bondiblue wrote:
Blue Sombrero wrote:
verbs wrote:
Something must've been up for him not to be persevered with. He currently has the 10th best possession average of anyone who has played for the Blues since 1986. And that includes one game where he only got two possessions. 33 in his last game too.
I remember a classic Blues News article about him. I can't quite recall the specifics but it was something along the lines that when he was at school, his school footy team beat their record for goals scored in a match which had been set previously by John James and his schoolmates. And Michael beat John's individual goals in a game record with something crazy like 30 goals.
Would definitely make a great Blueseum article.
As a kid at St Pats Ballarat in the sixties, we used to pass the team photos several times a day. The 1952 team photo was outside the entrance to the juniors' end of the dining room at the time. The photo had written beside it in white, 'SPC 52-51 to Ballarat High School 0-1' as I recall. John James played CHF that day and kicked 35 goals. Legend had it that he didn't always play forward but the then coach, Brother W.T. O'Malley, who coached the footy team there to about twenty-five of their 49 consecutive BPS premierships, put him at CHF to set a goalkicking record. What has happened since then, others will know but if someone has broken that record, I am not aware. Somewhere under the house I have the book on the history of SPC from 1897 to 2000-odd. If I ever find it, I'll look up John's boy in it. Watch this space but don't hold your collective breaths for a result.
You're no fun.
Good story.
You're a footy Pearler BS
Thanks, Bondi.
I just looked up the school history book and not only is there no mention of John James's goalkicking record in a single game, there is no mention of it ever being beaten. There is a mention of that season, though. To get some perspective, in 1952 there were four schools in the Ballarat Public Schools (BPS) competition. (It expanded to five during the sixties when Ballarat East High School was opened and where ironically I did my first lateral meniscus at the princely age of 17 but that's another story altogether.)
The BPS fixture required each school to play each other home and away and the winner was decided on wins, losses and if needs be, percentage.
In the six games they played in the BPS that year, 1952 John James kicked 83 goals, setting a record for the comp that may never have been broken, although I recall one Paul Shannon regularly kicking 10-15 in about 1968 while his Lebanese father stood on the sidelines shouting,
"That's a my boy." but that's also another story.
In one of the six games in 1952, James kicked the aforementioned 35 against the hapless Ballarat High School when he was moved to Centre Half Forward for the express purpose of kicking a mountain of goals. That upped his overall average but in the other five games, he averaged a lazy 9 per game from (wait for it) Centre Half Back. BTW the SPC oval is almost the same size as the MCG. If I recall, it's two yards shorter.
Here's another piece of info about that 1952 St Pat's team. It also had Brian Gleeson in it. Gleeson went on to win the Brownlow playing with Melbourne in 1957, I think it was.
Thanks to you lot I had an enjoyable evening wading through the old Alma Mater's history. Sorry about the lack of info on Michael but as John was and is a famous Carlton man, I thought I'd add to the story and the legend that is John James.