GEOFF’S WITH HIS MATES
THEY were three players who formed a formidable defensive line and were integral to one of the most successful eras in Geelong Football Club’s history.
The half-back line read: Russ Middlemiss, John Hyde and Geoff Williams.
Between them they shared five premierships and three best-andfairests across 303 games.
“I don’t think you can underestimate how great the bond was between those three boys,” Geelong vice-president Bob Gartland said.
“Each of those three boys have a different story and a different personality, but together they created this impenetrable half-back line — and they were hard ... very tough, head over the ball players, who played for each other.”
That line, regarded as the best in the competition, has passed away in the space of 12 months.
“It’s ironic they would be together again so quickly,” Gartland said.
Williams’s death this week leaves only three surviving players from the 1952 flag.
Premiership teammate Bill McMaster agreed with Gartland’s recollection of the trio.
“The half-back line was a great part of the success of the side,” McMaster said.
“Geoff was great mates with the other two and they played well as a team. Geoff was a very good athlete . . . who could run, who was strong, he was a very good team player.
“He was just so enthusiastic. He was what you would call a great club man.
“They were very tight, got on very well together. It was a great line, a very good line of players.”
Middlemiss, Hyde and Williams remained good friends post their playing days, Gartland said.
“They were inseparable,” he said. “Whenever you saw them at a function, if you saw one you saw them all because they would just stick together, those three boys.”
Williams’s early record was similar to Joel Selwood’s, both walking into sides full of stars.
He played in two Grand Finals in his first two years, as Selwood did, including the 1952 premiership, was voted best-on-ground in the decider, won the best-and-fairest in his first season and had a winning record of 83 per cent (Selwood’s win-loss ratio was 91 per cent in his first two seasons).
Williams would win another Carji Greeves Medal
in 1955 when Geelong made a preliminary final.
“He was well-built, he was very athletic, quick, very strong. A great team player,” McMaster said.
“He was a very good player. He won the best-and-fairest in his first year, which takes a lot of doing at that stage because Geelong had a good side.”
Williams was raised in Geelong but recruited from Warragul, spending some time in the Gippsland town with his work in the bank.
While his record across 121 games would show he was one of the greats of his generation, it was his work in the community that Gartland remembers fondly.
Williams founded the YMCA little league competition in Geelong, which continues to thrive, and in 1984 he received the Reg Hickey Award for services to Australian rules. He was awarded an OAM in 2016 for his work in the community.
An excerpt from a Geelong Advertiser report that year read: “His citation salutes his contributions to the Geelong community.
“They include having cofounded and run for 15 years
Geelong’s original YMCA little league football competition, working on the YMCA board for a decade — including two years as president — and founding and coaching with an indoor soccer competition at Corio Leisuretime Centre for five years from the late 1970s.
“The soccer competition took Geelong teams to national titles and proved a popular winner with Geelong’s vibrant migrant communities.
“Williams also helped establish Bell Post Hill’s
Cobradah drop-in centre and volunteered there for many years.
“He is a long-time member of Hamlyn and Western Heights Uniting and Geelong’s Wesley Uniting Church congregations and Geelong West and Highton Combined Probus clubs.” 121 1952, 1955 1 1984 1952 2016
Also a Geelong Football Club Hall of Fame member and life member.
Gartland said: “He even drove the prison welfare bus from North Geelong station to the prison to bring visitors to visit the inmates at the Geelong prison. He was just extraordinary.”
McMaster, Terry Fulton and George Goninon are the only surviving players from the 1951 and 1952 premierships (Les Reed played in the 1951 flag but did not feature the following season).
Gartland said those sides left a lasting legacy on the competition and community. “That team is a team of extraordinary people, not just as footballers, but as people and as men,” he said.
“Geoff Williams was a very humble man. He was a gentleman and really well mannered. He always thought of other people all the time and what he could do for someone else to make their life a bit better. “He used to say, ‘ I don’t know why people make so much of what he did, we didn’t do anything’. It goes to the legacy that he leaves behind, particularly in his community and with his family and with Geelong.
“As a city, we’ve got so much to be grateful for to Geoff Williams.”
Williams was a loved husband of Joan (dec) and is survived by children Robyn, Peter, Judy and Andrew, nine grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren.