Fifty years after knocking Essendon over in the big one, surviving members of Carlton’s Under 19 Premiership team of 1963 have gathered at Percy’s Pub in Carlton to reminisce.

The gathering, which included 15 members of the victorious 20, was championed by the best player afield that day, Peter Smith, who took some months to locate fellow Premiership players - including Carlton’s Team of the Century rover Adrian Gallagher, and others like the club’s former Senior coach Denis Pagan, who turned out for the Unders twice in that all-conquering ’63 year.

Smith, who set the ball rolling in publicizing his push for the 50^th anniversary reunion, hailed the gathering an enormous success.

“The past players were all over the moon with the turnout,” Smith said. ”We’d never reunited before, so we’re hoping we’ll meet at least once a year from now on to catch up for lost time.”

Smith, then a 17 year-old wingman with the Unders, was adjudged best player of Carlton’s ’63 finals series, which culminated in its 38-point Grand Final victory over Essendon - 12.11 83 to 6.9 45. That win iced a very tasty cake given that the Carlton team was anchored to the bottom of the ladder with only one win from the first seven matches that season - only to win the last 13 on the trot including the GF.

Bizarrely, the Carlton players had to wait three weeks to realize their dream, as Essendon and Richmond drew the Preliminary Final. The Bombers duly won the Prelim replay and earned the right to meet Carlton on Grand Final day, October 12, 1963 – at Bacchus Marsh’s Maddingley Oval of all places.

Smith wisely lobbed at the pub armed with nametags. As he said: “It’s 50 years after all, so without the nametags we would have been struggling”.

“The reunion gave all of us an opportunity to talk about things that had been forgotten,” he said. “For example, Brian Gorman was suspended for four weeks in the second semi and it had slipped my mind. He reminded me that he snotted an Essendon bloke and turned up to the Grand Final to watch on, but got crook, had his appendix out and missed the celebrations.”

Smith said that all past players took the liberty of raising a glass to their former Carlton coach Tom Brooker (“the blokes would have run through a brick wall for Tommy”), together with their old captain John Morrison, Chris Challenger, Clive Gordon and John Kemp, all since deceased.

Other players from the ’63 year - Gerry Nagel, Alan Grace, Bob Cohen, Doug Thomas and Robert Guest - couldn’t be located for the purposes of the reunion, and as Smith suggested, “Maybe we’ll track them down in time for the 51^st”.