Last Day of School

Kevin Sheedy’s Bomber Jacket: Australian Football’s Controversies and Curiosities
$29.99
Gelding Street Press
July 2025

About Kevin Sheedy’s Bomber Jacket
If Australian Rules football buried a time capsule, Kevin Sheedy’s bomber jacket would be the first item placed inside.
AFL’s precious artefacts also include Bob Murphy’s medal, Angry Anderson’s grand final Valiant and a 1999 vintage can of Whiskas – as you’ll discover in this collection of legendary true stories from Australia’s favourite sport.
In Kevin Sheedy’s Bomber Jacket, journalist Glen Humphries tells Aussie Rules’ best yarns. This book is packed with tales of betting scandals, Ned Kelly movies, an elephant on grand final day and much more – not to mention events that ended up changing the game as we know it.
It’s perfect to pick up when your team has the bye.

Read an excerpt
OUT COMES THE HOOK
Okay, so let’s say there was a one-armed Australian rules player running around in the late 1800s. Seems a safe bet that sports writers might mention that in their reporting from time to time. It’s not like the late 1800s were a wonderfully enlightened time; it was an era where phrases like ‘cripple’, ‘spastic’ and worse were used without a second thought.

Now if that player took the field with a hook in place of that missing limb, it would be a certainty that it would be mentioned in newspaper coverage. Especially if that aforementioned hook took someone’s eye out or inflicted some other serious injury. Really, what were the officials thinking by allowing someone with a hook to play football?

This player supposedly sporting a hook was one Alex Bruce, though some online pundits insist it was George Bruce. That can be easily disproved by looking at photos of Georgie Boy, which clearly show him with not one, but two, arms. So, okay, not George Bruce.

But is it Alex Bruce who is the one-armed man? Time to queue the shoulder shrugs.

The main source of the story of one-armed Bruce and his hook comes from the memoirs of Victorian Football Association president TS Marshall, written in 1896, more than a decade after Bruce played.

‘He had one arm, but his one arm was equal to most people’s two backed up as it was by an artificial one with an iron hook at the end of it,’ Marshall wrote. ‘He was a good tempered and fine player, but I verily believe he was the cause of more oh’s and ah’s…than a dozen ordinary footballers, for when he pushed from behind, always of course with an iron hook, it meant weeping and wailing, and gnashing of teeth to his unfortunate victim.

‘No matter how his victim took it, Bruce always perceived a calm, unruffled countenance.’

Yes, I’m sure a tight marking contest with a hook-wielding opponent would result in ‘weeping and wailing’. Again, what were the game’s officials thinking by allowing him to take a hook on the field?

But did he take a hook onto the field? Did he really?

Aside from this aforementioned quote from Marshall, I have not been able to find a single contemporary mention of Bruce and his hook. Sure, it’s unlikely that Marshall made up the fact that Bruce had one arm and liked to whack opponents with a hook. But maybe he conflated things; maybe Bruce wore the hook in his day-to-day activities but took it off during the game.

The newspapers, when they mention Alex Bruce, they don’t mention his hook. And, as we established in the opening paragraph to this chapter, that would really be something a reporter would jot down into their notebook.

Bruce seems to have been around for the founding of the sport. In May 1859, the Melbourne Cricket Club wrote down the first rules of the game (there were 10 rules and none of them explained what sort of ball is to be used) and Bruce’s signature is one of those on the first page. It looks like he played for Melbourne and moved over to Fitzroy in 1860 and pops up in a few match reports.

In late May, 1859, the Argus reported on ‘an excellent game of football’ at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where Bruce picked his team – he had to rope in people hanging around the place to make up the numbers – and kicked the only goal in the match.

In June that year, there was a report of the Melbourne club’s weekly game on the Richmond Paddock. ‘Sides were selected by Mr Hammersley and Mr Bruce, and after some three hours’ kicking three goals were obtained —two by Mr Hammersley’s side and one by that of Mr Bruce,’ Bells Life reported.

If only one of those mentions included a photo of the guy, which would clear up the whole hook thing.

Incidentally, there has been a one-armed footy player, just without a hook. In 1954 17-year-old Royce Dickson found himself picked up by Geelong and there was talk that he’d make his way into the top side. That talk ended in March of that year when he got his arm caught in the rollers of a mechanical blower at the woolen mill where he worked. The rollers tore off his arm 10 centimetres below his shoulder, ending his chances at the Cats.

A fundraiser for Dickson was held, with Geelong donating £100 to the fund, while players presented the hospital-bound Dickson with an electric razor. Remember, it was 1954, so that would have been a new-fangled gizmo and a flash present at the time.

He might not have made the top grade at Geelong, but Dickson didn’t give up on footy. In April 1956, he took the field for Golden Square against Sandhurst in the Bendigo League reserve grade competition. He impressed the judges, being voted best on ground in his team’s 27-point win. Later that year he got the call-up to the firsts but was forced to leave the field with the game just a few minutes’ old after injuring himself in a collision with an opponent.

In 1956, Dickson had a big win when he took wool mill owner Collins Bros to the Geelong Supreme Court. By then a student-teacher, Dickson was awarded £5000 in compensation – the equivalent of $182,000 in today’s money.