Kelvin Templeton - Hall of Fame Bulldog!

[azabob]

First twelve or so minutes for anyone interested.

https://megaphone.link/NTETP9597054769

[bornadog]

[HOSE B ROMERO]

Great to hear Demps. Legends both he and KT. Some nice left foot goals in that clip too.

[1eyedog]

A shining light during some very dark days as a footy club. If there was a number on the back of a footy jumper or a duffel coat in the late 70s early 80s it was almost always #31.

[Yankee Hotel Foxtrot]

KT was my first football hero and Bulldog idol.

I was only 4 or 5, and I didn't get to see very much football or football news on TV back then, in country Maryborough Victoria. Plus my old man was a Yank and despised 'aerial ping pong' and as with most folks back then one TV in the house was the norm, and my parents' sole domain to dominate, with a close second being my much older, football agnostic sisters.

My Mum came from England (Birmingham), but migrated post war as a 9 year old to Brooklyn, where her Dad built one of the first houses on Stenhouse Ave/St?.

So despite my Mum not being a huge football fan herself, the parochial nature of the times, meant she was still Bulldog's when it was required to nominate your affiliation. She said she went to the 1954 GF as an 18 yr old with her then boyfriend.. (I have my doubts about that though..anyway....

As such, and I'm sure I've mentioned this here, when I first joined WOOF, most likely, that I just never knew of a time when I first became a Bulldog's fan, it just gradually seeped in, from every visit to my Nan/Pop's house in Stenhouse st, or to my aunt/uncle's in Altona North.
It must've been around 77 or 78 (so I was 3-5)when I first recall being a KT fan. I 100% remember I was aware of KT kicking the ton in 78, when we were in Maryborough. And I also had this really cheap rubbery/plastic Bulldog Action figure which came with numerals to stick on, and I stuck on numbers 3 and 1 to the back- that must've been either 78 to very early 1980. So by the time we moved to Noble Park sometime during 1980 I was definitely already all aboard and seated on the KT worship train when he won his Brownlow.

I was devastated when he left the Dogs, and actually had no idea of the extent of both his injuries nor the perilous financial state the club were in.
The first VFL game of football I went to was in 1984 at VFL Park against Melbourne, we got flogged by 78 points, and I think KT kicked 7 or 8..

I was gutted leaving that hell hole of a wind tunnel and it's muddy gravel carpark.

To make matters worse my then grade 5 teacher at Harrisfield Primary School in Noble Park was a Melbourne supporter, and we'd had a sidebet on the result with homework extra/or less at stake.

I think he must've felt sorry for me and how bad we got spanked at my first game, that he didn't enforce the wager.

I suspect it wasn't until I came here onto WOOF that I started to learn and better understand the full background to those times and recontextualsze KT's move to Melbourne.

I'm not going to talk about the length of time its taken for KT to get this deserved recognition; I'm just glad it has happened.

As one who idolised him as a little kid, despite rarely seeing him on TV, and never seeing him at a game- (until he was with Melbourne!) he sure must've had some Hall of Fame skills to somehow still capture my imagination and indelibly make an impession on me.

[bornadog]

Great Story YHF, thank you for sharing. He was a very imposing figure on field, and really made his presence felt - no wonder you loved him as a kid