The ghosts of football’s past are more like old friends than distant memories – and for Pam Aitken, the daughter of the late Carlton ruckman and reserve grade coach Ken Aitken, happy thoughts are also found in ink-scrawled photo albums, dusty paper clippings and flickering VHS tapes.
“Dad was passionate,” Pam said, in pondering her late father’s deep connection to his neighborhood and his club.
“He grew up in Coburg and into a family business passed on from generations, and the Carlton Football Club meant everything to him.”
A week or two ago, Pam made the pilgrimage to IKON Park armed with items for years in her father’s keep – items she says were always meant to end up at Carlton. Included are precious photographs – from Ken’s early years in the 1940s when he proudly posed in his dark Navy Blue strip, to the Perc Bentley-coached years when he was very much part of the team fabric.
Amongst the photographs are her father’s scrawled coach’s notes of the 1950s to which he referred in a pre-season pie night address. The notes, somewhat politically incorrect by today’s standards, offer a rare, personalized window into the locker room of the mid-20th century, and reflect a man who was as pragmatic as he was passionate in his blunt game assessments and tactical insights.
Included in the notes are the following:
“Saturday Schedule:- Early rising to prevent sluggishness. 9am steak and egg, as little liquid as possible. Pack bag with clean togs: boots (Jack Allbright), pants clean, garters, socks, shin pads, ankle bandages, athletic support and jumper will be clean from (Harvey Speers).
Hints to help your Game:- Umpire. sum him up early and play accordingly. ‘Humour him’. Do not want any player ‘Reported’. Back each other up.”
Kenneth David George Aitken was a man defined by the blue of Carlton and the grit of Coburg. Though he managed just 14 senior appearances through four seasons from 1948, a stint as reserve grade captain in ’51 and a handful of senior games for the old enemy Collingwood, home was where the heart was – and back at Princes Park through the second half of the 1950s, Ken, as Under 19s Coach, imparted his knowledge to so many aspiring Carlton footballers, amongst them the late Sergio Silvagni.
“Ken was my first coach. He was a terrific bloke, a nice fellow,” Silvagni said in an interview some years ago.
“He was a gentle type of coach. He was instructive, measured, he didn’t rant and rave, and he was a good mentor to me.”
Long before the era of indoor gyms, Ken’s “pre-season” consisted of back-breaking work for the family’s grain cartage business. The firm, GSA, was founded by Ken’s uncle Dave Aitken - a legendary figure in his own right who owned vast swaths of land in Craigieburn, including the area taking in Aitken Creek and Aitken College.
A typical day in Ken’s working life involved loading trucks with bags of bran and pollard, delivering them to dairy farmers in Gippsland, and returning with empty bags to be cleaned, repaired, and resold – gruelling stuff that nonetheless ensured the rugged, bow-legged big man was equipped for anything the great Australian game dished up.
Pam was amongst the wide-eyed kids who ventured into the Aitken depot in Coburg. Another was a second cousin Ian Aitken, the League’s rookie of the year who would later be part of Carlton’s 1987 Premiership twenty.
For years, Ken’s treasured keepsakes did the rounds from son to daughter, house to house, but were for the most part tucked away. Recognizing their historical weights, Pam decided it was time they were returned to their spiritual home.
The club is now in the process of digitizing the collection and will shortly clone an old VHS tape of Ken’s 70th birthday held at the old Social Club in the since-demolished George H. Harris Stand – a tape crammed with Carlton-centric interviews and tales from long ago.
Ken Aitken passed away on June 3, 2008, just three weeks shy of his 80th birthday. Not long before he died, old friends like Jim Francis sat by his hospital bed. Francis embodied all that Ken admired in those who were part of his Carlton community – a community of generous, honest and hard-working men like him.
“He was just mad [for Carlton]. He was Carlton through and through,” Pam said of her dear father. “If he wasn’t at the ground watching, the football was always on at home – and he loved the Club and the game until the end.”
