Danny Frawley: AFL community mourns loss of a man who knew what mattered
The dying light of a dreary September sky over the Western Oval, St Kilda’s Danny Frawley, in full pre-weep, is held up by Stewie Loewe and Robert Harvey. Loewe had kicked five goals that day, and Harvey had the ball 40 times in a nine-goal upset over Footscray in front of 19,000-odd fans. But the moment was Frawley’s. After 12 seasons and 240 games, it was over.
“Spud” Frawley, the Bungaree potato farmer who had four years earlier led the Saints to their first final in 18 years would retire as a man who represented his state 11 times. But Frawley was not one for individual accolades. What made him a great captain over 177 games was something that many have alluded to over the past day – that he was a man who cared about others more than he cared about himself. His friend and colleague, Gerard Healy, described him on 3AW as “a decent man above all else”.
This is an admirable trait in any man, and particularly so in a game where much of the idealism and social benefits of football have been traded for ratings and revenues. It’s also something of a job requirement for defenders, and Frawley was a great one in an era of historically great forwards.
Frawley’s selfless gene extended to a media career where he was a man who didn’t mind the joke being at his expense – sometimes you sense he even insisted on it. Mencken defined genius as the ability to prolong one’s childhood and were you to watch The Bounce on Fox Footy you’d have to describe Spud as just that.
But Frawley’s real genius was masked by his media buffoonery. Across his 240 games for St Kilda, they won little more than a third of them. During this time, St Kilda fans had just two things to believe in – Tony Lockett and Danny Frawley. Lockett was another Ballarat boy, and along with Greg Burns and Joffa Cunningham would jump in a car and drive more than 900kms a week just to play for the club. Today the AFL largely pays lip service to country football, celebrating it as a marketing exercise with little thought for its broader health. But Spud was an advocate for it. He was a man who never forgot his roots and only gave away farming in the early 1990s.
While Frawley’s good mate Lockett would kick close to 900 goals in his 12 years at the club, the Saints simply looked more solid and durable – and were embodied best – by their fullback. Spud was stoic and someone Saints fans could depend on in tough times. It is no small thing to give a community something to believe in when times are rough – including three wooden spoons in his first three years.
While Frawley may have ridden on the shoulders of Harvey and Loewe in his last game, they would ride on Spud’s two years later when St Kilda made the grand final.
Frawley also inspired thousands of others when took up work during his playing days as a promotions officer with the AFL conducting football clinics at schools, including a future premiership-winning centre-half forward.
Brisbane Lions great, Jonathan Brown, shared his first memory of Frawley at a clinic in Warrnambool. “Coming to the ground and seeing Spud, and then 20 years later I was doing the same thing with him, when we were going around country Victoria on the Toyota regional bus tours. I looked at those kids and I thought, I saw meself in those kids. I thought, 20 years ago I was doing that. And Spud’s still bringing a smile to these kids’ faces. He was just so infectious.”
Which brings us to another photo from Frawley’s last game – one that speaks to an even greater legacy. It is a photo of Frawley running onto the ground with one of his daughters. Frawley looks to be a man trying to contain his emotions as he holds his little girl’s hand. She is dressed as like her father in a Saints jumper, shorts, socks and boots.
She is not aware of his 239 games to this point, or his Trevor Barker Award, All-Australian honours and state representation. What she sees is a man who is larger than life. She is a little girl who loves her dad and is completely and delightedly absorbed in the moment, whatever it may be.
Thirteen years later, Frawley would at last celebrate a premiership as coach of Old Haileybury’s women’s footy team in the VAFA – an experience made all the greater by sharing it with two of his daughters.
He shared his delight on Instagram: “Sunday marks the first time in my football career that I have been apart [sic] of a premiership winning team, couldn’t be happier to share that moment with my two of my daughters!!”
Danny Frawley was a man who knew what mattered and he will be missed.