BIO

Recruited from the Solomontown Football Club in Port Pirie, wingman Dick Brown experienced little joy with Norwood in the lean season of 1913.

Norwood was in a rebuilding phase and finished bottom with just two wins.  Its young squad was often competitive but lacking in poise when it counted.  Dick was there to see the pattern unfold in the opening match at Norwood Oval.  Centreman Phil Robin was delayed in travelling from his employment at Murray Bridge and missed the game.  Despite that setback, and with Dick’s Solomontown mate Les ‘Bolivar’ Parnell kicking four goals, Norwood was hanging on by three points until Ed Jones’s snap scraped in with seconds remaining to give South Adelaide its first win over the Redlegs in 10 years, 8.11 to 8.8.

North Adelaide thumped Norwood 9.11 to 3.10 at Adelaide Oval a week later.  Then, in Dick’s third and last league game, another four-goal bag by Parnell saw Norwood trailing Port Adelaide at Alberton Oval by just one point at three-quarter time before being held goalless in the last quarter and going down 10.11 to 5.2.

Dick did find satisfaction in making the best players when Norwood finally ended an eight-game losing streak, defeating a Combined Broken Hill side 11.11 to 9.9 at Broken Hill’s Jubilee Oval on 5 July 1913.

Born at Port Broughton on 27 May 1893 to Charles Brown and his wife Caroline, née Waters, Dick had six brothers and seven sisters – Charles, James, Emily, Alfred, Olive, Caroline, Herbert, Charles, Gladys, Harold, Laura and Elizabeth.

Dick was a hairdresser and lived at Glenelg in later years.  He was 92 when he died on 1 February 1986.

P Robins, D Cox Nov 2020