Calling footy historians: The Barassi years

[Dry Rot]

I'm reading Peter Lalor's biography of Barassi - a good read. I have a few questions for the footy historians here.

[Dry Rot]

Q1. What the hell happened to Footscray?

IIRC Barassi played his first season for the Demons in 1953, and would play in the 54 GF.

While the book is obviously about him and his teams, they weren't playing in a vacuum and other teams pop up in home and away games and the finals.

After 1954, Footscray mostly disappears from the story except for 1961 or some flogging by Barassi's team.

What happened to us post 1954? Why did we go down the toilet?

[Twodogs]

Internal politics and big heads basically DR. We lost a few good players (Peter Box)due to internal rivalries.

Basically we fell off the pace until 1959 because the club couldn't decidee between Sutton and aw whiten as coach and got the transition completely wrong. A divided club doesn't play well and loses its good players good.

Quite a few left to go coaching country clubs that could offer double the payment what Footscray could pay, plus a house in town and a job. It's like the Boyd deal these days. You could set yourself up for life.three or four left for that reason

Only one went to another VFL club I think.

[bornadog]

Internal politics and big heads basically DR. We lost a few good players (Peter Box)due to internal rivalries.

Basically we fell off the pace until 1959 because the club couldn't decidee between Sutton and aw whiten as coach and got the transition completely wrong. A divided club doesn't play well and loses its good players good.

Quite a few left to go coaching country clubs that could offer double the payment what Footscray could pay, plus a house in town and a job. It's like the Boyd deal these days. You could set yourself up for life.three or four left for that reason

Only one went to another VFL club I think.

I think we also had lots of turmoil in the Administration side.