In today’s frenetic consumer-driven world comes this timely reminder of what life was like when even the very basics like food and clothing were in drastically short supply.

This quaint little photograph of John Lemmon lending support to his football-mad grandsons Barrie Johns and little Michael at their home at 6 Norford Grove, Kooyong, was recently forwarded to the club with an accompanying letter penned by Barrie, himself a lifelong Carlton member and supporter.

Barrie wrote that the photograph was taken around 1945/’46, and that the massive piece of pigskin somehow hoisted by his younger brother was in fact a gift of the Carlton Football Club, at a time when, “as you might imagine, footballs were scarce after the war”.

“My grandfather, the late Hon. John Lemmon, MLA Williamstown 1904-’55, was born in the Trades Hall and played cricket for Carlton thirds. Naturally we barracked for the Blues,” Barrie said.

“The honorary secretary for the Carlton football Club at the time was the late Harry ‘Dinger’ Bell and the librarian at Parliament House. Somehow this football, a second cousin to a basketball, came to us.

“We would kick drop kicks on the concrete road and so the nose of the football got worn out. At the end of the football season, the 1945 premiership bloodbath against South Melbourne under Bob Chitty, our father took the deflated leather football case to the local cobbler, bootmaker, to have a leather patch sewn on the worn-out nose. For the next season the rubber bladder was reinserted into the leather case. Dad used our bike pump to inflate the footy. The footy was laced up and practice resumed on the road.”

My younger brother, Michael, and I were of an elite group of school boys who had a footy!

Yours truly,

Barrie Johns

Member 368534