Wells Looks At Collingwood’s 1950 Team

This is from The Age, June 2, 1950 before the Magpies played the Bulldogs.

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This would have been Phonse Kyne‘s first year as coach of Collingwood. Also featured are Bill Twomey, Jack Hamilton, Des Healey, Lou Richards, Bernie Shannon, Peter Lucas, Stan Smith, Charlie Utting, George Hams, Bob Rose, Bill Rose, Bill Nolan, Jack Thompson, Gordon Hocking, Neil Mann, Jack Purdon, Bill Tebble, Neville Broderick and head trainer Ern Reay.

By the way Collingwood beat the Bulldogs by 72 points in this round 7 clash, although later in the year Footscray almost caused an upset when in round 18 they lost to the Magpies by just 2 points.

1950 was not a great year for either Collingwood or Footscray. The Magpies would finish the season in 7th place whilst the Bulldogs would finish 10th. Essendon was premiers in 1950.

Mark Knight Collingwood Cartoons

I’ll probably get a letter from Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers about this, but here are a few Collingwood related cartoons from this season by Mark Knight. I used to like Knight’s cartoons but don’t really like them as much any more. I thikn the addition of colour to the cartoons have had a detrimental effact on them. IMO they look a bit too busy and quite unappealing.

I guess that is meant to be Scott Pendlebury getting attended to be the team doctor and Dane Swan by the tatooist, with Mick Malthouse, some other guy who’s supposed to be someone, Alan Didak? and the back of Dale Thomas, but it’s hard to tell because the caricatures are so awful.

Notice how in the above cartoon Knight has to write Riewoldt on the bag, just in case you couldn’t tell from his sloppy caricature who the hell it was.

Is that stoned guy with the huge eyebrows meant to be Andrew Demetriou? At least he hasn’t drawn Gillard as Queen Elizabeth I like he usually does (like how he draws Joe Hockey as Shrek even though Shrek hasn’t been popular since 2003!).

I like this one, except Ed’s not that fat.

More Wells’ Cartoons From 1958

Here are a few more cartoons from The Age from September 1958 by Wells.

The first one is from September 5th 1958 and is a preview to the big semi-final clash between the Magpies and the Demons. Melbourne were the overwhelming favourites for the flag that year and it was considered a major upset when Collingwood beat them in the grand final.

(Why is Phonse Kyne beating full forward Ian Brewer with a shoe?)

The second is from September 8 1958 after Melbourne beat Collingwood in the 1st Semi-Final by 45 points.

Obviously Wells didn’t have high hopes for the Pies, with Phonse passed out claiming “We’re gone”. Was this Graeme Fellowes first senior game?

This cartoon is a preview of the preliminary final between Collingwood & North Melbourne. It’s from September 12th and shows just how much of an overwhelming favourite Melbourne was for the premiership that year.

The fourth cartoon is from September 15th 1958 after Collingwood defeated North Melbourne by 20 points in the Preliminary Final.

Unfortunately there is not a digital copy available of Wells’ Grand Final Preview cartoon from the 19th of September. The online version of that newspaper is a little screwed up.

I do however have the premiership cartoon from September 22nd which I will post again.

It would be good if Rupert Murdoch would allow the Herald and the Sun to be digitised and put online but alas he would only do that if he could find a way for people to pay for the honour of viewing the archive. The least he could do is compile all of the Hook & WEG and Wells (pre-1950 before he was sacked and started at The Age) cartoons and publish them in book form. I’m sure there would be a few people interested in seeing these cartoons.