It was a big day for Alan, then 16 and a budding member of the Carlton cheersquad. The MCG’s gates had only just opened, and he’d secured his vantage point by the pickets at the MCG, when a newspaper snapper took this image by the old Southern Stand.
Sporting a dark Navy Blue top hat upon which the names of Carlton coach Ken Hands, and his boys were plastered, Alan was only too happy to pose for the photograph.
“I made the hat up to make it stand out, and the bloke said ‘I want to take a photo’,” Alan recalled recently. “The hat was a piece of cardboard with a big bit of crepe wrapped around it, but it didn’t last too long.”
One of 99,203 people at “The G” that day, Alan was perfectly positioned to bear witness to one of the most controversial incidents in League history, when Geelong full-forward Doug Wade was “pinged” by field umpire Jack Irving for an infringement against Carlton’s Peter Barry in the closing seconds of the match. That decision effectively put paid to the Cats’ premiership aspirations with the siren sounding and the Blues five points clear.
And Alan is adamant that Jack got it right.
“There was a great hullaballoo over this, but I had a great view of it and saw it happen before the umpire blew his whistle. Doug Wade grabbed both sides of Peter Barry’s shorts, so the free kick was definitely there.”
Born and bred in Davis Street, which runs between Princes and Lee Streets in Carlton, Alan fondly remembers completing the short walk through the Melbourne General Cemetery to see his heroes turn out at Princes Park.
“Back in those days I used to stand with Dad on ‘One-Eyed Hill’, but when work prevented him from going I joined the Carlton Cheersquad,” he said.
“I stayed on with members of the cheersquad until I was 21, and I can remember that we used to plonk ourselves in the Heatley Stand. The funny thing was that we actually tried to get the girls in the cheersquad to perform a dance routine on the ground whenever a Carlton goal was scored, and this was well before the Bluebirds were on the scene. We went to [then President] Lew Holmes and [secretary] Allen Cowie, lobbying them to let the girls run out, but Lew said the League would never allow it.”
Alan fondly remembers his involvement at Princes Park at a time “when the club didn’t have the resources”.
“In those days the Carlton people used to grab the kids and ask them to sell raffle tickets to raise funds for the social club. We used to carry the blanket around the ground and the supporters would throw coins from the terraces,” he said.
Alan recently returned to the old Carlton ground, recreating that moment in ‘62, albeit with less flamboyant headwear.
Alan Bolton recreates the moment almost 50 years on -
Visy Park, April 2010
And the man in the hat will be there again at the MCG on Monday, when the Blues take on the Cats once more - “and who knows . . . it might be a good omen, 48 years later”.
