Ex-Bomber mark-of-the-year merchant Gary Moorcroft became a legend in local football – and he’s not done with yet, writes PAUL AMY.
The Bill Lawry Oval at Northcote recognises a great of Australian cricket, a Test match captain, determined opening batter and a fancier of pigeons.
Last Saturday the ground welcomed another player associated with high flying.
At 2.01pm, 47-year-old former AFL Bomber Gary Moorcroft ran onto the oval for South Morang for a Division 2 Northern league match against Northcote Park.
His son Beau, 25, was alongside him.
Moorcroft’s appearance in the No. 12 jumper – for this round an Indigenous strip designed by the mother of a club junior – caught the eye of a few spectators among the crowd of about 300 people.
“Thought he’d retired,’’ a beer-sipping Northcote Park supporter said as he stood on the grass bank on the wing on the Westgarth St of the ground.
Moorcroft thought the same.
He didn’t play last year and he didn’t miss it.
“I could go and watch and be content with that,’’ he says.
His daughter Chloe’s boyfriend, Sam Hutton, played for South Morang, which made the Division 3 grand final.
Moorcroft went along to watch and saw a young and talented team win by 15 points.
It got him and Beau thinking about joining Hutton at the Lions. Moorcroft figured they could do with some experience in their return to Division 2.
One thing led to another and two months later South Morang appointed him a playing assistant to club great Gary Hall.
“I knew Gary even before he started playing in the AFL. His future wife worked for me,’’ South Morang president Grant Pell says.
“When he found out I was president he reached out and said his son was going to come and play and he’d come too, and I thought, ‘What a privilege to have someone with his knowledge’.
“Never did I think he was going to play a game. But he turned up to training and started running around. We saw him as a mentor to our boys but it turned out he was good enough to play.’’
*****
Twenty years after finishing a league career that will always be recalled for his soaring mark over Brad Johnson, the night in 2001 when he almost raised the roof of the Docklands stadium, Gary Moorcroft played his first match for South Morang.
It was in round one. Unfortunately an opponent fell on his foot and he suffered an injury to his plantar fascia.
Returning five weeks later, he kicked seven goals, catapulting him back into local-football headlines.
It was harder going for him against Northcote Park.
Moorcroft lined up at full-forward, where he was met by Northcote Park defender Daniel Tallariti, taller by 13cm and younger by 25 years.
Their duel was among the highlights of a game that South Morang ran away with in the third quarter.
Moorcroft still has his speed and he used it to make leads, but he couldn’t shake Tallariti, who is on Footscray’s VFL list.
At least twice Moorcroft fell to the ground with his opponent on his back.
“He can’t hold me!’’ he said to the umpire at one stage.
Moorcroft and Tallariti had words in the second quarter but there was no lasting animosity between them.
When Moorcroft grabbed a water bottle and refreshed himself, he offered the Northcote Park fullback a drink.
Things became more ominous in the third quarter when a young man ran to the fence and began hurling vitriol and threats at Moorcroft.
Tallariti, fearing the situation could quickly escalate, urged Northcote Park supporters to get the man away.
The incident unsettled spectators behind the goals but not Moorcroft, who after many years of boxing training can presumably look after himself.
Soon after he took a strong mark, kicked his first goal and smiled.
By that stage South Morang was on the way to a thumping win; it finished 41 points in front to go to third on the ladder.
Moorcroft and Tallariti shook hands after the game, with the veteran later saying: “That‘s 1-0 to him; he’s a pretty smart player with some good pace and he’s pretty strong too.’’
Of course Tallarati knew who he was playing on. “Everyone knows that mark he took,’’ he says.
As soon as the South Morang song had been sung in the rooms, Moorcroft sat on the floor and applied ice to his right foot.
It’s still giving him some bother; the man who seemingly had heavy-duty springs in his boots won’t be getting too far off the ground for a while yet.
*****
Recruited from the Northern Knights after winning the Morrish Medal in 1994, Gary Moorcroft made his debut for Essendon in 1995 and played 95 games for the Dons, including the 2000 premiership.
The grab that gave him perpetuity in the game came in Round 14 of 2001.
Leaping like fat in a frying pan, he took the mark of the year over Bulldog Johnson at the top of goalsquare.
More than 20 years later, people still ask him about it.
“A fair bit actually,’’ he says.
“It’s always something to look back on. It gets put on social media a fair bit. As they say, it gets older, it gets better.’’
It won him a luxury car.
Moorcroft left Essendon at the end of 2002.
Three appearances for Melbourne the following year left him two games shy of 100 league matches. In future years he reached tons of a different type.
In 2004 Moorcroft joined Essendon’s VFL affiliate, Bendigo Bombers.
Then it was on to local football, starting at Silvan.
He had some familiar faces around him: Marc Bullen, Ben Haynes and Aaron Henneman also joined the club, a package of former Bombers heading to the hills to work for The Compass Group and play in the Yarra Valley Mountain District league.
Moorcroft performed spectacular deeds for Silvan.
He won the best and fairest in each of his four years, played in two premierships and kicked two centuries of goals. In 2008 he booted a remarkable 168 goals.
Lee Hartman, now the CEO of the Southern Football Netball League, played with Moorcroft at Silvan.
“We were a two-pronged attack. Every time the ball came in high I just bent over a little bit so he could jump over my head,’’ Hartman says with a laugh.
“The bloke was a freak. I played 17 years of senior football and he was easily the best player I played with.
“The tricks he had were unlimited. One year when he brought up his hundred, he needed 15 for the day and only had four at three-quarter time. He got the hundred before time-on in the last quarter. It was just unbelievable. He could do anything. He’d take four or five hangers a week. Standing next to him, I knew it was coming. I’d just brace myself.’’
He says Moorcroft was “one of the best blokes you’d meet’’.
Bullen says he was a “superstar’’ at Silvan, “like he has been at every community club he’s been at’’.
“Fresh out of the AFL and we had the luxury of playing together up in the country on a small oval and we won two premierships … great days,’’ Bullen says.
“They loved ‘Gazz’ up there, on and off the field.’’
Moorcroft spent 2009 and 2010 with Romsey and crossed to Bundoora in 2011.
His feats as a Bull were local football’s version of Michael Jordan.
In 172 games he kicked 578 goals, figured in the 2011, 2013 and 2017 premierships, topped the Northern league goal kicking twice and gained selection in six teams of the year.
He regularly took big marks too. In 2016, at the age of 40, he hauled in a hanger against Northcote Park, and a string of media outlets picked up the footage. Moorcroft had “wound back the clock’’, they said.
Another former Bomber, Ricky Dyson, coached Moorcroft at Bundoora and says he was almost as professional with the Bulls as he had been with Essendon.
Their two seasons together took in the 2017 premiership, secured with a three-point victory over Macleod.
Moorcroft kicked the winning goal 29 minutes into the last quarter.
“He did all the little things a lot of people don’t do … he was always the first to training and would do extras, whether it was running or boxing or working on his goal kicking,’’ Dyson says.
“That’s why he’s still playing at the age he is. And he really loves competing.’’
Coming back from the Covid year off in 2020, Moorcroft signed to play at Bright, where his friend Paul Harrison was coaching.
The travel was too much and he hurt his calf.
He returned to Bundoora to have a run in the reserves, kicking six, three, eight and seven goals in four games.
Moorcroft says he “loved’’ his time at the Bulls and indeed in local football.
“I suppose when you’re in that bubble of AFL, you don’t realise how much local footy means to communities,’’ he says.
“You get all these volunteers who don’t get paid for what they do but they put the club first and you first. I’ve met a lot of great people along the journey, which has been the best part about it.’’
*****
“I’m just giving back I suppose, mate,’’ Gary Moorcroft responds to the question of playing senior football in the year he turned 47.
“With my job (he runs a scrap metal company in Melbourne’s outer east), it gives my brain a rest for two to three hours – it’s pretty intense sort of work – and I also get to play with my son.
“I’ve been lucky, body-wise. I’ve had one soft-tissue injury in my whole life. That’s why I’m able to keep going, I think.’’
He works at his fitness, doing something most days, including boxing.
South Morang coach Hall is happy to leave his old boy to his own preparations.
Moorcroft likes what he sees in the South Morang team as it tackles Division 2 for the first time in 10 years.
President Pell proudly points out that every player bar one in last year’s premiership team came through the juniors.
It shows, says Moorcroft.
“Most of them have played together their whole lives. That was the first thing I noticed, the friendships they’ve got, they all go out together, they hang around the club on Tuesday and Thursday night and Saturdays as well,’’ he says.
“There’s a good feel to the club.
“After Beau signed up I was happy to jump into that and help where I could with a young list, coach the forward line and show the boys a bit or two with the training standards and structure for Divvy 2 footy.
“They’re a really competitive group. They love to win and they love a challenge.’’
As does the 47-year-old forward in the No. 12 jumper.
