A record 35-game winning streak and successive premierships made a magical Carrum side one of local football’s greatest teams, writes PAUL AMY.
To the men who played in the team and the people who watched them, it was an unforgettable time of their lives.
As the wins piled up, it was as if Carrum had captured the imagination of the whole district.
To a young Peter Kirk, the players were like giants.
Every time he went to Roy Dore Reserve to watch the Lions, they seemed to be 10 goals in front of their opponents.
To a teenage Dale Carpenter, they were the mightiest of sides.
He still reminisces about the Lions and their great players: big Ron Stubbs in the ruck, Gary Guy in the centre, Les Seely in the forward line, Paul Leonard at centre half back ….
“It was such good footy,’’ Carpenter says. “They were champion footballers and they would have been in whatever era they played.’’
It’s 50 years since Carrum won the Mornington Peninsula Football League premiership.
The Lions followed up with another flag in 1974, going through the season undefeated.
From midway through 1973 to early in 1975, they won 35 matches in a row to earn a reputation as one of local football’s greatest teams.
It holds, half a century later.
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Recently, the players from the 1973-74 teams came together again at Roy Dore Reserve, in clubrooms far more comfortable than they had.
Their coach was there too. Ivan Guy is 95, still lives in the area and retains wonderful memories of the premiership sides. Two of his sons, Gary and Les, were part of them.
Ivan Guy coached and played at Carrum in the 1950s, winning three best and fairests.
He spent a few years with Marysville, when he worked on the South Melbourne-to-Morwell gas and fuel pipeline, before returning to the senior coaching role in 1972 and taking the club to four consecutive grand finals.
Two were won, two were lost.
The Lions fell to Hastings in 1972, thrashed Hastings by 45 points in 1973 and nosed out Mornington by four points in 1974, with 20th man Peter Cox kicking the winner close to the final siren.
Trying for three in a row, Carrum met its match against Hastings in a 1975 grand final played in rugged conditions.
“There was an inch of rain halfway through the third quarter. Cans were floating in the ditch under the line of the fence at Mornington footy ground,’’ Gary Guy recalls.
No one from the Lions made excuses; they were outplayed on the day.
“They (Hastings) were the better team,’’ Ivan Guy says.
Gary Guy describes his father as “tough enough as a coach, but so enthusiastic’’.
“He had this little whip-up line: ‘Chase, chase, chase, harass, harass, harass’. You look at it in this day and age and they’re called pressure acts,’’ he says.
“So he might have been ahead of his time.’’
Premiership players Les Hawking, David Parker and Gary Travaglia all say their coach had the ability to bring the players together in a happy environment.
“He was extraordinary,’’ Travaglia says. “He galvanised the bunch of guys, on and off the field. He was the glue to the whole thing.’’
Ivan Guy also looked after the supporters, hiring three buses and taking them to Healesville each February.
The Guy family is something like royalty at Carrum and Mornington Peninsula football.
Two of Ivan Guy’s brothers, Wally and Eric, played league football, for North Melbourne and St Kilda respectively. Another brother, Raymond, was a premiership footballer with Carrum.
Between them, they won league medals and club best and fairests galore.
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Ivan Guy says he was lucky to coach Carrum in the early 1970s.
A group of young players had come through together and they were as tight-knit as they were talented.
With experience, they developed into an excellent side, strong down the spine and skilled on the flanks and wings.
“Nearly all local boys … Carrum born and bred,’’ Ivan Guy says.
“I trained ’em hard and let them play to what strengths they had.’’
Gary Guy says: “We had that nucleus of local players. They all came through school and junior football and it wasn’t until near the end of 1975 that the buying-in of players from other clubs started. Up until then, it was homegrown talent and looking out for each other, basically.’’
David Parker, a defender in the 1973 premiership team, says Carrum had formidable depth; a string of reserves players would have been walk-up start for senior football at other clubs.
Goal kicking was a strength. Four players – Seeley, Rod Smith, Gary Guy and Japanese-born rover Glen Kuramoto – all booted more than 30 goals in 1973, with Seeley giving the century a nudge.
Parker says the Lions’ other great quality was their team-first approach.
“It was always about supporting your teammates. If things went wrong, you never abused anyone, because everyone was doing their best,’’ he says.
He says the Lions were blessed to have Stubbs and Gary Guy in the side.
Remarkably, they filled the first two placings in the Mornington Peninsula league medal count in 1974, Stubbs winning it and Guy second.
Stubbs had also topped the count in 1968, the year before he went to Hawthorn and played league football.
He won seven best and fairests with the Lions.
Stubbs’ career took a triumphant twist in 1980 when he went to Tasmania, was selected in the state team and won All Australian selection alongside Victorian champions Robbie Flower, Garry Wilson and Geoff Southby, South Australian greats Peter Carey and Graham Cornes, and West Australian legend Brian Peake.
“He was the best ruckman who has ever played football on the Mornington Peninsula,’’ Ivan Guy declares. “He won everything there was to win.’’
Ace forward Seeley says: “Ron was a beautiful footballer, a great mark, a lovely kick and a great tap ruckman. There were few players who could compete against him. He was a wonderful asset for Carrum.’’
Gary Guy was captain of the premiership teams – only because his father was the coach, he says with a laugh.
A brilliant centreman, he went to Melbourne after the 1974 premiership, playing 22 games for the Demons.
Debuting in round one of 1975, he had 15 consecutive matches before injuring his shoulder.
Deciding he wasn’t there for “fame or glory’’, he left Melbourne at the end of 1976, later playing for VFA clubs Frankston and Dandenong. He wishes now he had stuck at league football for longer.
“Gary was exceptional for Carrum,’’ Parker says. “He’d get in and under and win the hard ball. And he could kick a captain’s goal.’’
Parker had moved to Horsham with work in 1973 but he made the long drive back and forth to complete the season.
He wasn’t around for the 1974 success but his brother Garry was, wearing the No.13 jumper.
Garry died in 2000, aged 55. He was represented at the reunion by his wife Jan, son Ryan and granddaughter Alice, who wore his old jumper with the numbers on the back made of white plastic.
“It’s a bit like a leotard. Dad was a big guy. It must have shrunk a lot,’’ Ryan Parker says.
Garry Parker played 275 games for the club, a record when he retired.
David and Garry Parker flanked the great defender Leonard, a league All Star selection in the premiership years.
Leonard was renowned for his long kicking and straight-ahead style.
“You look back at that side and you can’t find a weak spot,’’ Leonard, now living in Queensland, says.
“Everyone was totally focused and committed. Without a doubt, we had the best goal-to-goal line in the league … Johnny Austin at full back, myself at centre half back, Gary Guy in the centre, the centre half forward spot we could change around, Les Seeley was at full forward and Ron Stubbs in the ruck.’’
Leonard, 73, says a lot of the premiership players had figured in the Under 17s flag in 1966 and were all about the club and its jumper.
There was no big money in those days, he says, but the players did receive a lot of beer tickets.
Travaglia was not a local. He came down from Swan Hill to do an apprenticeship in 1970 and the club “took me in’’.
He started in the Under 16s, captained the Under 18s in 1973 and went straight into the seniors in 1974.
“First season of footy and I played in an undefeated side. And after that, I never played in another flag!’’ Travaglia says.
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At the end of the 1974 season, with the run of victories at 32, the club produced beer coasters to commemorate the streak.
What started with a win over Frankston on June 16 in 1973 finished with a round four loss to Chelsea in 1975.
Remarkably, Gary Guy was part of the defeated team: he played for Melbourne on the Saturday and, against the Demons’ wishes, for Carrum the following day.
Stubbs, 74, remembers that the game was played at Chelsea before a “huge’’ crowd.
“It was disappointing to lose but to Chelsea’s credit, they played out of their skins,’’ he says.
“It was a let-down. But we regrouped and got to the grand final again. We didn’t let it get us down too much. It was a rude awakening along the lines of, ‘If you’re not on your game every game, someone will jump up and beat you’.
“But to win 35 in a row … gee … and a couple of those were really shocking days when it was muddy and cold and you didn’t really want to be out there.’’
The beer coasters are part of a collection of memorabilia that the football club holds from the premiership years of 1973-74.
Kirk, now involved with Carrum’s past players and officials group, says the Lions were “an incredibly good football team’’ and their winning streak still stands as a league record.
“And it’s definitely a record that may never be broken,’’ he says.
“They were an incredible team to watch and they would have been frightening to play against. They were legendary. They had great support and they had great success.’’
But for a time, the once-invincible Lions became invisible.
Dale Carpenter, who grew up watching the great Carrum sides and himself became a legendary footballer on the Mornington Peninsula, coached Carrum to the 1994 premiership.
It played one more season, then folded after an exodus of players.
A club that formed in 1911, became an integral part of the community and won eight senior premierships, had fallen on hard times and out of football.
Carpenter says it was the biggest disappointment of his many years in the game.
Ryan Parker later wrote about the Lions’ demise in the local newspaper, the Mordialloc Chelsea News.
He said many locals were left shattered.
“We all went our separate ways and ended up playing at other local clubs, looking for a new home based on school friends and relatives playing there. But it could never be the same as playing for Carrum,’’ Parker said.
Eighteen years later, the club was re-formed as Carrum Patterson Lakes after local resident Steve Barnes, a former VFA player and Southern league board member, called a public meeting to gauge interest.
Support for the idea was overwhelming and the Lions, affiliated with Southern, made the grand final in their first season back.
They have yet to win a premiership, although they were unbeaten from 12 matches in 2021, only for Covid to kill off the season.
Paul Leonard says it was a “special day’’ when the club returned in 2013.
“I never thought a reunion day like this would come. The football club folded, the fire brigade folded and they were two institutions in Carrum,’’ he says.
“And I thought, ‘What a waste of a life that was’. Then they resurrected it. That was great.’’
A few years ago, some of the premiership players – Leonard, Stubbs, Seeley, Cox and Stan Czarnecki – took up ownership of a horse that ran second in a Victoria Derby.
It was the appropriately-named Stars of Carrum.
Lion Kings
1973 premiership players: Les Seeley, Colin Counsell, Gary Guy, Russell May, Les Hawking, Peter Briggs, Stan Czarnecki, David Parker, Glen Kuramoto, Ian Molloy, Garry Parker, Paul Leonard, Jimmy Smith, Les Guy, Geoff Sullivan, Rod Smith, Ron Stubbs, John Austin, Ken Davies, Paul Kenny.
1974 premiership players: Stan Czarnecki, Lindsay Sole, John Austin, Garry Parker, Paul Leonard, Gary Travaglia, Jimmy Smith, Gary Guy, Glenn Heath, Ian Molloy, Peter Briggs, Doug Gibbons, Russell May, Les Seeley, Geoff Sullivan, Ron Stubbs, Bob Martello, Les Guy, Tony Hunt, Peter Cox.
