For it is through WF Evans, Carlton’s first President to preside over the club in a VFL premiership year, that a family linkage exists with the late Essendon champion and childhood Carlton supporter Dick Reynolds.
The photograph in question, which features WF and his son William Joshua in the Carlton District football team of 1909, has been graciously supplied by the Melbourne-based researcher and writer Dan Eddy. Eddy’s image has enabled the club to cross-reference it with the 1906 Carlton premiership team photo to verify Evans’ place amongst the group of previously unnamed officials.
Eddy is chronicling the life of Reynolds, Essendon’s triple Brownlow Medallist and four-time premiership footballer, for a soon-to-be-completed biography “King Richard”.
The photo is a real find for the club’s collection which, until now, had in its keep portraits of all but two of its 21 Carlton Presidents since 1897 - Evans and John McInerney.
Evans’ name first appears in the club’s annual report as one of 11 Carlton Vice-Presidents in 1904. Hailing from “Gowrie” in Royal Park, WF oversaw Carlton’s post-season trip to Norwood, which took in an exhibition match involving the South Australian premiers and won by the visitors, 11.13 to 8.8.
Elected President in 1905, WF oversaw the club’s operations for two years. He was one of three members of the football club’s ground committee (along with Messrs Broatch and Mills) who with the cricket club’s three appointees sought to improve the then Princes Oval and oversee the erection of the Ald. Gardiner Stand.
WF was there in 1906 - the same year Jack Worrall commandeered the Carlton team to its first Grand Final victory since it admittance to the League as a foundation member in 1897 - even though he was out of the country and in Japan on business for most of that year.
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The Carlton District football team of 1909. Evans is pictured in the back row, fourth from left.
But he was back for the business end of the ’06 season, for as the report also notes: “To celebrate the winning of the Premiership, the President of the Club (Mr. M (sic) F Evans) entertained the players, Executive, and personal friends at a smoke night in the Manchester Unity Hall. The event was a distinct success, and greatly enjoyed by the large gathering present”.
Born in England in 1853, WF’s year of migration is not known. What is known is that the resident café proprietor married Isabella Johnson in Melbourne in 1877 and together they settled in Carlton and raised seven children - amongst them a daughter Jean who later married Dick Reynolds.
“Jeanne’s family members were lifelong Carlton supporters but so too was Dick’s family. They eventually settled in and around the Parkville area after William Thomas Reynolds, Dick’s grandfather, relocated with his family from Taradale by the Bendigo railway line.
“Dick’s Dad William Meader Reynolds grew up in the area. He was a pretty rotund man and there’s no evidence he played local footy, but he did have the occasional kick in the street with the likes of Lang and the Gillespies . . . and Dick himself was a massive Horrie Clover fan,” Eddy said.
It is hear that the story gets somewhat murky, for Eddy relates the tale that at some point between the 1931 and ’32 seasons, William Meader Reynolds approached the then Carlton President Dave Crone with the suggestion they have a look at young Richmond, then chasing the leather for the black and whites of Woodlands.
“He went over to Carlton and said to Dave Crone: ‘My boy looks like he’s going to be a promising footballer . . . can he try out here?’ and Mr Crone replied: ‘Sure, bring him over’,” Eddy said.
What happened next has remained somewhat clouded for years given that the Reynolds family rarely broached the subject of the Carlton connection.
But the following quote, attributed to Reynolds in an interview granted in 1998, offered an alarming insight.
“I went over and trained one night with Carlton and I’ll never forget it. Not one bugger came up and said ‘What’s your name son?’ or, ‘What you gonna do?’. And I got out of there. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough”.
What might have been... An artist's impression of Reynolds in the Navy Blue (Image has been altered).
That said, did Eddy believe Carlton was derelict in its duty?
“I reckon you’d be clutching at straws to say Dick should have been picked up by Carlton. He either trained really poorly that particular training night or perhaps he was one of a hundred hopefuls who turned up to have a run . . . and he was only a skinny kid then,” Eddy explained.
“Dick was pretty quiet at a youngster too and it took a trainer at Essendon to suggest ‘Maybe you should throw him into the middle to get him involved’.”
Regrettably, both William Frederick Evans and William Joshua were long gone before Reynolds’ ill-fated Carlton foray. WF died in 1921 and within a year his son succumbed to a heart attack in his 30s - and one can only wonder what might have been had either still been around to wield their substantial influence.
WF Evans in Japan, 1906.
“Mind you the Reynolds’ were living in the Aberfeldie by the time Dick was born and he was such a promising player that I don’t know Carlton could have kept his talents secret from the Essendon committee anyway,” said Eddy.
Eddy hopes that his book will be released in the second half of next year. His three-year research has in part incorporated interviews with 140 people, amongst them family members and former footballers including the 1947 Carlton premiership players Ken Hands and Allan Greenshields against whom Reynolds pitted his immense skills.
