THE HIGHEST FLYING FORWARD ON THE PARK

GREG PARKE by Whispering Jack

They say that in sport, as with most things, timing is everything. If you're in the right place at the right time, you might taste greatness; become a hero. But if your timing is out by just a little, you might miss out on all the glory.

I often think that way about Greg Parke, the high marking spring-heeled, blond Demon key forward position player of the late '60's and early '70's. His timing for marks was perfection; he would position himself in a pack and suddenly soar seemingly without much effort to pluck the cherry strongly in those vice like hands. It was great stuff for the footy fan in those days although, today, this art seems to have almost died out of our game. In that respect, he timed his career well.

But the timing of his arrival from suburban Bentleigh to the Melbourne Football Club at the beginning of 1968 was a different thing altogether. I always believed that had Parke emerged at the club a mere five years earlier, he might have played in one or two premiership teams - perhaps even more - and therefore his career on a personal level could have been far more celebrated. He might even have become known as one of the club's true champion players and tasted team of the century glory.

The fact is however, that Parke arrived in the early days of one of the darkest periods in the club's history. While I still remember him as a great player in those troubled times, the club's circumstances robbed him of the glory of finals appearances in the red and blue and his status as a player in our great game was diminished by the fact that he played in such an unsuccessful side.

Back then, football was a different sport to the one it is today. The game was an amalgam of amateurism and semi-professionalism, clubs were run on chook raffles, teams played on suburban grounds that were dustbowls in autumn and mud heaps in the winter, few players were super fit or highly skilled, they used different types and styles of kicking, there was a lot more violence, nobody ever dared to handball on the back line and the contested pack mark was a feature of the game.

It was also an era that held very little joy for Demon supporters – especially not for those who had grown used to the taste of grand final success in the decade between 1955 and 1964 when the club took six premiership flags in a golden era that came to shattering end in the middle of the 1965 season. Despite the absence of Ron Barassi, hero to a generation of red and blue youngsters, who defected to lowly Carlton in the off-season, things looked good when the team won the first eight games in the dramatic winter of '65 but things fell apart quickly after that. I remember a Queens Birthday flogging at the hands of an emerging St. Kilda, the sacking and reinstatement of Norm Smith, the club going into freefall and failing to make the finals, the exodus of household names from the golden era and the failure of recruiters to replenish the quality of the club’s playing stocks. The team really nose-dived in Smith's later years and by the end of the 1967 season, the great coach was gone. Without Smith, without Barassi and without many of the stars, we found ourselves searching for new champions but very few potential heroes came along.

There was Stan Alves, Gary Hardeman, Ross Dillon (but he was often injured), Greg Wells and later the great Robbie (who I maintain was our only real hero since 1964), but back then, when other sides such as Carlton were finding the likes of Alex Jesaulenko and Brent Crosswell and Richmond was signing Royce Hart, Dick Clay and Francis Bourke, the Demons were always struggling.

I always recall those dark days when I drive past the intersection of Hawthorn and North Roads in East Brighton. A cynic might say that this is because there’s a cemetery located on one of its corners but that's not really the reason. The truth is that on another corner stands a milk bar that was the venue of a meeting I had with the great Greg Parke when he was a young copper and I was a slightly younger university student.

But first, let's go back to 1968 when 11 new players were introduced to Melbourne's senior line up - Kelvin Clarke, John Forster, Greg Parke, Denis Clark, Phil Rhoden, Darryl Schwarz, Ray Biffin, George Lakes, Euan Campbell, Peter Weekes and Graeme Aubrey. Some of the above became handy footballers but only Greg Parke who was the 864th Demon to don the guernsey was to play more than 10 games in his debut season. The 185 cm 84.5 kg forward played 18 of them in 1968 and went on to play a hundred or so more and while he never attained hero status, he was up there with Melbourne's best in the post 1964 era.

I first saw him playing in an intraclub practice match at the M.C.G. He came under notice instantly and not just because of his mop of blond hair, his untidy looks and the socks hanging around his ankles. It was a high mark that he took early in the game, followed by another and another. Everybody knew then that we had a new key position forward on our hands.

Parke's first VFL game was at Moorabbin against St. Kilda in Round 2 when he lined up at centre half forward in a team that had a smattering of premiership players most of them at the end of their long careers. He was flanked by the great Brian Dixon and the ever-elusive Barry Vagg. The team’s spine was composed of Bob "Tassie" Johnson and Brian "Doc" Roet, skipper Hassa Mann was in the centre and another young up and coming forward Ross Dillon (who debuted brilliantly in 1966 but was soon sidelined with a long term knee injury) was at full forward. Other premiership players in the side were Don Williams, Tony Anderson, Bryan Kenneally and John Townsend while future test cricketer Max Walker was in the ruck and future Tasmanian premier Ray Groom was in a back pocket. Stan Alves was on the wing. Parke kicked a goal in that game but the Demons had a bad day going down to the Saints by 56 points. They beat the Swans the following week when Parke kicked two and the young forward was soon a regular fixture in Melbourne’s best player list.

The high flyer really came of age in Round 8 at Victoria Park against the old enemy which had had the wood on Melbourne since the end of the golden era. Parke was in great form in the air and the Demons were on song in the first half as they burst to a 24-point lead but the home team struck back with seven goals in the third quarter to nose ahead by five points before Melbourne steadied in the final term to win by a goal. Parke booted four and was named best on ground.

I remember being in a car full of elated Demon supporters driving home and singing (that's a very kind word for it!) an ode to Melbourne’s man with the big spring - to the tune of the hit song of the day "MacArthur Park" which was a one hit wonder for actor Richard Harris. It was a song whose words made absolutely no sense and it went on forever but these young fans, euphoric with the thought that their team had now won five out of the first eight games of the season and in striking distance of the top four, were certain that spring was waiting for us. To our consternation, we were a step ahead of ourselves as we would be many times in the coming four decades.

Meanwhile Parke continued to shine although his team would win only three more games for the season. They lost the return game against Collingwood at the MCG by a solitary point. Parke was the club's best first year player by a mile but the team of the '50's and the '60's was undergoing its final disintegration. A three-win season and a wooden spoon in 1969 beckoned. Greg Parke played 21 games and kicked 25 goals, Dillon booted 48 at CHF but the team was still terrible despite having two such good key forwards.

There was some improvement in 1970, the team finished 10th and made the night grand final for the second year in a row with policeman Parke still the one in a key forward spot for the Demons. He could mark all right and indeed, he set a VFL record in 1970 for marks taken with 238, a figure that was not beaten until a decade later when Gary Dempsey took 241 (but that statistic included a finals match with the Kangaroos). Parke’s ground play was fair but his kicking was a bit so-so. Still, it was his superlative high marking that was such a feature of his play. Parke's number 26 proudly adorned many of the duffle coats that were the fashion among young football fans.

Melbourne had a great start to season 1971 under new coach Ian Ridley. Constable Parke continued to hold down the centre half forward position and it was about this time that I came across him in that milk bar in North Road East Brighton. I introduced myself, we each bought ourselves an Eskimo Pie to munch on and discussed the club's fortunes before he went off to catch a thief, direct traffic or whatever and I returned to my textbooks. We won the next few games so I prided myself on motivating the star forward and things were looking decidedly rosy when the Demons beat St. Kilda by 3 points in round 9 to make it eight wins out of nine games. Sadly, the wheels fell off again after that as the team fell into a slump and out of the top four. At least they finally won a night premiership (for teams finishing outside the top four).

Melbourne managed to win ten games in 1972 thanks mainly to another great season from Parke who topped Melbourne's goal kicking in 1972 with 62 goals. He kicked six goals in a 33 point win over Geelong and regularly picked up bags of five goals playing mainly at full forward. Ross Dillon left at the end of a patchy year to play for the SA Redlegs, Norwood leaving the Demons with only one key position forward.

Parke himself would not last much longer at the club and although he managed to average a goal a game in 1973, the blond forward struggled for consistency. He transferred to Footscray at the end of that season after a career at Melbourne which spanned 119 day and 7 night series matches for the club during from 1968 to 1973.

It was a sad day when Parke left Melbourne but he finally had a slight taste of football glory in spring as he was a leading light in Footscray’s finals campaign in 1974 before heading off to play 18 games for the SA Redlegs, Norwood, where he joined Dillon in 1976 before returning for a cameo season at Fitzroy. In all, he played a total of 171 VFL games, including 37 for Footscray and 15 for Fitzroy.

But it was at Melbourne that the great Greg Parke as the closest thing you can get to being a hero of a club down on its knees - a shining light in a dark, dark age. It would take us almost two decades before we could find another high flying forward but that’s another story.