“…. I walked across Trafalgar Oval ….It was pitch-black….and eerily quiet…..there was no-one around…..It took me back to when I was a kid……and the amount of times that I ran around that Oval…..listening to my Dad addressing his players at training…..and me, chasing the footy……”
“I often say to people ………go back to where you played your Junior football ….and just walk out on the ground….take a moment to soak it up, and reflect on how good it was when you were a kid…..”
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Mark Browning spent his growing-up years in two country towns – Trafalgar and Wangaratta…..
His Dad, Keith, was a stocky utility player in some battling South Melbourne sides of the early-fifties when he made the decision to head bush. Like a lot of stars of that generation, he was lured by an attractive coaching job which could consolidate his family’s future.
“Mum and Dad were both 22 when Trafalgar appointed him coach …..They’d never been there; had no car……In fact they got a lift up in the truck that was carrying their furniture……But that was the makings of them,” Mark says.
Keith landed a job as a Sales Rep with a Biscuit company and, in two separate stints with The Bloods, coached them for nine years…… interspersed with a spell as coach of Cora Lynn….. When he guided Trafalgar to the Gippsland League flag in 1962 the tiny town, which was fighting well above its weight, celebrated for weeks.
He was going on 34 ( “just about stuffed as a footballer”, according to Mark) when he received a job promotion, to Wangaratta, as a rep for the North-East/ Riverina.
“He played a few games with the Magpies, then retired….Anyway, work had become a priority and he was more interested in my footy by then,” Mark recalls.
“My parents had no idea about Kett Street being in a flood area when they bought a house down there, over the bridge. Old Jack White, the Wang President, warned Dad: “You’d better buy yourself a boat.”
“But I didn’t mind…..The best part about the floods was the fishing, especially in the swamps behind the Magpies ground……We caught plenty….Mind you, we had to fight the tiger snakes on the way through !…..”
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Mark followed the path of all avid local youngsters…….playing with the Blues in the
Midget competition, then moving up to Junior League club Centrals.
“The only trouble was that they were Brown and Gold…..the same colours as the ‘rotten Rovers’,” he quips.
His lifestyle focused on Footy, Basketball and Fishing…….and getting up to deliver newspapers around the West End six mornings a week: “Imagine it….the middle of winter….. freezing cold….you’d ride home, have brekky, then head off to school…..”
“I got paid on a Saturday morning – $5.25 for the week……Then I’d go to the Bakery and spend half of it….”
He remembers being selected in an O & M Schoolboys side, organised by the great Norm Minns, and picking up about 4 kicks for the week……”I thought I was pretty good, but that put me in my place,” he says.
Keith was now Victorian Sales Manager of the company, and had travelled back from Melbourne on week-ends for a couple of years, before the family made the move to East Doncaster.
“The 4-5 years we spent in Wang was fantastic (especially the fishing), but it was probably good timing to get down to the big smoke, as far as my footy was concerned…….I joined Beverley Hills juniors, which was in Fitzroy’s zone…..”
“I was still residentially tied to North Melbourne for another twelve months because Wangaratta was part of their zone; and was also eligible for South under the Father/Son rule.”
He was 16 when Fitzroy talked him into playing a practice match in the country……Lining up at centre half forward on the previous year’s Hampden League Maskell Medallist, Danny Harrington, he booted five goals and incited everybody’s interest….
“Dad said: ‘That’s worked out well, because South are really keen now…..They want to give you $500 to sign on and another $500 when you play your first game…….’ I’d always dreamt of following in his footsteps, so I was rapt….”
Thus began the career of a Swans champion…..
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It was a stuttering start …….He spent the first season, as a 17 year-old, battling away in the Reserves ( “I was awful….overawed” ), but once he broke into the seniors in Round 5, 1985, Mark was to become a fixture for the next 13 years.
What a story !
He was to experience the contrast of belonging to a League club on its knees, fearing for its future………to becoming part of the glitz and glamour of a no-expenses-spared acquisition by an eccentric private-owner…..
But initially, he had to establish himself……His first coach was Graeme John ( “a former star…. a terrific fellah”), who was succeeded by Ian Stewart.
“ ‘Stewie’ was probably the key coach for me……He gave the young blokes a real go, and used to play me on the opposition’s best player every week……I was only 183cm, but I might get Flower, Greig or Schimmelbusch on a wing….then I’d be playing full back on Blight or Quinlan, or CHB on Sidebottom…. It was a fantastic grounding…..”
Mark had just turned 21 when he was appointed as the Club’s Development officer; which involved him visiting Melbourne schools, and servicing their Riverina zone.
“It was great fun…….We’d hire a light aircraft from Moorabbin, land somewhere in the Riverina and conduct clinics for three days, in Wagga, Narrandera, Griffith or Ungarie …..We’d train with a local Club on Tuesday night.”
“I had team-mates queuing up to help me……As long as we were back for South’s training on Thursday night – and were still playing okay – all was good….”
There was no problem in that regard…..He’d become a star, and represented the state for six years straight. His eight games for the ‘Big V’ included winning a Simpson Medal against Western Australia.
“I loved playing for Victoria, because we didn’t have a lot of team success at South…….I remember, I was 21 or so, playing in the centre, against WA at Waverley……The first ruck was Dempsey, Tuck, Matthews; the half back line of Barker, Knights, Bruce Doull…..Then you had blokes like Teasdale, Southby, Kelvin Moore, Van der Haar…….I thought: ‘How good’s this…..’
“I’d barracked for South all my life, and it hurt to see them struggling….The place was run-down….Craig Kimberley, a fanatical Swan, and a really smart young entrepreneur, who started Just Jeans from scratch, was our President…… I thought, if a bloke like him couldn’t make it work then nobody could……I knew we were in real trouble…”
“They said: ‘Well, the options are, you can merge with someone, or go up and play at the SCG every second week’…..That sounded good to me…..We flew up there to play in 1982, then re-located in ‘83….”
“I was 25 when the move to Sydney came about……It was a real roller-coaster….I was vice-captain for a lot of that time…… The boys stuck together pretty tightly, but half-way through ‘84 a lot were struggling to get work, their wives were homesick, and the Club allowed half of the list to go back to Melbourne….”
“We never all trained together….so, if a bloke came up to play his first game, we’d hardly ever met him…..Somehow or other we got through……”
“Then the Edelsten thing came about ……All the excitement and glamour was great, and suddenly the Swans became front-page news……But you could always see that it was a car-crash waiting to happen….”
“It proved though, that if you started to win games of footy in Sydney, people would come……And they did, in their droves….”
The Swans were flying, under Tommy Hafey’s coaching, in Mark’s final season – 1987. They booted a few scores of 150-plus points, and were drawing regular crowds of 35-40,000 to the SCG.
They finished second, were dealt severely by the injury-stick and capitulated in the finals. Mark had played a total of five finals in his career – four of them in his last two seasons with the Club.
“Just to illustrate how starved of success we’d been, my five finals was the most anyone had played with the Swans since the thirties…”
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So the illustrious Browning VFL career was over..…He’d played 251 games ( which places him 10th on the all-time Swans list ), was Club Best and Fairest and an All-Australian in 1983, Vice-Captain for four years, Captain in 1984-‘85, and is the only Swan to have played a century of games with both South Melbourne and Sydney.
He was inducted to the Club’s Hall of Fame in 2009.
“I was only 30 when I retired, and wanted to continue somewhere with a real footy culture…….The Hobart President, Graeme Peck had been in my ear for a while, and I was appointed to take over from Peter Hudson as captain-coach….”
“It was a great Club, with great people……We loved it there…”
“Even though Tasmanians were passionate about their footy, I couldn’t believe there was nothing happening in the schools……We’d been busting our butts in Sydney trying to get into schools….”
“Billy Picken, who was coaching Clarence, agreed….We’d been employed by the TFL to get footy up and running….”
“We went to the Tassie CEO and pleaded our case…..We said: ‘Mate, you’ve gotta get school footy going…..He said: ‘Don’t worry; all the kids are playing with their Clubs ….”
“There’s no doubt about it, they took their eyes off the ball for a long time….”
Besides coaching, Mark ran a Hotel down on the Hobart waterfront, about five minutes walk from Constitutional Dock . He guided Hobart into the Grand Final in his second season in charge. They held a handy lead over North Hobart, but were run down in the closing stages….
“The next year we worked on our depth…..I found out there were about five guys earning most of the money, so we brought in a pay structure that ‘spread the love’…..I just got some kids who were recently out of the VFL Under 19’s and wanted to come down and play…..”
“The scores were just about level at three quarter-time in the 1990 Grand Final, in front of a crowd of 18,000…..We came out and kicked 10 goals against North Launceston in the final quarter, to win by 58 points…”
“That was certainly the highlight of my time at Hobart, but I was just as proud of our effort in beating them on a mud-heap in the Prelim Final two years later……Trouble was, we were cooked when we met North Hobart in the Grand Final….. ”
Mark was in charge of Hobart for five seasons, and coached the Tasmanian State team against Queensland in 1993.
He reflects that football in the state has been withering on the vine for some time…..”for instance, my old club Hobart – one of the most famous of all Tassie Clubs – can only field a Reserve Grade team in the Southern Football League this season” he says.
“I feel that if Tasmania hadn’t got that licence recently, football would have headed further down the gurglar…”
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The Sydney Swans again fell upon hard times whilst Mark was in Hobart in the early 90’s. Gary Buckenara accepted the ‘poison chalice’ as coach, but had failed to lift them out of the mire. After the ignominy of 18 straight losses ‘Bucky’ was sacked….
Mark received a phone call, offering him the job, and inviting him to Melbourne for an interview.
“I said: ‘Okay, but have I got the job ? ‘…….’Yeah, yeah’……”
“Anyway, when I arrived in Melbourne they mentioned: ‘Oh, by the way, someone else has bobbed up’…….I queried them: ‘Who’s that ?’…..’Ron Barassi’……’I said: I think I’m in a bit of trouble here….”
“But truly, getting Barassi was the turning-point for the Sydney Swans…..They’ve never looked back from there….”
Instead, Mark moved up to Queensland in 1994, and coached power club Southport into a couple of QAFL Prelim Finals.
“That was regarded as a bit of a failure for Southport, who are used to winning flags……I found the players’ attitude a bit more laid-back to Tassie, where they were used to crawling over broken glass for you….”
He then landed the job as the A.F.L’s Queensland Talent manager in 1996, and has been in the role ever since.
“Close to 160 kids from Queensland have played AFL footy since then” he says ….”Many of them didn’t come to the game until they were 15-16……We’ve had a lot of success by grabbing them from other sports.”
“The Suns and Lions have academies now….They do a lot of the legwork these days….I make sure the structures are in place; that the staffing’s right……..Female footy is flying up here……An unbelievable Girls Development program has been developed…..”
“The exciting thing about my job is that sometimes you can follow the kids’ careers for the next 12-14 years.”
“I say to them: ‘Grab the opportunity and run with it…….”
ON REFLECTION 