ALAN Willett was in Swan Hill only a few years but memories of the district are as strong as ever 60 years on. ANDREW ROGERS reports.
THE day Alan Willet first met committee members from Swan Hill Football Club remains etched in his memory.
And more than 60 years on the occasion sounds like something straight out of a Hollywood script.
“I’ll never forget the day,” the 90-year-old said on Monday.
“It was January of 1950, I suppose. I was working in the garden [at home in Horsham] and they came up to me and said, ‘Are you Alan Willet?’”
“I said, ‘Yeah, who wants to know?’
“It was Bill Brown, who was a local builder and Sam Shiner and he was a farmer, sort of retired then. Sam was secretary of the club and Bill was a committeeman.”
At a later meeting in Swan Hill, Willett said he started to have doubts about the move.
“We went to the White Swan Hotel and it was stinking hot as hell. All the shops had the blinds down along the street. I thought to myself, ‘Crikey, what have I struck here?’,” he said.
However, for Willet one crucial factor was on the money.
“At least the beer was cold,” he laughed.
Willet had been born and bred in Essendon before the war and returned to play for local club North Essendon in 1946.
“I came back in ’46 and most of my mates were gone. I’d played thirds there pre-war,” he said.
And while a two-year stint on Essendon’s list in 1947 and 48 didn’t lead to a stellar career at the elite level, he gained plenty of experience around the traps including at Horsham, Swan Hill, Mildura and Ararat.
“I played a season with Horsham and did reasonably well, then I replied to an ad in the Sporting Globe and two [Swan Hill FC] committeemen came down to interview me on a Sunday afternoon,” he said this week.
Willet coached Swan Hill from 1950 until 1953, playing for the Swans in 1954 before work with William Adams Tractors saw him move to Mildura in 1955.
But it was arguably at Swan Hill that Willett’s best footy memories were made.
For more on this story see Wednesday’s edition of The Guardian (May 22, 2013).
