As a Carlton senior footballer he ran out but once wearing the famous button-up dark Navy Blue guernsey with the No.47 on the back.

It happened almost 50 years ago - but Daryl Gutterson always deemed it an honour to wear that jumper.

Now, in the wake of Daryl’s untimely passing at the age of 67, the item carries even greater poignancy for the loved ones he leaves behind.

Zoned to Carlton (but only just as the dividing line with Fitzroy was across the road from his family’s home in Derrick Street, Lalor), Daryl, then an impressionable 16 year-old, joined fellow Lalor player Ian Cartwright in the move to Princes Park in 1969 – in what was a magnificent epoch in Carlton history.

A second cousin of the seven-game Footscray player and 1962 Gardiner Medallist Jim Gutterson, Daryl – or ‘Dizzy’ as Brent Crosswell dubbed him for his breathtaking turn of speed - first turned out for the Bill Hoogen-coached Under 19s.

He progressed through the reserves - initially under the watch of the late Keith McKenzie – and in 1971 finally earned his one and only call-up, ironically against the Lions, in the Round 10 match at Princes Park.

Having blown out the candles on his 18th birthday cake just 27 days earlier, Daryl featured in another first when he followed ‘Big Nick’ down the race in that maiden senior appearance.

For this was also the game in which Carlton coach Ron Barassi and Fitzroy coach Graham Donaldson (Daryl’s reserve grade coach at Carlton the previous year), famously agreed to trial the 50-yard centre square, within which only four players from each team were permitted to frequent at the centre bounce.

Named 20TH man on the bench alongside John Warden (wearing the No.46), the budding wingman with a thumping left foot got the call-up early in his solitary senior appearance and stood both David Rhodes and Treva McGregor, eight weeks after McGregor took out the ’71 Stawell Gift – the last League footballer to win the coveted footrace.

Daryl’s oldest son Brent (so named after Crosswell his long-time friend) said that a lack of application in his tender years probably went against his father.

“After making his senior debut against Fitzroy in ’71, Dad played the rest of that year in the reserves . . . and he played on in the twos until the end of ’73,” Brent said.

“Although ‘Barass’ liked Dad as a footballer, Dad always told me that with the likes of Garry Crane, Ian Robertson and Bryan Quirk going around, it was a case of ‘right place, wrong time’ for him.

“Being a young guy, Dad probably thought natural talent would get him through . . . and in the end a run-in with ‘Barass’ didn’t help.”

“The run-in” to which Brent referred took place on another occasion, when Daryl was kicking the dew of the grass.

A former teammate, the 1968 Premiership player Ian Collins, recalled the incident.

“Daryl was quite a clever wing/half-forward, although he wasn’t very big and was quite light. Anyway he was playing in the reserves this particular day and at half-time, while we were stripping for the senior match, he walked into the room,” Collins said.

“Barassi lined Daryl up and told him he was shirking the issue. Barass grabbed him by the throat and tried to put him into one of the lockers. The locker was about half the size of Daryl, but Barass was trying to force him headfirst into it.”

Little did Barassi realise that Daryl, a southpaw, was a more than handy amateur welterweight, and retribution came swiftly – courtesy a left hook across the chops - which split the coach’s lip and drew blood in the process.

Not surprisingly, Daryl, at 21, and with 68 reserve grade matches and the one solitary senior appearance to his name, parted company with the club he loved. He sought a clearance to Fitzroy, but the Blues played hard ball and so he crossed to VFA outfit Brunswick.

By the age of 28, after having represented Watsonia in the Diamond Valley Football League, Daryl opted to give the game away - his commitment to work as a sales rep for a fittings and bearings business taking precedence.

“Though he loved Carlton, Dad always thought that if he’d lived on the other side of Derrick Street he might have been a 100-game Fitzroy player given the players he was competing against at Princes Park in that era,” Brent said.

But Daryl always kept a soft spot for Princes Park and its people. He was a regular at Spirit of Carlton functions and only recently took great delight in seeing Callum Moore getting around in the old No.47.

“Dad used to say to me “I only played one game’, but I’d tell him ‘Dad, you played in exalted company – the company of absolute legends of the VFL/AFL’ and I’d have given anything to have run out once in a senior game wearing a Carlton guernsey,” said Brent - himself a Carlton reserve grade player who trained with the likes of Bradley, Fevola, Koutoufides and Ratten through 2002 - and took goalkicking honours with 30 from a half-forward flank.

“Dad played in a magnificent era at Carlton with Crane, Crosswell, Gallagher, Jackson, Jesaulenko, McKay, Nicholls, Robertson and Walls – famous names that are still talked about now.

“As a person, Dad was a pure gentleman. He wanted to know everyone’s stories. When I was playing he used to follow me down to the games and we’d talk footy, because footy brought him so much joy.”

The four-time Carlton Premiership player David McKay, as with Collins another of Daryl’s old teammates, remembered the one-game wingman as “a good player who like so many of his time found it difficult to break into the side”.

“But that one game meant so much to Daryl. He was proud of his association with Carlton and he was loved and respected by his former teammates,” McKay said.

“He was a terrific fellow too. Every time you saw him at a past players function, which was often, his face lit up. He had a rough look about him, but underneath beat a heart of gold.”

Daryl died in the Intensive Care Unit of Heidelberg’s Austin Hospital on Thursday, August 13, after suffering a cardiac arrest five days previous. He is survived by his wife Robyn (a niece of Carlton’s first Brownlow Medallist Bert Deacon), sons Brent and Rhys, daughter Emmilee and their respective spouses, and six grandchildren.

The funeral service for Daryl Graeme Gutterson will be held next Monday, August 24, commencing 11.00am. To view the service via webcast, go to www.tobinbrothers.com.au

Daryl Gutterson’s one senior appearance, Carlton v Fitzroy, Round 10, Saturday, June 5, 1971

Carlton 13.12 (90) defeated Fitzroy 10.15 (75)

B: Ian Collins Geoff Southby Vin Waite

HB: Kevin Hall David McKay Barry Gill

C: Trevor Keogh Bill Barrot Phil Pinnell

HF: Ian Robertson Robert Walls (vc) Syd Jackson

F: Peter Jones Alex Jesaulenko Barry Armstrong

Ruck: John Nicholls (c) Sergio Silvagni Adrian Gallagher

Res: John Warden Daryl Gutterson

Coach: Ron Barassi