from injury. It was the only game in which I played with my brother in the navy blue and we won. I looked after Stuart of course, giving off a few possessions here and there.”
Born in Preston in February 1935, Denis’s allegiance to the Carlton Football Club spanned some 80 years.
Denis Glascott poses proudly on the porch of the 'Carlton castle', circa 2011.
“He followed Carlton from the time he was four years old,” Glascott said. “He was a lolly boy at the ’45 Bloodbath and he was there for all the Carlton Premierships that followed, including the three of which I was part.”
About eight years ago, this reporter paid Denis and Heather Glascott a visit after the pair kindly agreed to loan their sizeable VHS collection of Carlton games of the 1980s for digitising.
That day, he agreed to pose for a photograph on the verandah of the Glascott family’s famous Thomastown (and Carlton) abode.
Denis Glascott was finally farewelled at Memorial Park, fittingly in the outer northern suburb of Fawkner, which formed part of Carlton’s recruitment heartland in the good old days of metropolitan zoning.
