Like the day in 1979 Stan Magro took out Jezza and we came from five goals behind at half-time to completely overrun Collingwood in yet another mighty clash and victory with and over our most hated rivals. It’s ironic that Jezza didn’t see the finish of that game where excitement ascended into delirium nor was he on the MCG on Grand Final day when the siren sounded for that famous five-point win.
But back to One-Eyed-Hill. It was a tremendously sad day when our home away from home – standing in front of the press box – was taken from us to make way for the Elliott Stand. The date: May 19, 1986 with Ronald Dale Barassi swinging a ceremonial sledgehammer at 1.17pm before the cranes moved in to demolish the 50-year-old structure. We were there to mark the occasion and many of us made of with a souvenir plank which were placed lovingly in the corner of Stewart’s Hotel in Elgin Street as we drank to its memory and reflected upon the joy we had been blessed during one of Carlton’s golden ages.
So we were faced with finding a new home for One-Eyed-Hill and, as we liked to “mix it” with Opposition supporters, in front of the old scoreboard was the obvious venue. To get to our new home meant we had to pass “Intellectuals Hill”, the name some Melbourne University and Age types had dubbed their spot in the forward pocket at the Lygon Street end. We disparingly referred to it as “Pontificator’s Hill” but they were Carlton supporters and we loved them.
But just in front of them stood one small man. Well small in size but a giant in stature. His name: B.A. (Bob) Santamaria – the man who caused the great Labor Party split of 1955? by forming the Democratic Labor Party and a man committed to weeding out communism in Australia and flushing it down the toilet. And yes, there was only one other cause “Santa”, as he was affectionately known, was as committed to:
supporting the mighty Navy Blues.
Apart from dropping a political nuclear bomb in the 1950’s, Santa dropped a bomb among the Carlton faithful when he announced publicly that he would no longer be attending Carlton games when West Coast and the Brisbane Bears entered the competition in 1987. It was the lead for a feature on the new national competition I wrote when a staff writer on The Australian and boy did it cause a storm.
Quite simply, from Santa’s point of view, now there’s a theatrical and epic pun, he didn’t want to see Carlton playing Brisbane or West Coast. He wanted the blood and guts of Carlton and Richmond or Carlton and Collingwood. A true traditionalist. Yet his view was hard for the Carlton faithful to swallow. Like so many other Carlton supporters he was a fixture at Carlton games, standing almost non-descript in his favourite position at each home game. Never a home game would pass when myself and the other one-eyed-hillites lucky enough to know the great man wouldn’t pop over for a quick chat – and it was never about politics, only Carlton.
So another bright sunny day greeted us at the Parc de Princes in 1987 with the Blues travelling smoothly with a 5-1 win loss record. It was already clear we were a better team than ’86 and we had a burning desire to avenge our GF loss to Hawthorn that year – hopefully against Hawthorn! We wandered through the crowd, cans in hand, when we were stopped in our tracks. I said to Silly: “Look who it is.” And as I turned over my right shoulder I could see Silly with smile of a pleasure and satisfaction and he has stared at Santa. “Santa, you beauty,” we cried almost as with as much passion as we did when Jezza was soaring into the stratosphere. Santa was very funny in his response. He blushed, shuffled his feet and looked slightly down as we approached him. “Hello Santa, how are you,” I inquired. “Fine. Very good,” he said in his clipped tone. “Hey. I thought you said you weren’t coming to the footy anymore. I mean I quoted you directly in The Australian. We’ll have to print a huge retraction on Monday.” We all laughed with merriment. “What changed your mind, Santa,” Silly asked. Santa’s head shot up and he looked us straight in the eye with a lovely gleam and said: “I think we’re going to win the flag”. But Santa, we responded, it’s only round seven. Santa’s point of view was this: “I know a Carlton premiership side when I see one and this is a Carlton premiership side.” We doubled over with joy because we knew he was right. Ahhh. The outer at Carlton and it was from that day forward we knew we had found our new home for One-Eyed-Hill.
Post-script. In the weeks leading up to B.A. Santamaria’s death he started to take lunch breaks. Santa had never done this before. It turned out he was going to Princes Park everyday to reminisce about the many joys he had experienced at the ground before he said his final farewell.