|
The
Origins of the St Mary's Guernsey
by Don Malcolm
The original St Mary's jumper, in use from 1932-1939
consisted of three vertical stripes in red, black
and gold.
St Mary's disbanded during the 2nd World War for seasons
1939-1945, and when the club re-convened in 1946,
a new set of jumpers were required.
1945-1950
The St Mary's jumpers that were used in the late 1940's
were obtained by my father at a time just after World
War 2 when such things were very hard to obtain.
Australian businesses were trying hard to recover
from the war and the only people that seemed to have
access to sporting equipment including footballs were
the VFL and VFA clubs.
Football although being played on a lesser scale
during the war years, was recognized as an outlet
for young men and even the army made certain allowances
for senior players. Grounds like the MCG were taken
over by the military forces other areas around Carlton
became the home of American forces and was known as
Camp Pell.
My father worked for the Post Master General's Department
(PMG), supervising and working with linespeople to
maintain phone services for the military, and in his
role he was classed as an essential services officer
with the PMG. He travelled around Victoria in this
capacity ensuring that the phone lines were maintained
and repaired.
On a journey to Port Melbourne, he came across a
sports store and, always being on the look out for
sporting goods, he enquired if they had any jumpers
available.
At the same time as his visit there was a chap from
Port Melbourne FC who had called in to pick up a set
of jumpers (on hire) for one of their teams.
Dad pitched his story of how badly we needed jumpers
and how St.Mary's would be so grateful if we could
buy a set from the store.
The conversation got around to how we were a church
team and the inevitable questions were asked about
exactly where the church was and who was the Minister.
Dad dodged as many direct questions as possible but
he must have impressed the two gents who decided that
to keep faith with the church, St. Mary's should have
the set of jumpers, which turned out to be a black
jumper with a gold band around the midriff. In fact
these jumpers had been jumpers used by cyclists in
those days.
Dad came home full of pride and along with the ladies
of the club it was organized to add numbers and a
Red Vee to the jumper to retain the clubs Red, Gold
and Black colors.
There was a sporting goods manufacturer in Hartwell
called Riders Sports who were just setting up, and
they made the red material available to us.
These jumpers took a fair bit of punishment as they
were not originally made to be used in physical clashes
and tore quite easily.
1950-
The need for new jumpers quickly came about but still
they were hard to get.
We decided that we needed to make our mark on football
in the ESCFA and design our own distinctive jumper.
I had long been impressed with the WA State Team
jumper of gold with the Black Swan.
We checked out all the opposition club's jumpers
and found that a plain gold jumper would certainly
be one of a kind at that time.
The difficulty came about in sourcing the jumpers
and in the interim we were able to obtain a full set
of Gold Windcheater type jumpers. Theses certainly
were not the real answer as they were made of cotton,
and were not good to wear in the cold wintry weather
and really were not suitable.
Finally we were able to arrange through Rider Sports
in Hartwell for him to manufacture us proper jumpers
in Gold with black trim and numbers.
The original jumpers were of a wool mix and were
very warm, but in rainy weather your weight increased
measurably as the jumper took on the rain.
During one of the re-ordering of jumpers Jim Francis
put forward the idea to change to a St. Kilda style
jumper. Jim's father was coaching there at the time.
After much deliberation it was decided to not just
copy the St. Kilda jumper as other clubs used that
jumper, but to retain the clubs gold and Black colors
but to add the St. Kilda styled shield.
The shield and logo was added to the jumper in
1962. This caused immense technical problems as
embroidery was extremely expensive and not readily
available. Our jumper was not suitable for screen
printing because of the open weave. The first shield
added to the jumper was printed by screen print on
a felt type material which was then sown on to the
jumpers.
This was successful for some time but the felt material
gave out and finally we were able to get the shield
embroidered and added to the jumper.
In am not sure who it was that suggested the motto
that appeared on the shield. It may have been Ray
Leman or Alan Skinner who was our resident graphic
arts man. Not sure how good their Latin was though.
Over the years there has been many mixtures of materials
and today we now wear the St. Mary's Salesian jumper
recognizing the colors of the two now merged clubs.
 |
Audentis fortuna
iuvat
The one thing that has been a constant on the
guernsey to this day is the shield and logo: Audentis
fortuna iuvat.
> Click
here to find out more about the club logo |
|
