Tom Mcneil and the 1955 Australian Football Players' Union!
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39 Tom McNeil and the 1955 Australian Football Players' Union! Braham Dabscheck i~:! Se:.ior Fello~\T in the Faculty 0fLaw c.t the UniYersity ofi\!elbourne. He is also an independent member of the Australian Football League Players' Association Agents Accreditation Board. Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT: In 1955, former St Kilda player Tom l\IcNeil attempted to form a union of players of the Victorian Football League (VFL) and the Victorian Football Association (VFA). It was called the Australian Football Players' Union. The attempt proved to be unsuccessful. This article places this in the context of other attempts to form player unions/associations in Australian Rules football and other team sports. It provides an account of Tom l\fcNeil's background and arrival in Australia, his brief career with St Kilda, his meeting on a return to his homeland withJohn Hughes of the Scottish Soccer Players' Union who provided him with the idea to unionise Australian footballers. The article explores the machinations associated with this failed attempt, and details of McNeil's subsequent life as a player, coach, administratm; and member of the Upper House of the Parliament of,\7estern Australia. KEYWORDS: Australian football, players' union, Scottish Football Players' Union, Tom McNeil, \Ve~ternAustralian Parliament. I would like to thank Tom McNeil for granting me extensive interviews and providing me with his records of events associated with the Australian Football Players' Union: the Australian Football League Players' Association, especially Brendon Gale and Matt Finnis, the AFLPI>:s former and current Chief Executive Officers respectively. for financing my research and to the Australian Football League, especially its statisticians Col Hutchinson and Cameron Sinclair for their help and granting me permission to examine the minutes and other records of the Victorian Football League CVFU. I would also like to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful comments. Sporting Traditions, vol. 28, no. 1 CM ay 2011l, pp. 39-61. ©Australian Society for Sports History, www.sporthistorv.org 40 SpOrtlllgTRADIT/ONS VOlUME 28 no I MAY 2011 In 1955, former St Kilda player Tom McNei! attempted to form a union of players of the Victorian Football League (VFL) and the Victorian Football Association (VFA). It was called the Australian Football Players' Union. The attempt proved unsuccessful. The union disbanded following an unsuccessful attempt to gain registration before the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration, w1der the Conciliation andAdJitmtionAd 1904 (Cth).2 In mid-2008 Tom McNei! was in Melbourne and turned up at the offices of the Australian Football League Players' Association (AFLPA) in Albert Park, to join as an associate member (past player) of the AFLPA. He asked to see Brendon Gale, the AFLPA's Chief Executive Officer. McNei! told Gale that he had tried to establish a players' union in 1955, and provided him with documents and newspaper cuttings concerning its activities. The AFLPA approached me to interview Tom ·McNeil, gather information on his background and provide an account of this failed attempt to form a players' union more than half a century ago. I had intendewed Pat Cash senior and Ted Henry's, the President and Treasurer, respectively, of the union, while researching for a .!\'faster's thesis in 1973, but had not been able to make contact 'With Tom McNeil, the union's Secretary.3 Neither Cash nor Henrys knew his whereabouts other than he ·was living in Perth. Nor did I know his whereabouts in 1990, when I 'Wrote an article on the attempt to form a union that was confined to the events ofl955 and 1956.4 This article did not include material on Tom McNeil's background, the Glasgow and John Hughes connections, the minutes of the Union and documents from the VFL, access which was obtained through the AFLPA, McNeil's subsequent career and information concerning attempts to form unions in 1913 and 1927. Interviews-were conducted ·with Tom Pt'lcNeil atParliamentHouse, "\~Testern Australia on 11-12 November 2008. The interviews were not recorded. I took notes. It is unsurprising to report that he expelienced difficulty remembering names and events (at the time of the inteniew he was 79). This did not prove to be a major problem. He had maintained records of his can":f!r as a pbyer, Lefore playing in the VFL, his da)~ with St Kilda, his post-VFL foothalling career as player, coach and administrator and his subsequent career as a politician and member of the Upper House in the Parliament of "\Yestern 2 Application by the Australian Football Players' Union for registration as an organisation of employees. 84 Commonwealth Arbitration Reports, 675, Industrial Register J. R. Taylor, 10 February 1956. 3 Braham Dabscheck, The Labour Market for Australian Rules Footballers, unpublished Master of Economics thesis. Mon ash University, 1973. 4 Braham Dabscheck, 'Out of Bounds: The 1955 Australian Football Players' Un·lon', Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 27, 1990. pp. 32--39. Braham Dabscheck Tom McNei/ and the 1955Australian Football Players' Union 41 Australia, from 1977 to 1989. 5 When his memory failed him he would point to information in his Scrap Book. 'Vhen there ·was a 'dispute' between his memory and the written record I opted for the latter. An Historical Introduction Tom McNeil's Scrap Book contains a letter by W. S. Sharland of Esplanade, St Kilda. This was presumably Wally jumbo' Sharland, who played with Geelong in the first half of the 1920s and became a football m·iter and one of the game's early broadcasters.6 The date of and which paper this letter was published is unclear. In all likelihood, it was published in May 1955: ·~pathy of most League and Association players is terribly disappointing" states 1\Jr. Torn 1\kNeil, com'ener of the Victorian Football Players' Union. That is nothing new. ConYenors and 'imrkers for something similar knew apathy in 1913 and again in 1927. In 1913 a footballers' council was established to protect players and act in the best interests of the game. The late fvlr J. L. Dow, ex~I\Hnister ofAgriculture was president, and the executiYe officers included]. McHale (Collingwood); first secretary,]. Smith (St. IG!da), D. McNamara (Essendon Town),]. 'Veils (Carlton), G. Roberts,J Mclntyre and other noted men. 'Vorld 'Var I dealt a lethal blow to the organisation. In 1927, at the instance of the late Jim McHale, Ray Brew (Car! ton), \V. Cubbins (St. IGida), D. McNamara, the late Con Hickey (then secretary of the Ausu·alian Football Council), and others, I convened meetings which were held in Tattersall's Club. Brew drafted a constitution. Players have e'i'eiJ' right to foster a well run organisation of their own. In Sydney, the N.S,,V. Rugby League Club is a well known and pmverful organisation. Something similar should be quite possible for this State.7 5 This will be referred to as Tom McNeil's Scrap Book. Most of his newspaper cuttings do not indicate the paper in which they were published, or the date of publication. 6 For details of Sharland's career see Russell Holmesby & Jim Main, The Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers: Every AFLIVFL Player Since 1897. Bas Publishing, Melbourne, 2007, p. 719. 7 For details of the political career of John Lamont Dow see the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online Edition, http://adbonline.anu.edu.au/ biogs/A040090b.htm, accessed 18 November 2008. For details of the careers of the players see Main and Holmesby & Main, The Encyclopedia !2 SpOrtlngTRAQITIONS VOLUME 28 no I MAY 2011 Thls letter reveals that the attempt by Tom McNeil to furm a players' union ·was not the first time that players had turned to collective action in attempting to enhance their employment rights and conditions. Beside these examples, there have been eight other unsuccessful attempts to establish player unions/associations in Australian football. They occurred in 1931 (Victoria), 1960 (Victoria and South Australia), 1973 (South Australia), 1979- 1986 (Western Australia), 1988 (Western Australia), 1990-1992 (Western Australia), 1993 (Sydney) and 2007-2008 (South Australia). Bacl<ground Thomas J\kNeil was born on 9 June 1929 in Glasgow, Scotland. His father, who had the same name, worked as a dispatcher 'With D C Thompson, Newspaper Distributors. He had a sister Jessie, who was approximately one year older than him. She had died aged 80, a short time before I conducted my interviews. Football/soccer is a large part of the life of Glasgow and is divided into two halves, based on sectarianism: the Blue (Protestants) and the Green (Catholics). 8 Tom ~vlcNeil's family·were Presbyterians, hence he was a Rangers supporter. He played soccer at school. On 5 August 1940, ~kNeil and his sister were evacuated, ·with 475 other children, to Australia on the Polish ship BatOJ)' (It also carried 100 airmen who disembarked at Cape Town and 700 troops who disembarked in Singapore). They ·were two of several thousand children ·who were evacuated by the Children's Overseas Reception Board (CORB) at the height of hostilities and Nazi bombing raids on Britain during 'Var II. 1\kNeil does not have any memory of being afi-aid during the trip to Australia. It is only when he reflects on what could have happened, knowledge that has been sharpened following publication of information on CORB evacuees,9 that he realises how fortunate he was. The Balm)' docked in Perth and arrived in 1\•lelbourne in October 1940. Tom and Jessie were fostered out and he remembers going to a variety of schools in hls first two years in Melbourne. He originally lived with the Cheetham fumily in MontAlbert. He later moved in with the Horne fumily at Crisp Street, Hampton.