Throughout his league career, Garry Sidebottom was a personality of the game who never took a backward step, a touch of controversy added to his aggressiveness, enthusiasm, strength and skill making him a larger than life character on the football stage.
At six foot four and quick on his feet, he could fly with the biggest and run with the fastest, making him a valuable commodity on the field.
Yet the young Garry Sidebottom was too small to get a game initially.
“I wanted to be a jockey,” he confessed..
Eventually taking his place in the Midvale juniors as a rover, he never really took the game seriously as a teenager. More interested in the fairer sex than a game of football, the seventeen year old Sidebottom was talked into having a run with Midland in the Sunday League in 1972. “Kevin Gartrell told me they’d give me ten bucks a goal, so I gave it a go,” he recalled. “I got eight the first week and said: “I’ll be back next week, this is a pretty good caper.”
“The following game I came up against East Fremantle-Cockburn with Con Regan playing full back. The lights went out very quickly and I woke up with a bottle up my nose.”
The Sidebottom name is an institution at Swan Districts, with Wally senior playing a hundred games and representing Western Australia, Dave chalking up a hundred and twenty nine appearances, Wally junior twelve, Michael fifty four, and Allan ninety eight games respectively, Allan also playing with Fitzroy.
When Garry decided to follow the family footsteps to Bassendean he was less than dedicated.
“I weighed twenty one stone, and when we went up the sandhills at Moore River I lasted about five minutes,” he laughed. “I couldn’t get into the car fast enough to start the journey out of there, but one of the blokes followed and talked me into coming back. Jack Ensor sat me down and persuaded me to give it a decent shot.”
The lights went out again for Sidebottom in his first game of league football in 1973, when he fronted South Fremantle defender Tom Grljusich. “I never even got to shake hands,” was his vague recollection. “The following week I copped Peter Eakins from Subiaco, and ended up with nineteen lumps in the back of my head.”
“I quickly learned to get in first,” he said, and the eighteen year old quickly proceeded to chalk up fifteen visits to the Tribunal in his first three seasons of league football. “Barney O’Sullivan told me he was sick of seeing me. “You and Brownie are a great pair,” he commented.
Playing as ruckman, centre half forward or full forward, Sidebottom quickly became one of the stars of the WANFL, his aerial ability, body strength and pace around the ground making him a focal point for the Swans. Selected for the State side at centre half forward in his second season, the world looked to be his oyster, but a bad blow in a game against Claremont had serious repercussions. He spent three months in hospital after initially suffering a broken neck, then a stroke and bleeding on the brain. “You’ll be in a wheelchair for good if you play again,” was one doctor’s prediction.
Another bout of concussion early the following season didn’t deter the youngster, and he continued to impress, collecting his first club fairest and best award, and once again representing his State. Sidebottom went on to play State football in every year for a decade.
A groin strain in 1977, forcing an eleven week absence, didn’t stop him from being selected in the inaugural State of Origin side, where he lined up at centre half forward, flanked by South Fremantle antagonist Stan Magro and Ron Alexander. In that year Garry had St Kilda, Fitzroy, Footscray, and Melbourne beating a path to his front door. “It was in the days of form fours, and I’d heard the stories of players getting paid thousands for just a signature, so I reckoned I’d cash in,” he joked. “Ninety two pairs of cufflinks later I signed with St Kilda. I was an avid fan of Darrel Baldock, and followed the Saints a bit.”
“Mike Patterson was a great coach. He wound me up, knew how to get me motivated. We won our first seven, but missed the finals.”
His fifty six goals in 1979 being enough to win the goalkicking at St Kilda, Sidebottom was installed as captain of the club the following season.
Garry was inadvertently involved in a striking report in a game against Essendon in 1980. Phil Carman, the man with an erratic reputation, struck Sidebottom, and boundary umpire Graham Carberry was quickly on the scene to inform Carman he’d be on report. An animated exchange then took place between the two before a “Liverpool Kiss” was clearly seen to be inflicted on the hapless ump. Carman ended up with twenty weeks, sixteen for the umpire contact and four for hitting Sidebottom.
From captain of St Kilda in 1980, Garry Sidebottom ended up at Geelong in 1981.
“My contract was up for renegotiation, and I was after some incentives, but the committee wasn’t receptive to my requests,” he said. “I later learned that Swans had been actually leasing me to St Kilda, and President Lindsay Fox wasn’t keen on continuing the payments. I rang John Cooper to no avail, then ended up at Geelong.”
Sidebottom spent one season at the Cats, and was selected in the side to play the 1981 preliminary final against Collingwood. He was once again in the news when the team bus arrived at the game without him. Supposed to pick him up on the road near Lara, there was a breakdown in communication, and Garry missed the bus. Peter Johnston was named as one of five emergencies in the side, and thinking he wasn’t playing, pigged out on chicken, chips, and a strawberry thickshake shortly before the game. “My stats were nought, nought and nought,” Johnston remarked.
At the beginning of 1982 Sidebottom found himself almost signed and sealed to go to North Melbourne, where he would have been playing centre half forward with Ross Glendinning at centre half back. Selected for North on the Thursday night, eleventh hour negotiations saw him at Fitzroy after they came up with the cash.
Spending three years at the Roys, Garry enjoyed his football under the coaching of Robert Walls. He recovered some of his best form, playing in three finals and was runner up to Bernie Quinlan for fairest and best.
“I achieved the feat of being the first cyclist over the Westgate Bridge,” he claimed. “I’d lost my licence and by some quirk of fate won a racing bike. After a late night meeting I set off on the bike heading for home and got to the new bridge, where a bloke jumped out and said: “where are you going?” Telling him I was a St Kilda player, the bloke said he was a fan, and said: “I’m having a coffee, don’t be around when I get back.”
“I would have liked to have stayed at Fitzroy, but Toddy paid me a visit after the end of the 1984 season. “We’ve recruited Kevin Taylor and would like you back,” Todd said. “I had a crook knee and reckoned I probably had a year left, but John said he’d look after me at Swans so that I’d maybe get three.”
A struggling club when Sidebottom was there between 1973 and 1977, Swan Districts had won a hat trick of flags in his absence, and were reigning premiers in 1985. Garry resumed in sparkling form on his return, booting seventy eight goals and winning a second club fairest and best trophy. Taking his State appearances to fifteen, he put in a colossal nine goal performance in the first semi final against West Perth, but that elusive premiership proved to be once again out of reach after a preliminary final defeat at the hands of Subiaco.
Injury and suspension affected Sidebottom’s output as a thirty one year old in 1986, and it came as a bolt out of the blue when Todd called him over and said: “you can finish up now if you like.” “I thought he meant finishing training, but he was referring to my career,” Garry recalled. “It came as a shock to me, I argued the point, but thinking things over later on thought it may be the right time.”
It may have been the last of Sidebottom’s league days, but by no means was his involvement with the game over.
“Joining brother Allan in Kalgoorlie was one of the best moves I’ve made,” Garry said. “I’ve been around a bit since then but always end up back here.” Playing at Boulder, he had stints at Esperance, Kambalda, Southern Cross, back to Boulder, then coached at Maylands.
Garry gave opponents Garry Malarkey, Ken McAullay, Peter Steward, Peter Eakins, and Bruce Doull credit as hard to beat, while team mate Stan Nowotny got the nod as toughest teammate.
“I always tried to give it my best shot,” the affable Sidebottom said. “I maybe made a rod for my own back by not stepping back, but it’s a tough game, you give what gets dished out.” He spoke of the can incident that happened when he was at St Kilda. “I chased the ball to the boundary line,” he said. “A can of beer flew over the fence and struck me in my left eye.”
“The cops were onto it, and brought the bloke into the rooms after the game. A St Kilda fan, he reckoned he was after the ump.”
Garry Sidebottom played 233 games of league football in Western Australia and Victoria, kicked 395 goals, was named at centre half forward in Swan Districts Team of the Century, and is a life member of the black and whites as well as a Western Australian Hall of Fame inductee. He was an outstanding footballer in two States.
