When Carlton recently availed the players’ match-worn ANZAC Day guernseys for public auction, young Harvey Binns saw an opportunity.
Trawling through social media, the 16 year-old stumbled onto the Club’s online platform where the jumpers, signed by the players who donned them for the recent Round 7 fixture with Fremantle, were going under the hammer.
Investigating further, Harvey discovered that the guernseys each carried the names of former Carlton footballers who served in wartime – amongst them his great grandfather, the late Ron Hines, who wore the dark Navy Blue No.11 into 57 senior matches through and beyond the war years, 1943 to ’48.
The family’s newly-discovered interest in the No.11 was triggered and its mission immediate. The clan wasn’t just going to settle for any jumper; they wanted the jumper with THAT number.
“Harvey was like a dog with a bone, Ron’s granddaughter Erynn recalled recently.
“It had to be 11. It’s woven into our history. When someone draws the number 11 at bingo we don’t yell ‘Legs 11’ – we yell ‘Ronnie Hines’.”
Ron died in early 2019 at the ripe old age of 95, but the love of his life Alma survives him at 101 (102 come October) – and when Erynn contacted Carlton wondering if the family could obtain the item, the Club, recognizing that this just wasn’t a piece of memorabilia but a post script to a lifelong love story, resolved to act.
Accordingly, the No.11 guernsey – complete with the grass stains of Optus Stadium and the signature of its wearer Mitch McGovern - was removed form auction and subsequently handed to Erynn and her two sons. They then handed the guernsey to Alma’s son Rod, who completed the special presentation to Alma on Mother’s Day.
Ron and Alma’s romance was forged long before they heard the first roars of the crowd at Princes Park. It was back in the lean years of The Great Depression, when Ballarat-born Ron lived in Rennie Street, Thornbury, and struck up a friendship with Alma’s older brother Jack Hair. Jack was a lovable larrikin who hailed from nearby Coburg, and it was at the Hair house there that Ron first laid eyes on Alma, his future sweetheart.
For Ron and Alma, love was instantaneous – and it endured for almost 75 years of marriage.
Ron, it must be said, was a man of many talents: a self-taught saxophonist who played in marching bands and a natural at every sport he touched. But as the 1940s dawned, his life, like so many others, was upended by war.
He enlisted with the Royal Australian Air Force in 1942, the same year his mother died. In ’43 he forged first links with Carlton, the circumstances of which Ron subsequently recorded in his diary:
“While I was in the Air Force and doing my basic training at Ascot Vale in Melbourne, I started my football career with Carlton.
I went down to the Carlton Football Club with my bag and a bloke said ‘What can I do for you?’.
‘Come to try my luck,’ said I.
‘Bit small aren’t you?’, he said.
‘Good things come in small packages,’ said I.
So I was allowed to have a run (and) after training I went back into the clubrooms and they signed me up . . . two weeks later I was playing in the firsts . . . got paid 30 bob.”
Ron got his first call-up in the 14th round match of the ’43 season, against Essendon at Windy Hill. At the first bounce he lined up on a wing alongside the fearsome Carlton centreman Bob Chitty, and he played his part in the visitors’ dour three-point win.
In July 1944, Ron’s on-field career was put on hold with his posting to New Guinea and his enforced farewell to his soulmate Alma. Alma and her family were hit hard by the conflict, her oldest brother Jim was tragically lost at sea when his ship went down.
Through the distance and the danger, Ron and Alma penned letters to eachother - a paper trail of a bond that couldn’t be broken.
Through late 1944, Leading Aircraftman Hines was stationed in the Markham Valley at Nadzab, 30km north-west of Lae. On his return to Townsville in early 1945, he was discharged after seven month’s active service.
Ron made his way back to Melbourne and duly announced his engagement to Alma. They duly married in October of the following year. He also reacquainted himself with the football club, and through the second half of the 1940s was part of Carlton’s powerhouse outfits under Perc Bentley.
Alma was there for every on-field moment too - a constant presence at Princes Park in watching her Ronnie become part of the Carlton legend.
As fate would have it, a crook leg cost Ron his place in the 19-man team for the 1945 Grand Final remembered in infamy as ‘The Bloodbath’. Despite the setback and to his eternal credit, Ron’s genuine joy with Carlton’s ultimate achievement truly endeared him to his teammates.
Ron played on at Princes Park, but a hernia thwarted his availability for the 1947 Grand Final won in dramatic fashion by way of Fred Stafford’s trusty boot. He parted ways with Princes Park after the sixth round of the following year and he did so with that churning feeling of what might have been on Grand Final day 1945 and ’47.
To quote another of his diary entries: “It broke my heart not to be able to play both times”.
When Ron passed away in January 2019 after a long battle with illness - during which time Alma visited him in his nursing home on a daily basis for the final 16 years - the No. 11 Carlton guernsey had long been central to their shared life.
On Mother’s Day last Sunday, McGovern’s match-worn No.11 carrying Ron’s name was presented to Alma, as a tribute to her late husband - the young wingman who once chased the leather through the war years and beyond, and the legacy he left behind.
The jumper, still unwashed and carrying the grit of a modern game, will likely be framed within double-sided glass – in tribute to Ron and the woman who stood by him through it all.
For Alma, seeing those two single digits on the back of the ANZAC guernsey won’t just remind her of the footballer, but also of the boy from Rennie Street who at first sight knew then and there that she was the one.
As she said in clasping the treasured No.11: “This means the whole world to me . . . come on the Blues”.
