A painful Mitch switch
“WELCOME back”, as Richie Benaud used to say, as we resume meandering down memory lane after a short interruption.
With Geelong set to host Carlton in Cat City on Saturday night, I was reminded of those players who have turned out for both clubs.
Mention the topic to any fellow Cats fan of my vintage and nine times out of 10 they will nominate Chris Mitchell.
His first outing with the Blues after leaving Geelong took place almost 50 years ago but when a bloke kicks five goals on debut — against his former club — it’s hard to forget. More about that in a minute.
An athletic ruckman, Mitchell, 20, walked into a strong
Geelong line-up in 1967 as the third stringer behind Graham “Polly” Farmer and John “Sam” Newman.
(Topical aside: while the current Geelong brains trust continues the battle to solidify the chief ruck spot, the 1967 team boasted three quality ruckmen.)
Amazingly, Mitchell plied his trade the previous year for Old Geelong in D Section of the Victorian Amateur Football Association.
How’s that for a huge stepup in class?
The OGs are in C Section these days and I saw them in action a few times last season.
Take it from me, I could not imagine one of their number grabbing a spot in the current Geelong AFL team.
Mitchell played all 18 homeand-away games in 1967 as well as the three finals Geelong contested, culminating in the Grand Final loss to Richmond by nine points.
He was a consistent performer, picking up a healthy return of kicks, marks and hitouts along with 23 goals. A Rising Star nomination would have been a certainty.
There were no second-year blues for Mitchell as he continued his fine form, racking up a similar set of stats in 1968, playing every game again and becoming firmly entrenched in the team.
And then the big No. 8 was off, heeding the call to “Go West, young man!”.
He spent two seasons with East Perth and even represented Western Australia in the 1969 Adelaide carnival.
Mitchell returned to Kardinia Park in 1971, donning No. 27 and played just four unremarkable games in the first half of the season before moving to Carlton in a mid-year switch.
At Princes Park he slipped on the No. 27 jumper (there’s a good trivia question: players to wear the same number at two clubs in the one season) and found himself turning out for his first match in Carlton colours against his old teammates in Round 15.
He’d played alongside Polly Farmer at Geelong, now he was sidekick to the other great ruckman of the era, John Nicholls.
With Big Nick doing most of the ruckwork, Mitchell spent a fair amount of time in a forward pocket. But he wasn’t resting.
Oh, no, the new Blue got busy, hauling in 10 marks and booting 5.3 in an impressive — and unforgettable — performance.
I would have said “display” but I didn’t actually see it; rather I heard it all on 3GL and you don’t forget these things.
They are indelibly etched, no, burnt into your footy brain.
The young Geelong side, which included 10 players with fewer than 20 games to their names — five were teenagers — put up a brave effort before succumbing by 37 points.
Mitchell’s 5.3 was pretty much the difference between the teams.
And as my Coodabeen Champions colleague Greg Champion sings to the tune of Always On My Mind: “He never played like that for us … never played like that for us.”