As early as August 1898, moving image cameras filmed League matches, capturing footage of Essendon and Geelong’s late season clash at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground. However, it’s not until Saturday, October 2, 1909 at the famous Melbourne Cricket Ground that the earliest surviving glimpse emerges of the way the game was played.
The film, which runs a little over ten minutes, brings to life long-gone luminaries of Carlton’s glory years under Jack Worrall - men of stature such as the captain-coach Fred “Pompey” Elliott, the 1899 Stawell Gift winner Norman “Hackenschmidt” Clark, the first 200-game player Rod “Wee” McGregor and the only five-time premiership player “Champagne” Charlie Hammond.
Even the first Carlton mascot, master Samuel Grimes, can be seen flanking his heroes as “Pompey” leads them onto Jolimont’s hallowed turf.
Three years ago, on the centenary of the film’s production, the NFSA Archivist Ken Berryman noted that footage of the 1909 VFL Grand Final was produced by Charles Cozens Spencer, one of the earliest and most successful film exhibitors in Australia. Berryman said that in 1908, Spencer established a film production unit, and proceeded to produce a series of topical newsreels and ‘scenics’, including aspects of everyday life in Melbourne, for inclusion in his programs.
Berryman revealed that Spencer’s production arm was headed by cinematographer Ernest Higgins and, while most films in the early period were restricted by film camera load and characterised by long takes from a single, static camera position, by 1909 films were already becoming more polished with a wider range of shot selection, including panning shots, the addition of written titles, and editing for continuity.
“The 1909 Grand Final film coverage is virtually intact, a rare occurrence in a period from which less than five per cent of film prints produced locally have survived. Most 35mm nitrate-based film from this era eventually decomposed to a highly toxic, unusable state,” Berryman said.
“In an age of few permanent cinemas, Spencer took out a lease on the Lyceum Hall in Sydney and remodelled it as a venue for film presentation. He promoted his Lyceum shows with a range of gimmicks, including his wife, dubbed Senora Spencer, as Australia’s only female projectionist. Films shot by his cameraman would have been included as part of his film programming in Sydney, interstate, and most likely shown overseas as well as examples of exotic colonial colour.
“Most surviving films from this period were held by film exchanges or distribution agencies, or found in old cinemas, or gathered and looked after by film collectors. The 1909 Grand Final film was one of many early silents acquired by Gerald Tayler, who ran the distribution company National Films of NSW. His wife Dorothy took over representation of this collection after his death and ultimately allowed the then National Film Archive, a division of the National Library, to select and make copies of key films from this collection.”
The Archive over time made new negatives and struck new prints of these films from the Tayler Collection and, with permission, provided access to them for non-theatrical screenings in Australia by film societies, education groups etc. Film negatives and prints are preserved by the Archive, now known as the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), in temperature and humidity-controlled vaults in Canberra.
In 2009, in celebration of the film’s centenary, the NFSA created a new digital master from the film’s best surviving film component. From this, it produced a three-minute highlights package of the film for viewing on the big screen at Melbourne’s Federation Square.
More recently, to coincide with Sydney/South Melbourne’s participation in the 2012 Grand Final, the NSFA released the extended version of the film, which was screened at Federation Square.
The film offers an extraordinary glimpse into long-forgotten aspects of the game - from place kicks through to slap passes, numberless guernseys, players chaired from the field post-match by excited spectators - relics of the past thankfully captured by Spencer’s camera.
Regrettably, the result didn’t go the way of the Carlton team, at that time endeavouring to build on its unprecedented hat-trick of premierships - 1906, ’07 and ’08 - under the watch of coach Jack Worrall.
In a low-scoring contest, Carlton kept South goalless in the final term, but agonizingly finished two points adrift - 4.12 (36) to the Bloods’ 4.14 (38) - before 37,759 football patrons.
The 1909 Grand Final delivered South Melbourne its first premiership pennant, one of only five in 115 years of competition as South/Sydney.
As footage of the famous Grand Final features Carlton players in varying forms of playing strip (both the original blue lace-up with chamois yoke and the all-navy jumper with white CFC/CC monogram feature), it is envisaged that the film will be screened as part of a new display at Visy Park showcasing the history of the famed Carlton guernsey.
To view the entire film, courtesy of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia, go to the NFSA YouTube channel.
