Paul ‘Chewy’ Scanlon has had a remarkable career in senior football – and it’s not over yet for the 45-year-old, writes PAUL AMY.
When the scores went up and the goal kickers and best were listed, there was a familiar name among the St Kilda City players.
P Scanlon.
There is only one P Scanlon playing at senior level in Victorian local football.
They call him ‘Chewy’, and he’s been around so long that a few people refer to him as ‘Old Chewy’.
It was a surprise to see Paul Scanlon, at the age of 45, on the City team sheet.
Hadn’t he retired?
“I actually surprised myself by playing,’’ Scanlon says, explaining how he had come to sign with the colourful Southern league club.
He is great mates with St Kilda City spearhead and former AFL forward Aaron Edwards, and before the season Edwards told him to join in training at Elwood Beach.
Scanlon thought it would be a good way to stay fit ahead of coaching and playing for the Diamond Valley Superules team.
Before he knew it, he’d agreed to have a run for City.
And so a comma replaced a full stop on the career of a Victorian country and suburban footballer who has played well over 400 senior games.
“What a legend,’’ former AFL player Daniel Harford tweeted at news that Scanlon had been named best for St Kilda City in its win over Mordialloc last month.
Harford is staggered that Scanlon is still getting a kick in Division 1 senior football.
They played together in the VFL at the Northern Bullants, when Harford was on Carlton’s list and won the Ants’ best and fairest in 2006.
“He’s a bloody marvel, mate,’’ Harford messages CODE Sports. “In the best nick, always. And an even better bloke.’’
Barry Mitchell coached Scanlon at the Bullants and once gave him some advice that has always stayed with him: “Play for as long as you can, because whenever you retire, you’ll regret it.’’
Mitchell could surely not have imagined that Scanlon – who joined the Bullants from Northern league club Bundoora – would still be playing well into his 40s.
It was Mitchell who set Scanlon on his way to local football.
Often denied a senior position by Carlton players – the Bullants and the AFL Blues were then in a VFL alignment – Scanlon played a lot of reserves games with the Ants.
Mitchell took him for a walk at Princes Park one night and suggested it might be a good time for him to “go local’’ and earn a decent dollar.
Scanlon had a young family at the time. He saw the sense in the suggestion.
And soon he was hitting the road for Seymour, the first stop in a long and successful time in football in the bush and the ’burbs.
*****
Steve Daniel coaches Southport in the VFL.
Twenty years ago he was an assistant at the Bullants and then moved to Seymour as a senior coach in the strong Goulburn Valley league.
Scanlon followed him. He was there for three seasons, playing in two premierships.
“The old ‘Chewbacker’. He’s a freak, mate. He’s one of the best players I’ve been lucky enough to coach, at GVL level and VFL level,’’ Daniel declares.
“He was tough, a great user of the ball, his decision-making was elite and he was super-fit. Still is. He’s never had an ounce of fat on him. He’d be in the gym working on those arms every single day. Always doing arms, never doing calves.’’
Daniel reckons he gets a message from someone every year talking about how Scanlon is still playing.
“Without fail. It’s like, ‘Do you know Chewy’s going on?’ That’s been happening for 10 years!’’ he says with a laugh.
“He’s had a mammoth career really. He’s a quality bloke who just loves playing football and is very, very good at it.’’
Scanlon says he “hit his straps’’ in the Goulburn Valley.
He calls himself a “late bloomer, a late maturer’’.
“Being at the Bullants made me a better player,’’ he says.
“My skills weren’t great early days but I got better as I progressed. I’ve always had a go, a crack. That’s always been a big part of my game. I think I’m a good teammate too, trying to help others out.’’
Scanlon would have won a league medal at Seymour but for a suspension; with him ineligible, it went to ex-AFL player Trent Hotton.
Past the age of 30, the right-footer decided on a return to the VFL, this time with Bendigo Bombers.
And, going from a country league to the state league and most weeks coming up against AFL-listed players, he won the best and fairest. He won it well, polling 171 votes to finish 13 ahead.
Scanlon also spent 2010 at the Bombers, but there had been a change of senior coach and he enjoyed it less.
The following season he joined Northcote Park, where he played in a premiership under former AFL Saint Jason Heatley.
A return to Seymour came in 2015, but the travel that hadn’t bothered him a few years earlier finally got to him.
Then he and his mate Tim Bongetti decided to link up with Mornington.
They were on their way to the club to sign when they phoned Frankston Pines top-liner Luke Potts, who had played state under-age football with Bongetti.
Potts was aghast when they told him they were about to run pen over paper at Mornington; he said they would all be better off playing together rather than against each other.
They turned the car around and went to Frankston Pines.
In his first year with the club, Scanlon was runner-up in the league medal, despite struggling with osteitis pubis.
“He carried it all year. He could barely move at the end,’’ Potts recalls.
Twelve months later, at age 39, Scanlon won the medal.
And in 2018 he figured in another premiership in what may be the greatest Mornington Peninsula grand final of all: Pines defeated Sorrento with a kick after the siren in front of a heaving crowd at Frankston Park.
Potts, a VFL best and fairest at Frankston, did not know Scanlon before he joined the Pythons.
He quickly came to appreciate him.
“For me, he was perfect. He’s a big bull. He goes in and does all the hard work and makes me look good on the outside,’’ Potts says.
Scanlon finished up at Pines at the end of 2019.
When local football resumed in 2021, he managed to play at three clubs before Covid killed off the season.
He started at East Keilor, only to fall out with coach Pat Christofi over Scanlon’s desire to play some Superules games on Sundays.
Shane Crawford persuaded him to help out at battling Ardmona and he was part of its drought-breaking victory over Longwood in the Kyabram District league.
And then he popped at Avenel for a game or two. He enjoyed the football, but not the long drive.
Last year he was back in Melbourne, playing a handful of matches at Port Melbourne Colts as he coached the Diamond Valley “Supers’’.
The Tiwi Bombers are another club Scanlon has called home. Well, sort of; he was a fly-in player for four years, including the 2010-11 premiership, when he was best-afield.
He would head to the airport on Friday nights and return on a red-eye flight on Sundays.
He did the same for Nightcliff.
“I tell everyone going to Darwin is the best pre-season you can ever do, because you can hardly breathe in the heat and the ball’s like soap,’’ Scanlon says.
Scanlon, an electrician on the Metro Tunnel Project, remains dedicated to his fitness.
Most days he’ll be up at 4am to go to the gym. Last Tuesday he knocked off work, went to a gym in South Melbourne for an ice bath and then headed to St Kilda City training at the Peanut Farm.
“That’s for recovery mate, to keep the body ticking over,’’ he says.
“It’s hard to get up each week. I don’t usually come good now until Thursday or Friday, and then you do it all over again.
“There are times when I’m nowhere near right, when I’m sore, and I think to myself, ‘Why do you do it?’ I do it because of the people I play with and because I love football. I just love being involved in footy clubs. You meet so many good people, it keeps you active, keeps you fit.’’
His arrival at St Kilda City has put him back in club football with his former Pines teammates Edwards and Potts.
He’s enjoying their company and his involvement at City.
Potts says his teammate is “still pulling his weight’’, but Scanlon knows he’s slowing up. Time is staking its claim.
“I had a few little skill errors last Saturday and I’m not usually like that,’’ he says.
“Even Aaron pulled me up on it. He said, ‘Mate, what’s wrong with your kicking today?’
“You’ve got to play smarter now, know where to move on the ground and where to cut angles and where to get the easier kick. When you’re younger you used to run around like a headless chook, but you had the fitness to get there.’’
Will this finally be Paul ‘Chewy’ Scanlon’s last season?
“I think it will be,’’ he says.
“But I say that every year, don’t I?’’
CHEWY’S TOP 15 PLAYERS
Local
Saad Saad: “By far the best player I ever played with. He should have played in the AFL. He kicked centuries of goals at Seymour and would take hangers every week. Phenonemal footballer.’’
Luke Potts: “A ball magnet with great skills who works hard. He played good footy in the VFL so it’s no surprise he’s done so well in local. He was a superstar at Pines.’’
Aaron Edwards: “A goalkicking machine whose talent took him to three AFL clubs and won him a Liston in the VFL. In his prime he was probably on Saad’s level. He’s one of my best mates so it’s great to be playing with him at St Kilda City.’’
Beau Henry: “Beau was my captain at Pines and also my ruckman. He played for the jumper and he played with a lot of prick. A tough player and a great teammate.’’
Bronik Davies: “Bronik was a workhorse who got the most out of himself. He was my captain at Northcote Park and he showed everyone how to do it by being hard at the ball.’’
Luke Stevenson: “I first played with ‘Stevo’ at the Bullants and then Seymour. He was a Mr Fix It. He could do jobs on blokes who were taller than him or shorter than him and I never really saw him beaten. He was a big-game player too.’’
Matt Penn: “I played with Matty at the Bullants and he was hardworking and tough forward, back or mid. I loved playing with him – he’d always stick his head over the footy – and he was one of my best mates at Seymour.’’
Chris Stewart: “I only saw him for a very short time but what a player, strong, tough, marked at will. He could change a game and do whatever he wanted on the footy field.’’
Matty O’Keefe: “One of the toughest blokes I played with; probably the toughest, to be honest. He was a Seymour local and could have gone to any club in Victoria and got big money but he stayed at Seymour because he saw it as his home. He always looked after me if I was getting tagged.’’
Nick Carter: “A very unassuming player. He didn’t look much of a footballer but I never saw him get beaten. Give him a job and he’d do it every week. Tough as nails too.’’
VFL
Stewart Crameri: “Stewie had everything: strength, speed, endurance, versatility. He could play forward, back and everywhere in between. He went on to a good AFL career too. We saw that coming.’’
Jack Redpath: “Jack was only a kid when I played with him at Bendigo, a country boy from Kyneton. But I knew he was going to make it. He was big and strong and could play ruck or centre half forward.’’
NTFL
Ross Tungatalum: “Was on St Kilda’s list at one stage and no doubt had the talent to be in the AFL. He was so gifted … both feet, on the run, bouncing the ball in the wet like it was dry. Ross was a freak.’’
Gerry Cunningham: “A forward who kicked stacks of goals. Similar to Ross, he had raw talent and could have gone on to bigger things. A superstar.’’
Cameron Ilett: “One of the most gifted footballers in Darwin and one of the most decorated too. Wherever he played he found the footy.’’
