One such player is Bill McNamara, who proudly wore the blue lace-up with the chamois yoke through the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and who crucially lent support to his then coach Jack Worrall in extraordinary circumstances through late 1903/early ’04.
William Healy McNamara was born on June 8, 1876 (it’s previously been misreported the 9th), the sixth of 13 children raised by Irish immigrants. Bill’s father worked in a drapery near Port Fairy, at the appropriately named Belfast town.
At some point between 1885 and 1890, when one of Bill’s brothers was wrongly accused of theft, the McNamara family relocated to Melbourne.
Together they settled in Brunswick, not far from the old Princes Oval, and it was through the Brunswick football team for which a young John Curtin played that Bill first came under the notice of Carlton’s talent spotters.
At the age of 22, Bill fronted up for Carlton against South Melbourne at Albert Park, in what was the opening round of the 1899 season. This would be Bill’s first of 69 senior appearances for the Blues, ending with the seventh round match against Essendon some five seasons later.
The 1903-04 seasons would prove tumultuous for player and for club, for it was during this period that the legendary Secretary/Coach Worrall was sensationally sacked then reinstated by the Carlton committee over an alleged misappropriation of gate takings.
Almost 50 years after the event, in a letter to the club’s then secretary Harry Bell, Bill wrote ;
“I would have to say that the most outstanding incident in my time at Carlton in my 54 years experience was the dismissal of the Sec. Jack Worrall in 1903 and his reinstatement by the members at the Annual Meeting in 1904, after the Committee had refused his nomination”.
Bill was one of at least 19 Carlton players including the captain Joe McShane, who lent their signatures to an important petition, denying that the players would refuse to play if Worrall was reinstated for season 1904.
“During the past two seasons we have had many opportunities of observing his (Worrall’s) work for the Club, and we consider that the energy he has expended, and the ability he has displayed in keeping an excellent Team in the field under very adverse circumstances, entitle him to the confidence of the Members of the Club,” the petition read.
“Trusting that you will further the best interests of both the Club and the Team by supporting Mr. WORRALL.”
The Carlton team, 1903. Bill McNamara can be seen in the back row to coach Jack Worrall’s immediate right . . . quite literally the right hand man.
At the election of March 28, 1904, the 19 players ran a ticket supporting Worrall and opposing the President Robert Heatley, Vice-President and all committeemen bar the seven who voted against the proposal to sack Worrall. When the players’ ticket ultimately proved successful, Heatley and co. resigned, Worrall was reinstated and Carlton’s golden era that heralded in the premierships of 1906, ’07 and ’08 dawned.
Bill later officiated in a handful of matches as both a central and boundary umpire. But his contribution to the Carlton Football Club was not forgotten, for in February 1927 he was awarded honorary Life Membership.
He died on November 21, 1959 aged 83.
