# Wally Clark (Australian footballer)

Wally Clark (25 May 1936 – 24 March 1996) was an Australian rules footballer who played for Fitzroy in the Victorian Football League (VFL).

## Fitzroy

Clark, who was at Fitzroy from underage level, played as a rover. He was their top goal-kicker with 21 goals in 1962 but had his best goal kicking year when he bagged 33 two years earlier.
Although he retired from the seniors in 1963, Clark continued in the Fitzroy reserves as captain-coach and won a Gardiner Medal for his on field performances.

## Saturday, 6 July 1963

Clark coached the senior Fitzroy side for only one match.

### Predictions

With the team having lost the first nine home-and-away matches in the 1963 season, and with its opponents on the day (the second week-end of the split round 10) being the powerful Geelong side that would go on to win the 1963 VFL premiership, nobody gave the Fitzroy team a chance.

### The selected team

With its captain-coach, Kevin Murray, and its regular first rover, Graham Campbell, absent in South Australia with the Victorian Interstate side—and with Geoff Doubleday, Joe Dixon, and Ted Lovett unavailable (each had returned to their country clubs) -- the selectors made eight changes to the preceding round's team (and in the process, dropped both Stewart Duncan and Brett Pollock, and relegated Ray Slocum to the bench as 20th man) and, as well, appointed the (then) Second XVIII coach, Wally Clark, as the team's stand-in coach (it was the only time that Clark ever coached the First XVIII).
With seven teenagers, and only six of the twenty chosen having played more than 20 First XVIII games, the team was very inexperienced:
The Fitzroy Team (6 July 1963) :
| B: | Brian Carroll 22yrs; 2 games | Allen Lynch 24yrs; 53 games | Norm Brown 19yrs; 12 games |
| HB: | Brian Pert 27yrs; 94 games | David Sykes 20yrs; 15 games | Bob Beattie 19yrs; 16 games |
| C: | Wayne Eastman 21yrs; 12 games | John Bahen 19yrs; 18 games | Colin Sleep 18yrs; 6 games |
| HF: | Tony Hirst 18yrs; 1 game | Ron Harvey 27yrs; 118 games | Brian Beers 24yrs; 69 games |
| F: | Max Miers 22yrs; 17 games | Gary Lazarus 17yrs; 9 games | Ian McCrae 19yrs; 10 games |
| Foll: | Bryan Clements 20yrs; 11 games | Ron Fry 26yrs; 4 games | John Hayes 23yrs; 38 games |
| Res: | Barry Fitzgerald 24yrs; debut | Ray Slocum 25yrs; 83 games | |
| Coach: | Wally Clark: Debut as First XVIII coach | Wally Clark: Debut as First XVIII coach | Wally Clark: Debut as First XVIII coach |

### The match

The match, played at the Brunswick Street Oval—with Geelong having already won the Under 19s game, 10.11 (71) to 6.10 (46), and the Second XVIII's match, 8.13 (61) to 4.8 (32) in the curtain raisers—provided "one of the biggest upsets in that decade of VFL football" (Spaull, 2014), when the Fitzroy team thrashed the Geelong side 9.13 (67) to 3.13 (31), not only leading Geelong 3.7 (25) to 1.6 (12) at half time, but, also—following Clark's inspiring half-time address delivered to the players in room packed with Fitzroy supporters (whom regular coach Kevin Murray routinely excluded from the change-rooms)—scoring 5.4 (34) to Geelong's 1.3 (9) in the third quarter.

### Remainder of the 1963 season

This extraordinary performance strongly contrasts with the fact that Fitzroy did not win another match during the entire 1963 home-and-away season, failed to win a single match in the 1964 season, and did not experience another victory until the second round of the 1965 season.

## Latrobe

The following season he went to Tasmania where he became captain-coach of NWFU club Latrobe. He coached and played for four years resulting in 47 wins and 23 losses. His side were runners up in 1966.

## Death

Clark died on 24 March 1996, at the age of 59, following a brain tumour.