JACK BURKE and Silvio De Bolfo were cabinet-makers, whose professional lives first overlapped in the immediate post-World War Two years. For a time both men plied their craft for the glaziers TS Gill & Sons in Bell Street, Preston, which is where it’s thought they first met.

But Jack, who died on April 26, and Silvio, my grandfather, had more in common than cabinet-making.

Both were bound by Blue.

John Albert David (‘Jack’) Burke was born in the family home at 7 Huntingdon Grove, East Coburg, in January 1929. Jack was destined to align with Carlton at a time when football was gloriously territorial.

Silvio, a Northern Italian migrant of the late 1920s, was captivated by Horrie Clover, whom he saw play at Princes Park barely a year or two after he lugged his suitcases down the ship’s gangway and onto Melbourne’s North Wharf (thesedays New Quay).

For these two men there could be no other club.

Through the years, Jack stood with my grandfather in the outer at Princes Park. You could find them of a Saturday on the terraces at the Garton Street end, watching on in wonderment as the likes of Comben, Hands James and Kerr chased the leather.

In time, Jack’s eldest daughter Jenny and son Doug would join him in the Princes Park pilgrimages, as would my Dad John with his father Silvio. By the late 1960s my younger brother Paul and I tagged along, perched precariously on a collapsible stool, fashioned by Silvio, which he set up on the terraces. That stool elevated my brother and I above the heads of the grown-ups standing in front, so that we saw for the first time the brawn of Nicholls and Silvagni and the genius of Crosswell and Jesaulenko on that beautiful field of dreams.

In late March, Jenny called to ask if my father and I would like to catch up with her and Jack to reminisce once more – and so we did, over lunch at Heidelberg’s Old England Hotel.

This was the final time Jack ever ventured out. Three weeks later he was gone at the age of 92, having died peacefully just up the road at the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Centre.

Co-incidentally, Jack bid farewell in the lead-up to last Sunday’s Carlton-Essendon match – a contest in which his grandson, Nik Cox, turned out for the red and black.

Nik wore a black armband as a mark of respect to his grandfather, and Carlton landed the four points – which would have pleased Jack no end.

Last Tuesday, John Albert David Burke was farewelled at Heidelberg Golf Club - and Nik and his father, the former Fitzroy, Melbourne and Brisbane footballer Darryl Cox, were amongst the pallbearers.

Earlier, those in the audience heard tributes from Jenny, who confirmed that “Jack’s love affair with Carlton started in his childhood years”.

As Jenny said: “East Coburg was a designated Carlton area and Dad’s Uncle Jim would take him to Princes Park”.

Another tribute to Jack was paid by his son Doug, who for years has lived in Utah in the Mountain West subregion of the western United States and was unable to attend the service in person.

The following is an edited version of Doug’s recollections of his father and his very special memories of the Carlton and Princes Park of Jack Burke’s time, as relayed by a family friend.

I could share quite a few memories of Pop, but will share one I like to hold onto. This is the story of a Saturday in the life of Dad and two of his kids. This is definitely one of my more cherished childhood memories of him . . .

It’s April in Melbourne - and this runs through every Fall (Autumn) and Winter weekend into early Spring - going to the footy every Saturday morning to see our beloved formerly mighty Blues who during our childhood were in their golden years with stars like ‘Big Nick’ and ‘Jezza’.

Mum had lunch ready to go by 11.45am so that Jenny, Dad and I were in the Kingswood and out the driveway our home in Erskine Road Macleod by 12.30.

We zigzagged through all the backstreets – Dad’s so-called ‘shortcuts’ – through the suburbs of West Heidelberg to Preston, Alphington, Thornbury and Northcote, trying to avoid every traffic light and major intersection to park in the same spot every second Saturday at Princes Park.

We’d stand in the same queue outside the ground and listen to the roar as the Carlton reserves players contested the final quarter.

Tickets into the ground were about four bucks each and Dad would give me ten cents to grab the weekend bible, the footy record, and we’d find our way through the outer, standing room only, past the manned white wooden booths selling lukewarm to cold Four ‘N’ Twenty pies and warm beer – and we never troubled the attendant for either in the years that we went.

Occasionally, but rarely, we’d score a bag of peanuts from the legendary ‘Peanut Man’, who always squawked as he walked through the crowd with his big hessian bag “peanuts, peanuts, shilling a bag”.

We stood behind the right hand point post for all those years with the same supporters. We would link up with the friendly faces of the De Bolfo family – the patriarch Silvio, his son John and John’s boys Tony and Paul.

Meanwhile, my meek and mild-mannered sister Jenny would recreate herself on Saturday afternoons on those asphalt terraces at Princes Park and scream - so that by the fourth quarter her lungs usually landed in the pocket.

The old man always had his black umbrella in case it rained … and for two and a half hours that steel tip of that umbrella would graze the right side of my head, with my father constantly pointing to and emphasising the complete and utter incompetence of the men in white.

After a couple of seasons of piercing and scar tissue building up, I finally had him relocated to stand beside Jenny instead of directly behind me.

At the end of the game we’d stream out of the ground, past the beautiful old terrace homes of inner Carlton and back to the car – and if the traffic was heavy we’d sit and listen to Harry Beitzel and Bill Jacobs review the game on 3AW – and when they went around the grounds we’d desperately hope that Collingwood, Essendon and Richmond all lost.

Then it was home for fish and chips, a bottle of Melbourne Bitter and the replay on HSV7 or the ABC. It drove Mum and my other sister Julie nuts, but we couldn’t get enough of it. Not until later did Mum join Dad in the loungeroom and settle in for the night to watch Michael Williamson and Mary Hardy host that unforgettable Melbourne variety show, the Penthouse Club.

On Sunday mornings there’d be a couple of hours work out the backyard, working on the veggie patch and cutting the lawn, so that by noon you’d be back inside – off to the fridge to grab a bottle of Carlton’s finest, a packet of Colvan Chips, then settle into the couch to watch three hours of superb TV where grown men squabbled and cracked bad jokes on World Of Sport.

A few guests here and there mixed in with Lou (Richards) and ‘Captain Blood’ (Jack Dyer) handing out the sponsors’ fabulous gifts of Hutton’s Footy Franks and leg hams to the lucky.

These were our Autumn and Winter weekends with Dad - and I wouldn’t change any of it, even now.