A PHOTO FROM GRAND FINAL WEEK

GRAND FINAL WEEK

It's Grand Final week and I have been drawn to recall a memorable experience in this week, six years ago.

TWO BRAVE OLD LIONS

It was late September in Melbourne. It seemed a good time to
take Bill for a nostalgic tour of the Newry Street neighbourhood
in North Fitzroy where he grew up in the 1940’s and 1950’s.

Bill Heywood had been a resident in the Nursing Home since
his stroke a couple of years earlier, at the age of 62. The
Activities Officer, Sue, had introduced us when I became a
volunteer visitor.

Bill had been encouraged to share the remarkable story of his
life. We had been writing it down for him so that other
interested people might read how a young Newry Street boy had
left school unable to read and yet had become literate as a 15
year old working at a timber settlement in the State Forest at
Murrindindi. The cause of the transformation had been a
perceptive work mate who saw Bill could not read and who took
the risk of challenging him and then teaching him.

This last Thursday in September suited us all. Sue was able to
borrow the van, I was free and Bill was keen to pay a visit to
that corner of Fitzroy where he had grown up, running the
streets, selling Sporting Globes, playing truant, climbing over
the freight carriages in the Depot at the end of the street, scaling
the wooden bridge that spanned the railway in the Edinburgh
Gardens.


We drove along Brunswick Street, past the shops where the
boys and girls used to meet, glanced at the Lord Newry pub where Bill would sometimes be sent to collect some beer in a billy can after hours, and we parked in Freeman Street looking across the oval to the old grandstand which had been restored to its former glory.

With Sue pushing the wheelchair we trundled to the end of the street where Bill gazed at the old footbridge and wondered how
on earth he and his mates had clambered up and down its side in
their exuberant childhood.

Turning into Newry Street, we walked along to the old family
home, one of a group of single story terrace houses, while Bill
recalled; Jacky Cain, who had collected lizards; Bill Byron, who used to earn his income taking his horses to shows
and fairs; the games of hand tennis they used to play in the
middle of the street which was now filled with parked cars.

Approaching Brunswick Street, memories flooded back of the
morning after the big gang fight when the local doctor roused
the protagonists and made them replace the pickets they had torn
off his fence for weapons.

Bill pointed out the homes of the Clay brothers and Butch Gale
and we remembered how, in those days, many of the players
lived close to the Oval and turned up for training after a full
day’s work.

Back on the corner of Freeman and Brunswick Streets, the old
two storey gate house stood as a reminder of the time when
some local lads broke into the bar there and stole cartons of
cigarettes.

The best was yet to be!


We were intending to head back to the Nursing Home for lunch but decided first to make a circuit of the Oval on the concrete path that now runs alongside the fence.

Across near the grandstand, on the grass, were two men, one
with a long scarf and a football jumper draped over his shoulder
and the other armed with a camera and a notebook. As we drew
closer, I gasped,

“Bill, I think it’s Kevin Murray.”

[I should mention that Bill is one of those ex-Fitzroy followers
who has transferred his loyalty to the Brisbane Lions. The
intensity of his love for the Lions is matched only by his
antipathy for anything connected with Collingwood. For
football supporters of earlier days, this tribal neighbourhood
feeling was a major factor in one’s life.]

As we neared the two men it became clear that it was indeed
Kevin Murray, former Fitzroy hero, captain and Brownlow
Medallist.

“Excuse me, Kevin,” I called. “Bill here is one of your old fans
and he’d love to say hello.”

Kevin strode across immediately and greeted Bill warmly. He
then overwhelmed us by taking off the Brownlow Medal which
he was wearing and placing it round Bill’s neck. Bill glowed.
Then Kevin placed the Lions guernsey on Bill’s arm, put his arm around Bill’s shoulder and paused for some photographs.

Bill sat silently, beaming with delight.

On his return to the Nursing Home, Bill was heard to say,
“If I never get out of here again, that will keep me going for
years.”


Two days later, with Kevin Murray cheering them on, Brisbane
won the AFL flag for the second year in a row.

Some weeks later, Sue and Bill wrote to Kevin to express their
gratitude. A letter came back soon after, written from Kevin’s
home at Arcadia , in which Kevin says,

‘The most important thing that I have learnt from all my hard
years at Fitzroy and 40 years climbing around scaffolds in the
building trade , you never forget where you came from, we all
have to start somewhere. Meeting Bill that day gave me as
much enjoyment as it did to Bill, because when I was at Fitzroy
it was people like Bill who gave me the inspiration to achieve
what I did during my career.”

If you visit Bill’s room today, you will find one wall is covered
with pictures of Brisbane Lions premiership teams of the
nineties. However, pride of place is held by a photograph of that
memorable September meeting of two brave old Lions.

Mac Nicoll, 2003



Postscript

Bill Heywood died two years later. He will be long remembered as an extraordinary raconteur, a brilliant crossword solver, a fanatical Lions supporter and a good friend.