IT might be 97 years since “Jack” Wells last laced a boot for the Navy Blues, but his descendants are living proof that the family links with the football club remain unbroken.
 
Glenn and Josh Wells - Jack’s great grandson and great great grandson respectively - have made the long trek across the Nullabor to reacquaint themselves with the hallowed Carlton turf on which Jack turned out for 66 senior matches, some of them as captain and later captain-coach, from 1910 through to the premiership year of 1914.
 
In doing so, they came armed with precious photographs - sepia throwbacks to a bygone age when Wells sported the old CFC monogram across his broad chest - copies of which have now been obtained for the club’s ever-expanding archive.
 
For the Wells’s, this was the least they could do.
 
“My son Josh and I are still one-eyed Carlton, and it’s all because of Jack,” Glenn said. “Jack’s career here wasn’t a long one, but he played it out with a great conviction and he was a player of some skill too.
 
“Jack’s time at Carlton also impacted on my late father Brian. Dad trained with Fitzroy in the late 1950s/early 1960s, but because he was one-eyed Carlton he wanted to be released to the Blues . . . and when they didn’t he gave League footy away.”
 
Josh, proudly sporting a playing guernsey recently acquired in the Carlton Shop, made a point of acknowledging his great great grandfather also. As he said: “It was terrific to see the players train at the Carlton ground this week, because I’m so proud that it’s where Jack once played”.

Forty-two year-old Glenn and his wife Julia, together with their 15 year-old son Josh, call Secret Harbour home. Secret Harbour is situated about 60 kilometres south of Perth, where Glenn awaits the call as a sub-mariner for the Royal Australian Navy and Julia works as a swimming instructor. Josh, meanwhile, is pursuing his studies as a Year 11 student at the local Comet Bay College, but he still finds time to chase the leather.

Turn back the hands some 128 years, to the western Victorian town of Pleasant Creek (later known as Stawell) where John (“Jack”) Wells was born on January 4, 1883. Jack was the fourth of 12 children (one of five boys and four girls to survive childbirth) of Jane Mary Reid and William Wells, a North Londoner hailing from Highgate who followed the great wave of prospectors to the goldfields in the 1850s.
 
In his youth, and for reasons unclear, Jack made the trek to Kalgoorlie on the Western Australian goldfields. It was 1899 - almost 100 years to the day before his naming on the bench in Kalgoorlie City’s Team of the Century.


Glenn Wells and Josh Wells with a photo of Jack.
 
Electoral rolls for 1901 and 1905 list Jack as having served as a clerk in Bourke Street, Kalgoorlie, and the story goes that he later became an active participant in the trade union movement.
 
During his time in Kalgoorlie, Jack had a run with the local Hannans Football Club before joining City. He then signed with Perth, at that time a member of the Western Australian Football Association, and impressed local judges with his often freakish ability. Dubbed “a barrel-chested powerhouse with an abundance of football smarts”, Jack was a matchwinner considered equally effective across the centre, up forward or in the ruck.
 
In the wake of Perth’s loss to East Fremantle in the 1904 WAFA Grand Final (with future Carlton defender Martin Gotz roving superbly) Jack made his way back east and accepted an offer to play for St Kilda. Though he captained the Saints through 1907 and led them into the finals, he later became embroiled in a factional committee room stoush, quit the club and made for Carlton town.
 
It was at about this time that Jack, then employed as an engine driver, married a Queenscliff girl Catherine Mary Leitch, in Collingwood. It was August 1908 and the newlyweds would raise a son John jun. and daughter Mavis, born in the years of 1909 and 1911 respectively.
 
Jack’s arrival at Princes Park in 1910 was indeed timely, given the pre-season departures of no fewer than seven senior players. Finding his niche in the ruck alongside captain-coach Fred ‘Pompey’ Elliott, the 27 year-old proved a revelation in driving the inexperienced Blues to the minor Premiership.
 
Regrettably, on the eve of the 1910 second semi-final, three Carltonites Douglas Fraser, Douglas Gillespie and Alex “Bongo” Lang were sensational drawn from the team to confront South Melbourne in the second semi-final, amid allegations they were paid to ‘play dead’.
 
Fraser and Lang were later found guilty and incurred lengthy sentences, while Gillespie was cleared of any wrongdoing in a contest Carlton lost. But the team, by virtue of completing the season as minor Premier, earned a Grand Final berth against Collingwood, which had proved superior to south in the prelim.
 
Regrettably, the black and whites emerged 14-point victors on that last Saturday in September, with “Dick” Lee and “Jock” McHale leading the way in what was Jack’s one and only Grand Final appearance in a Carlton guernsey.
 
Season 1911 served Jack well, for his consistent play earned him Victorian selection and aided his club team’s late September surge. But the year would end with Carlton’s semi-final loss to Essendon, during which time guernsey numbers were first permitted, and Jack wore the No.16 now donned by Andrew Collins.
 
With the retirement of the Carlton captain-coach Fred ‘Pompey’ Elliott, Norman ‘Hackenschmidt’ Clark and Jack were appointed to the respective posts of coach and captain for season 1912. Jack also earned the Victorian captaincy, but just prior to the carnival sustained a leg ailment and was reluctantly forced to relinquish the honour.
 
Having completed the 1912 home and aways just shy of South Melbourne, Carlton posted a comprehensive 28-point victory over Geelong in the semi-final to advance to the prelim with Essendon. Late in the nip-and-tuck affair, Jack called on the great Carlton centreman Rod “Wee” McGregor to push forward, but McGregor refused and the pair argued at length.
 
In what was an ugly postscript to the agonising four-point loss to the Same Olds, McGregor was called account for dissent and summarily suspended for the next 12 months. Clark then asked for a year’s leave of absence, and Jack accepted the role of captain-coach.
 
Ten consecutive finals appearances, including six Grand Finals for three premierships, came to an end for Carlton in September, 1913, with Jack himself confined to only 12 senior appearances due to injury.
 
The then Secretary George Bruce, in his report for the 1913 year, wrote that “Mr. Jack Wells, who was appointed Captain and Hon. Coach, carried out his duties in a creditable manner, and is worthy of your commendation for the strong hold he had of the players on the field”. But perhaps Jack relinquished the coaching portfolio to ‘Hackenschmidt’ with some relief, and similarly the captaincy to the much-admired centre half-back, Willie Dick.
 
With the outbreak of war in Europe, the Carlton players readied themselves for great comeback, which would take in the first of back-to-back premierships in 1914, but claim the career of Jack in the process. Sadly, he was unavailable for all but five matches of the 1914 season, and was overlooked in September.
 
As a means of dealing with the hurt of the lost finals campaign, and in the twilight of his on-field career at the ripe old age of 32, Jack obtained a transfer to neighboring VFA outfit North Melbourne. At North, Jack’s football life petered out before the Association entered into voluntary recession for the war’s duration, but by then he’d already been honoured with a certificate for four years’ service at Carlton and life membership.
 
Little more is known of Jack’s later life. He survived his beloved wife Catherine by almost 17 years, and died in Fitzroy just eight days before Christmas, on December 17, 1966.
 
He was laid to rest with her in Melbourne General Cemetery, in the shadows of the old Carlton ground Jack called home . . . and is still home for subsequent generations of the Wells clan.