TOPIC:

THE West Perth Football Club is saddened by the news that 1942 premiership player and leading goalkicker Ted Brunton passed away earlier this week.

Another Cardy gone to the big Footy ground in the sky. RIP

Brunton joined West Perth in 1942 from Swan Districts during World War II and had an immediate impact at the Cardinals along with Sandover Medallist Laurie Bowen and Ralph Latham.

He arrived at West Perth as a 16-year-old and turned 17 during the 1942 season with the WANFL playing as an underage competition during the war.

His 1942 season included kicking nine goals in a 55-point Round 9 win over East Perth at Leederville Oval, and 10 against Perth in a 155-point hiding at the WACA

Full article at
westperthfc.com.au/news/8799/premiership...-brunton-passes-away





The 1942 West Perth premiership team, including Ted Brunton, who passed away this week. Brunton came to West Perth Football Club that season from Swan Districts Football Club Inc. when the Black Ducks were unable to field a team in the competition. He was not alone. Ralph Latham and Sandover Medallist Laurie Bowen also joined the Cardinals that season, but would otherwise have played for Swans. They helped form a dominant team that finished three games clear on top of the WANFL ladder and went on to win the flag. Brunton kicked 90 goals in 21 games for West Perth, topping the league's goalkicking in 1942. He kicked six in the Grand Final.

Ted is far right in the back row standing behind his mate Laurie Bowen who's far right middle row. Ted was a great man and grandfather Cheers Dean Brunton

Bud Byfield and Ted Brunton each won premierships in the debut seasons of short but eventful WAFL careers.
Claremont and West Perth are mourning the loss of their 1940s premiership winners after both men died within a day of each other this week.
Arnold Stanley “Bud” Byfield, who was 91, will be commemorated at the WA football hall of fame dinner next week after being an inaugural inductee in 2004.
He played in the third of Claremont’s premiership hat-trick in 1940 amid 36 matches for the club, was a member of Melbourne’s losing grand final team in 1946 but made his greatest contribution to the game during half a century as a tireless country football administrator.
The Northam product was president of the country football league for nearly two decades, was the prime mover in the establishment of the WA Football Development Trust and was a ceaseless promoter of the sport in regional areas. He played and umpired nearly 500 senior matches of country football.
Byfield was also a talented cricketer who played six matches for WA in the early 1950s, helping them draw against a strong Australian XI, top scoring against South Africa and dismissing Test batsmen Bob Simpson and Ian Craig in his best Sheffield Shield performance.
Edward William Brunton was 16 when he made his debut in the under-age competition in 1942, but finished a memorable season by kicking six goals in the grand final and winning the WAFL goal-kicking award with 93 majors.
Brunton joined West Perth because his original club, Swan Districts, did not field a team in 1942. He played 21 matches for the Cardinals before he joined the navy and served as a coder on troop ship HMAS Westralia, which was used in a series of Pacific landings in the latter stages of the war, surviving a kamikaze attack at one point.
Dean Brunton matched his grandfather in 1995 by becoming a West Perth premiership player, then provided another parallel three years later by winning the club’s goal kicking.
Brunton played one game for East Perth in 1946 then returned to Swans, where he played for another five seasons, mostly in defence. He would have turned 90 next month.