Famously dubbed “Duncan’s Match”, it was the day Alex Duncan hauled in a staggering 33 marks (some eyewitnesses vouched for as many as 45) as the visitors prevailed against Collingwood in the battle of the high Cs.
The yellowing pages of the now-defunct Melbourne daily The Sun News-Pictorial attest to Duncan’s genius. Carlton captain Horrie Clover, in a post-match interview with correspondent Gerald Brosnan, didn’t hold back on the superlatives.
“We had the call in the air and Duncan’s performances were phenomenal,” Clover declared. “Their equal has rarely been seen; certainly they have not been surpassed. One can say he was a super-footballer”.
Brosnan himself was equally as glowing in his match report.
“I doubt if a finer individual effort than that of Duncan’s has ever been witnessed. The Carlton half-back couldn’t go wrong. With uncanny anticipation he seemed to be always in the right place, doing the correct thing, and ever in Collingwood’s way. Both his marking and kicking was wonderful,” Brosnan wrote.
“Duncan was magnificent, standing head and shoulders above everyone else on the field."
Legend has it that George Robert Alexander Duncan was first invited to train with Carlton on the sayso of the local station-master on the Romsey railway. It was the station master, an avid Carlton follower, who tipped the club’s recruiters into Duncan’s series of outstanding individual performances at local level. As a result, in 1921 Duncan first appeared at Princes Park en route to forging a 10-year link built on 141 senior appearances for the old dark Navy Blues. Duncan made an immediate impression up front, complementing the team’s acknowledged champion centre half-forward, Clover. His maiden season brought state representation for Victoria and culminated with his appearance in the 1921 Grand Final, in which Carlton fell just four points short: 4.8 (32) to Richmond’s 5.6 (36). Duncan was adjudged amongst Carlton’s best players afield in that Grand Final, but it was of no consolation to him or his fellow leatherhunters, the likes of Paddy O’Brien and Albert Boromeo. They had made a pact to win that game to honour the memory of their late rover Lyle Downs, who had collapsed and died in the rooms after an otherwise innocuous training session at Princes Park in July of that year.
Though he later emerged as Carlton’s leading goalkicker (with 27 goals in 1924), Duncan ultimately assumed duties as a centre half-back. This role reversal worked to the team’s great benefit, for Duncan’s height (he stood 185cm, or 6’1” in the old measurement), superb judgment and vice-like hands ensured that he was ideally suited to the key defensive post, and his agility was the match of virtually any opponent.
When he entered that ninth round encounter at Victoria Park in June 1927, Duncan could not have known that the Collingwood team was on the cusp of football immortality. Indeed, his direct opponent, Frank Murphy, together with the likes of Harold Rumney, Charley Dibbs, the Colliers and the Coventrys, would all play their part in the Magpies’ consecutive Grand Final conquests of 1927-30.
On the eve of the game, Collingwood sat pretty atop the League ladder, with its great inner city foe hovering in sixth place and striving for a top four berth. In the lead-up to the match, The Argus observed: “Collingwood, which is level with Geelong for first place, and Carlton, which is one game behind its leaders, will provide the most important match, and a record crowd is expected. Both teams have been playing splendid football, and a fine exhibition should result.”
Though few statistics were tallied in those days, Duncan’s glorious showing prompted the gentlemen of the press to reach for their notepads. That the visitors prevailed, 14.11 (95) to 13.5 (83), was almost incidental given the magnitude of Duncan’s history-making display. He almost singlehandedly commandeered Carlton to a famous victory, the Blues’ first at Victoria Park since the 18th round of 1921.
Wells captures "Duncan's match"
On that wintry weekend in ’27, almost 33,000 aficionados of football’s two greatest rivals paid an aggregate sum of ?940 at the gate to witness Duncan’s game for the ages. One critic wrote: “His aerial work was simply perfection - some of his marks were hair-raising ones. Never was there such a brilliant performance. Nothing could stop him, and he did not make a mistake in four quarters. His beautiful drop-kicking was as flawless as his marking.”
The Argus reporter was even more glowing. “Many former footballers and legislators described the match as the best since pre-war days, and referred to the play of Duncan, of Carlton, as the finest individual effort in the same time,” he wrote. “As Collingwood’s Murphy was drawn to say afterwards, ‘I never saw a finer display. Duncan was magnificent, and, in addition, it was a pleasure to play against him, for he was perfectly fair all through the game.’”
But perhaps the final word belongs to John Worrall, the great Australian game’s first coach and the sporting journalist who reportedly later coined the immortal axiom “Bodyline”.
Worrall declared of Duncan’s showing against Collingwood that he had not seen an individual display to match it in more than 40 years of football.
“If any one man saved a game, that man was Duncan,” Worrall reported for The Australasian. “His aerial work [was] simply perfection.
“Every effort was meritorious, while many were hair-raising. Nothing could stop him. He sailed over everybody, the certainty with which he held the ball evoking roars of approval, both from friend and foe.”
