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Some of the greatest figures in the Carlton Football Club’s illustrious history today converged on the Social Club to bid farewell to their late former President George Harris.

Amongst mourners were members of Carlton’s coveted 1968 premiership team which landed the club its first premiership in 21 years - Gary Crane, Barry Gill, Alex Jesaulenko, Peter Jones, Wes Lofts, Dennis Munari and John Nicholls – together with the then coach Ron Barassi.

Also paying their final respects were former Carlton premiership players Rod Ashman, Jim Buckley, Syd Jackson, Stephen Kernahan, Mark Maclure, David McKay, Geoff Southby and Mike Fitzpatrick, the current AFL Commission Chairman; as well as former Carlton presidents Ivan Rohrt, John Elliott, Ian Collins (also a member of the ’68 team) and Graham Smorgon.

Carlton President Richard Pratt AC, who was unavoidably committed with business interstate, was an apology and was represented at the funeral by his wife Jeanne. Current players Jarrad Waite, Brendan Fevola and the club’s best and fairest Andrew Carrazzo attended, as did Senior Coach Brett Ratten and CEO Greg Swann.

With Carlton Chaplain the Reverend Steve Webster presiding over the 90-minute service, tributes to the remarkable life of a man cruelly cut down by a stroke in his last sixteen years came in abundance. A recorded reminiscence of Harris’s late wife Jeanne was aired, while family members Andrew Harris and Letitia Plain conveyed personal memories of a man hardened by his wartime experiences.

Barassi, Munari and Collins also talked of Harris the ruthless and intimidating football powerbroker who heralded in what was arguably his beloved club’s most successful era on record.

This was a most fitting Concert for George. It opened to the strains of  Old Blue Eyes' My Way and ended with The Last Post - in remembrance of a time when George, brother Joe and father Joe Senior were taken as Changi prisoners for a three and a half year stretch following the fall of Singapore in 1940.

As the faithful filed out of the Laurie Kerr Bistro, the body of the acknowledged father of modern-day Carlton was wheeled through the Boardroom - the place where Harris once plotted the fortunes of a future powerhouse which ultimately delivered a quarter of the club’s 16 premierships under his watch.

From there it was placed in a hearse and, to the strains of Lily Of Laguna, taken on a final lap of the Carlton ground, before disappearing through the gate between the Legends and Heroes Stands at the Garton Street end.