George Goninon is 94, and it doesn’t take him long to get to the bit that still irks him 70 years later. And it’s not being dropped after the first week of the 1953 finals, despite kicking 210 goals in his previous 53 games at full-forward for Geelong. We’ll get to that.

“I kicked 11 goals in the (1951) semi-final against Collingwood, I still hold the record,” George says from Darwin, where he’s convalescing at his son’s following stomach surgery. “I kicked 12, but the goal umpire said the sun was in his eyes. (Collingwood full-back) Jack Hamilton refused to kick it off, he said it was a goal.”

He’s still grumpy about being denied a dozen – and that he never received even a retrospective Coleman Medal for his 86 goals in `51, which were key to Reg Hickey’s Cats winning the first of what would surely have been a hat-trick of flags for a young side that kept getting better. If only George hadn’t been dropped during the `53 finals. But we’ll get to that.*

“Coleman was still playing,” he shrugs, and even a retrospective gong wouldn’t sate him now. “It’s only a piece of metal.”

The only silverware that truly counted was the premiership cup, and seven decades later the Geelong teams of the early 1950s remain among the club’s most revered. It’s no coincidence that youth, pace and daring were chief among their assets; 11 players recruited over the previous two seasons featured in the `51 premiership, including Goninon, who ironically left Essendon because he couldn’t get a game ahead of Coleman. Eight of the premiership 20 had played less than 30 games, and only Fred Flanagan, Tom Morrow and Russell Renfrey had notched 100.

Among the newbies was 21-year-old Bill McMaster from Lake Bolac, who kicked five goals on debut against South Melbourne. Now, Terry Fulton, Goninon and McMaster are the sole survivors. “We’ve lasted pretty well, haven’t we?” the latter muses, genial as ever.

His memories of that time are sharp, especially of Goninon, who he spent large chunks of games alongside playing as a forward pocket who went through the ruck. “He was smart around the goals, had a great sense of where the ball was going,” McMaster recalls. “And he was a great kick for goal, very straight.”

One particular day against Richmond at Punt Rd stays with him, Goninon pitted against renowned Richmond hard man Don ‘Mopsy’ Fraser, rain tumbling down and turning to hail as the pair went at each other verbally and physically all afternoon. “Mopsy was calling George everything, trying to knock his head off. You couldn’t beat George – he was going back just as hard.” McMaster recalls Goninon finishing the day with 11.

Goninon reckons he was “just quick, not very big”, and the Geelong of 1951 was similarly turned out and “too good for the rest”. “I kept kicking six goals every week,” he says, a fair summation of a season in which he booted 11, nine and seven plus half a dozen bags of six. “I dunno why, it just happened.”

Which brings us to his omission mid-finals two years later, a scandal that could break the internet if it happened now. Goninon was 26, nicknamed Groucho, a rock star of the game who kicked goals from anywhere and did so with swagger. The story – confirmed by Goninon in an interview years later – is that Hickey, God-fearing and notoriously hard-nosed, dropped him because he was a married man who was having an affair. For his part, Goninon maintained that he married the woman he left his first wife for.

Now, his recall of the time jumps around before landing on the job he had driving a truck between Geelong and a mine out the back of Winchelsea four times a day, which reportedly earned him a staggering 75 pounds a week (“more than that,” he says now). Goninon says it also made him late for training one night when the truck broke down, and the coach dumped him.

He drove to the MCG on grand final day `53 anyway, went down into the rooms and wished his teammates well, and was leaving before the bounce when Collingwood selector Gordon Hocking spotted him and said, “Come and sit with us.” Goninon sat under cover among Magpies, saw them beat Geelong by 12 points, then drove home.

Remarkably he stayed at Geelong, managing another 11 games for 23 goals in 1954 before playing and coaching at Newtown, Geelong West, West Footscray, Bruthen and Lakes Entrance. “A few quid here and there,” he reflects now. “Helped pay the maintenance. I was married twice.”

He’d played in a flag with his native Burnie before leaving Tasmania, laughs that “they used to follow me around, premierships”, but didn’t win another after Geelong. At Lakes Entrance he coached a team who mostly worked in the bush all week and made straight for the pub when they returned to civilisation each Friday. “They were training on beer.”

Now, John Goninon says his Dad is sharp and looking good, and takes a daily walk with the aid of a stroller. A former stalwart of Geelong’s past players, he never misses a Cats game on the TV. “He’s Geelong through and through, even puts his Geelong hat on when they play, sits there in the Darwin heat wearing a Geelong beanie!”

His 278 goals from 78 games for the Cats still puts him among the club’s top 20 goalkickers. The final word on one of football’s great enigmas goes to McMaster, harking back to that 1951 semi-final against Collingwood.

“I was walking into the ground with George then next morning, and I realised I hadn’t congratulated him. I said, ‘That was great yesterday George, tremendous.’

“And he said, ‘I kicked 12 bloody goals you know!’”

1951 VFL Grand Final

Article written by Peter Hanlon.

* Note: Finals series goals are not counted to the Leading Goal Kicker