Bruce McMaster-Smith, the former Carlton wingman between stints with Fitzroy and St Kilda through the early 1960s, has died after a long illness. He was 77.
Of diminutive stature, McMaster-Smith stood just 169 centimetres tall and tipped the scales at 61 kilograms wringing wet. Regardless, he stood tall through 54 League appearances in total and relished every moment. As he told The Age’s Peter Hanlon in a touching interview back in 2011, he liked the old sportsman’s lament: “'Once you hear the roar of the crowd, you hear it for the rest of your life”.
McMaster-Smith’s wife Heather, who had met the then Fitzroy footballer at an after-match function in 1960, recalled that her husband suffered an early setback in a game for the Lions, when a wayward finger almost blinded him in one eye.
“He also lost a contact lens on Brunswick Street Oval, but almost unbelievably he found it the next day,” Heather said.
After just 13 senior appearances with Fitzroy, McMaster-Smith found his way to Carlton, the club he’d followed as a kid in Kyabram. On the eve of the fifth round of 1962, when Graham Donaldson withdrew with an infected leg, McMaster-Smith got his first call-up for the Blues, in what was a baptism of fire at Princes Park.
Carlton met Essendon in what would prove a dress rehearsal to the ’62 Grand Final, sharing space in midfield with Berkley Cox and Murray Kick. Regrettably, the hosts fell 45 points short, and Jim Carroll, in his second and last game for the club, was reported for landing one on the rough noggin of the Bombers’ Ian 'Bluey' Shelton.
Former Carlton ruckman Ken Greenwood, who shared following duties with John Nicholls in that match, was saddened to learn of McMaster-Smith’s passing.
“Bruce was a terrific little bloke – very popular and very well-liked,” Greenwood said.
“He was lightning quick, very fast. He was a good little footballer too, and while he had speed and ability, size might have gone against him.
“He was playing off a wing before the finals series in ’62, but I think the selectors felt he was too small to be playing on the MCG and they went with bigger wingmen going into the finals.”
Former Carlton wingman Bruce McMaster-Smith. (Photo: Carlton Football Club)
Though he wasn’t to feature in any of Carlton’s four finals contests that year, McMaster-Smith made a real impression– sharing Carlton’s most Brownlow votes (10) with Peter Falconer on the night Geelong’s Alistair Lord took Charlie home.
Through three seasons in guernsey No.40, McMaster-Smith turned out 26 times for Carlton – the last of them against Footscray in the fourth round of ’64 at Princes Park.
McMaster-Smith was cleared to St Kilda after the 1964 season and, to script, booted the match-winning goal in the dying seconds of his first senior game for the Saints – Round 11, 1965 versus you know who at Moorabbin.
Greenwood recalled McMaster-Smith bobbing up in that ill-fated match against Carlton. As he said: “Bruce let fly with a kick from the wing late in the game which sunk us - and he was pretty happy about that”.
A further 14 matches for St Kilda, the last of them Grand Final day ’65, rounded out McMaster-Smith’s League career - and Greenwood believed that the man’s effervescent personality served him well beyond his playing days.
“Bruce was really talkative, and if memory serves he went into car sales, which would have suited him as he had the gift of the gab.”
McMaster-Smith was only the second of 13 Carlton players ever to sport the number 40 at senior level after the late Don Rainsford - the-three gamer of 1950 more famously remembered as a voiceover man for the Seven Network.
The number 40 was most recently worn into senior football by the 150-game record holder in it, Michael Jamison, and is now the property of Jesse Glass-McCasker.
In Hanlon’s article of 2011, headlined 'The enduring battler', McMaster-Smith, then recovering from his second stroke and having suffered a heart attack, kidney disease and prostate cancer, reflected on his good fortune in chasing the leather with the likes of Kevin Murray, John Nicholls and Darrel Baldock.
Considering himself incredibly fortunate to have run the MCG wing one last time in front 105,000 on Grand Final day ’65, McMaster-Smith’s League days were done at 26 – and yet he always maintained a love for the game and an empathy for those at the heart of the contest at a time when football’s never been more scrutinised.
As he told Hanlon: “A player’s given 100 per cent physical effort, he takes a mark in front of goal, and you see him heaving. He’s sobbing with exhaustion, his muscles are like lumps of lead, sweat’s running into his eyes, his limbs are quivering. And he misses. And the crowd says as one, ‘We’ve gotta get rid of that %$#! He can't kick!’ ”
McMaster-Smith, an uncle to the Herald Sun chief football writer Mark Robinson, died in a nursing home in Ferntree Gully on Tuesday. He is survived by his wife Heather, daughter Robyn, son Andrew, daughter-in-law Belinda and grandson James. Heather spoke for all of them when she said: “Bruce was very outgoing, very friendly and very loyal . . . he was a nice bloke”.
The Carlton footballers will wear black armbands into Sunday’s match with GWS at Etihad Stadium as a mark of respect.
