Playing Career : 1902 - 1903
Debut : Round 17, 1902 vs Essendon, aged 21 years, 164 days
Carlton Player No. 144
Games : 2
Goals : 0
Last Game : Round 1, 1903 vs Collingwood, aged 22 years, 44 days
Height : 170 cm (5 ft. 7 in.)
Weight : 66 kg (10 stone, 5 lbs.)
DOB : 15 March, 1881
Another of the many thousands of Victorians who flocked to Western Australia at the height of the gold boom in the first years of the 20th century – and thereby fuelled the rapid expansion of Victorian Rules football – Sam Stivey returned to Melbourne in 1902 to play two senior matches for the Blues.
Stivey was born in Port Melbourne in 1881. By the age of twenty, he was working in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, and playing good football for Boulder City when word reached him that there were real opportunities available at the Carlton Football Club. Under new secretary-coach Jack Worrall, the Blues were scouring the country for football talent, and encouraging every player with ability and ambition to come to Princes Park.
Worrall’s first season of 1902 saw little improvement by the Blues, who continued to languish on the lower rungs of the eight-team ladder. But Jack had tried and assessed plenty of new players – including wingman Stivey – who made his debut in the last match of the season; a narrow six point loss to Essendon at Princes Park in August.
Stivey held his place in the team when the new season began in May, 1903, and helped celebrate Carlton’s 100th VFL game with a resounding 21-point victory over Collingwood. Sometime soon after that game he was given a permit to Port Melbourne, but he cut short his VFL career – probably for family reasons - and went back again to WA.
Little is known of Stivey’s football career afterward, but it is likely that he pulled on his boots for Boulder City or one of the other burgeoning clubs in the goldfields region. He married, and by 1914 was the father of five children.
When the First World War began in August 1914, Stivey enlisted for active service, but his age (he was 34) and his marital circumstances saw him restricted to home duties. He joined the supply section of the Medical Corps, where he rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant. In the last months of the war, he saw action of a kind at last, when he transferred to the Corps Sea Transport section and sailed in a convoy to England.
At the height of another war - on March 21, 1943 – Sam passed away, just eight days after his 55th birthday.