Right: Don Scown’s Team of the Century medal.
By Sally Bird
PEARCEDALE Football Club’s champion rover from the 1950s and ’60s, Don Scown, was named in the Mornington Peninsula Nepean Football League Team of the Century at a dinner at the Frankston Art Centre on Saturday night.
Scown who played 231 games with the club, collecting two premierships in the B Grade in 1952 and 1953, before becoming playing coach in the A Grade team from 1959-1963, winning premierships in 1961, 1962 and 1963.
After starting playing at the age of 11 in the under-17s, the only junior side at the Pearcedale Baxter Junior Football Club, he went on to win the best and fairest trophy in 1950, best and fairest in the seniors in 1954, played in the Country Championship Representative side in 1955 and 1957, and received a special award from Pearcedale Baxter Football Club in 1958.
When he won best and fairest for the league in 1959, 1960 and 1961, he also won it at Pearcedale, but his wife, Berice, said he handed back the award each year so it could be presented to the person who came second.
He started training with Footscray Football Club in 1955 but declined to go on due to arthritis.
Scown, who was nominated almost a year ago for the Team of the Century as rover, is one of 27,000 people who have played for the league over the past century. He said he was honoured to be nominated.
Scown was up against George Hoult, who was given the position.
Berice Scown, who after 48 years marriage is still his number one fan, said that as the night wore on and the names were being announced and the positions filled, she thought he might not make it.
“They were getting down to the last positions, and I was thinking he wasn’t going to get it, and I thought, after all he did for the club, what do you have to do to get in?”
Scown said the team members were announced in alphabetical order. He was the last person announced in the team – on the interchange.
Mrs Scown said she jumped to her feet thrilled.
“I felt so sick,” she said.
Don Scown was more pragmatic.
“It was only a game of football. It was an honour to be nominated and then receive it. It was a real honour, but it was an honour for the club to have someone good enough to be nominated who had played with them over the 100 years,” he said.
He came from a family of 13 children and eight of his 11 brothers have played for the club over the years.
“The team was basically all Scowns or Damons, back then,” Scown said.
Berice Scown, who’s father used to drive the team bus, said Don was her hero.
“There was no other player on the ground for me but Don.”
“When he played football it was as if he had the ball on a string. If the ball was there to be got, he got it. He could take the ball from one end of the ground to the other. No one could catch him.”
Scown said he put a lot of work into training.
“I used to run four miles every night if I wasn’t at training.
Scown’s advice to players of today is simple.
“If they can turn either way, can kick with either foot, and (hand) punch with either hand they’re on the way to being a good footballer.”
The Pearcedale Baxter Football Club best and fairest trophy is named in his honour.
