The 102-game half-forward’s dramatic goal gave Carlton a narrow one-point win - 13.8 (86) to 11.19 (85) - and delivered the Blues’ their eighth premiership in a famous year which also saw Bert Deacon take out the club’s first Brownlow Medal.
Stafford, who recently attended the club’s “Magnificent Seven’s” function acknowledging the premierships of 1907, 47 and 87, vividly recalls his date with destiny.
“It was only because of Essendon’s bad kicking that we kept with them, but you know what they say about bad kicking – it’s bad football,” Stafford said.
“Looking back I was just happy getting picked in the side. That was the main thing. We had a good coach, Perc Bentley, there were a hell of a lot of good blokes up there and we stuck together both on and off the field. Everyone, from the committeemen down to the bootstudder helped eachother out in them days.”
Stafford’s show-stopping six-pointer brought great relief to an old teammate, Ken Hands, who thought he had blown it for the Blues minutes earlier.
“But then the boundary umpire called it back for out of bounds. Later, Ray Garby met that boundary umpire and he said that he didn’t know whether the ball was out of bounds, but he made up his mind that it was because of the reaction of the crowd.”
My own father, a boy of 11 in ’47, has but one memory of the Grand Final, which relates to the song “five minutes more”, penned by the American lyricist Sammy Cahn.
“I can remember the Carlton supporters singing ‘Give me five minutes more, only five minutes more’, and five minutes later Freddy Stafford delivered,” Dad told me.
Blueseum Footnote: Fred Stafford passed away in 2009. For more on Stafford's career, click his Biography link below