Weekly Times |
OUT the back of a sprawling, 100-year-old homestead at Willangie, in the southern Mallee, sits an old barn. It’s not much to look at, but the door is responsible — at least in part — for one of the most remarkable country footy careers of all time.
The homestead, on a dirt road between Birchip and Sea Lake, belongs to Tony Doran.
To those who follow bush footy closely, particularly in the Mallee, Doran needs no introduction.
His statistics are unparalleled:
573 games of senior footy.
2993 career goals.
THIRTEEN 100-goal-plus seasons.
TEN goals or more in 67 matches.
TWENTY league goalkicking trophies.
ELEVEN premierships.
THIRTY-FOUR consecutive seasons.
And the best bit? He’s still playing.
On Saturday, the 49-year-old grain grower slotted seven goals from full-forward for the Nullawil reserves.
Barring injury or an army of defenders, Doran will kick his 3000th goal at the Maroons’ home ground in the next fortnight — possibly this weekend against lowly Moulamein.
Records are scarce, but Doran may well be the first player to reach the figure in Victorian Country Football League (now AFL Victoria Country) history.
Some tallies put legendary goalkicker and football nomad Trevor Sutton, who booted 249 for Deniliquin in 1982, above 4000 career goals, but many of those were kicked in summer seasons up north.
Doran began his career as a rover in the juniors at Woomelang, but his thirst for goals was ignited at age 13.
“I was pretty small when I was young, but I grew a lot one year and went from rover to centre half-forward,” he said.
“The most goals I’d ever kicked in a game as a rover was four, but they moved me forward and one day I kicked 11. I thought, ‘well, this is all right’, and that’s how it all started.”
After booting 120 in his final season at Woomelang, Doran switched to Birchip, where he was going to school.
“I was in the under-16s at Birchip in 1980 and I was kicking a fair few goals (he finished with 90 plus),” he said.
“The seniors were struggling a bit, so I played my first senior game that year, just one game to get a bit of a taste of it.
“I got a kick in the first 10 minutes and booted it up the ground. A second later I copped this dirty big backhander across the face. The bloke said, ‘you’re not playing juniors now, son’. It didn’t hurt much but it woke me up a bit.”
Doran spent the next five seasons honing his skills in the seniors under such coaches as tough nut Rod Wardle and former Geelong and Footscray player Stephen Lunn.
In 1985, Doran booted 112 goals and was joint winner of the North Central league’s best and fairest, the Feeny Medal.
It was enough for him to leave Birchip to try his luck in the tough Bendigo Football League the following year.
The move paid off — in his one season at Northern United, Doran won his first senior premiership and came second in the league goalkicking, 10 goals behind teammate Gavin Exell, who headed to Geelong the following year.
Doran returned to Birchip for the 1987 season, before starting his coaching career at Nullawil in 1988.
He spent four years as playing coach, with the club making finals in all but one season.
“But we played in five finals matches in three years and we lost them all, so I was a bit of a failure there,” Doran said.
“Then Woomelang came to see me so I went up there as coach. The first year (1992) I played a lot of kids because they’d only won one game the year before.
“I think we won six games that season and had another half a dozen games where we were within 10 points.
“In 1993 we did a bit of a pre-season and everyone was firing, but no one thought we were going to be much good.”
Despite breaking an ankle mid-season, Doran recovered to lead Woomelang into the finals, where it knocked off Nullawil in the second semi-final and Beulah in the big dance.
“That was a good win, one of the highlights,” he said.
After Woomelang missed the finals in 1994, Doran returned to Nullawil as a player “and I’ve been there ever since”.
At the Maroons, Doran booted 100-goals plus for three consecutive seasons, 1997-99, and played in the club’s back-to-back Golden Rivers league flags in 2000-01.
At the peak of his career, he would head out the back of his house before every game and practice set shots from beside a silo. He wouldn’t leave until he’d hit the barn door on the full five times with each foot.
And as far as superstitions go, he still uses a Sherrin footy bag he won for a best-on-ground performance in 1980.
The tape holding it together is testament to its age.
In 2006, Doran played most of the season in the seniors — some alongside son Kyle, then 15 — but stepped down to the reserves late in the year.
“I was probably getting a game more on reputation than form,” he said.
“So I went back to the ressies for the last three games and kicked 23 goals. We had both sides in the grand final, seniors and reserves. I played in the ressies, kicked seven and we won the flag. The seniors lost.”
It was the start of a purple patch for the Maroons’ reserves, who won six flags in seven years, with Doran part of them all.
He admits he doesn’t train much these days and pre-season preparation is non-existent.
“You’ve only got so many miles in your legs at this age and I don’t see much point in using them up in pre-season.
“Some Tuesday nights I have a jog if I’m feeling good, and Thursdays I just go out and do a few stretches and exercises then wander off and have a shower before everyone else.”
His wife, Veronica, reckons the only running he does now “is when he runs out of the footy sheds”.
Doran said his knowledge of the game and ability to read the play “gets me a heap of goals now”.
But in his best seasons, it was Doran’s pace off the mark, a strong set of hands and the ability to hold his feet that set him apart.
“And I’m only 180cm, so I got as many goals crumbing as I did marking,” he said.
“If I was going up for a mark and there was five blokes in the pack with me, there was a fair chance the ball was going to ground. I sometimes snagged a couple of goals while other blokes were still looking for where the ball had gone.”
Former Essendon player Geoff Burdett, another familiar name across the Wimmera and Mallee, coached Doran at Birchip in 1987.
“We used to call him ‘Cat’ — he’d just prowl around and all of a sudden he’d grab the ball and wheel around and kick a goal,” Burdett said.
“He’d snap a lot of goals but they were never flukes — he always knew where the goals were. And he had telescopic arms, too.
“That was where he was deceiving — he wasn’t that tall, but when his arms go up he’s like Dustin Fletcher, so he’d out-mark a lot of players.”
The inside cover of an old exercise book holds a hand-drawn table detailing Doran’s goalkicking feats — all 34 seasons, game by game.
“You used to get a cardboard fixture when you bought your membership and I kept it in the console of the car,” he said.
“On each round, I’d write down how many goals I kicked.
“I ended up doing that for six or seven years, then I thought I’d write it all down somewhere and keep it together.
“It’s probably a bit vain, but all full-forwards are a little bit that way, I think.”
The ravages of time and an unorthodox kicking style not seen since Rod “Curly” Austin played for Carlton in the 1970s have conspired to reduce Doran’s kicking distance.
“Most of my shots now are from 30m or less, and 35-40m probably pulls me up,” he said.
“The ball is virtually up and down when it hits the boot and I don’t know why it happens but I get a lot more rotations than most people, which I reckon helps it hold its line.
“You see a lot of league footballers who kick drop punts and the ball rotates so slowly and it fades. I miss goals, too, but most of the time it seems to work.”
Doran, 50 in August, isn’t sure how long he’ll play on, but he’s adamant he won’t retire.
“I’ll just stop playing,” he said. “You see so many people retire then their club is short so they’re back out there again, and I don’t want to do that.”
Burdett said Doran’s 3000-goal milestone was “incredible”.
“He’s been a great player and he’s certainly a freak,” he said.
“I’ve played with him and I’ve played against him, and he’s certainly one of those real legends of the bush.”
