Western Australian football has been blessed with many top exponents of the art of playing the full forward position.  Discussion usually centres around names like Naylor, Robertson, and Doig, but there have been many more over the years who are well worthy of mention as masters of their craft.

Swan Districts goalsneak of the sixties, Eric Gorman, was one of those.

Gorman was a tall, fast leading forward who possessed a good pair of hands, making him a tough proposition for any full back.    “We could always rely on Eric Gorman to beat his man”  was a comment made by Haydn Bunton when years later he named  his “best of” Swan Districts side.  He had a relatively short stay on the WAFL stage due to his occupation, but his 555 goals in eight seasons was testament to his ability.

Hailing from Donnybrook, Gorman moved to Perth at the age of sixteen, and in his early years cricket competed with football as his preferred sport. The young Eric Gorman was a better cricketer than footballer , having opened the innings for the Donnybrook seniors in the final of the South West Championships and compiling a neat  82, which laid the foundation for a winning total.  “ The team celebrated at the pub that night but I had to wait outside until someone brought me out a squash” Gorman recalls.  The fifteen year old Eric played for both the senior and junior Donnybrook country week sides  that same year , gaining selection in one of the two senior combined country teams which played  metropolitan sides after the carnival.   

He went on to play pennant cricket with Midland- Guildford, as did many other Swan Districts players. His teenage football development was spent  with Guildford and Maylands, and in the process  he managed through some quirk in the system to play with the East Perth combined side. 

Swans recruiting maestro, John Cooper, saw the potential on display with the young Gorman  and he was at Bassendean Oval in 1960.  In 1961  he managed four games with the league side, and, although left out of the Swans premiership line up, Eric showed enough potential for coach Bunton to pencil the name Gorman in for the following season.

He exploded onto the league stage in 1962, kicking six goals in both round two and three.   In August of his first full season in WANFL football he was playing for Western Australia against South Australia , kicking four goals out of nine in a losing team. He went on to boot 93 for the season, and was a key mover in the 1962 Swans premiership.

That Gorman did not add to his State appearances after that solitary selection in 1962 was a travesty.  He had shown he could play at that level, he held his form to kick high tallies each year, and showed his class in the big games with his nine in the 1963 grand final, a performance that must have made him a contender for the Simpson Medal, which was won by star defender Ken Bagley. It remains a record tally for a WANFL grand final.

His effort in that grand final was made all the more meritorious  by the fact that immediately preyious to the finals he was lucky to escape death when what he thought was appendicitis was diagnosed just in time as a strangled bowel  and he was later informed that he would have died within twenty four hours if he hadn’t sought attention. 

The State full forward position was dominated for the remainder of Gorman’s career by Ron Evans, Bob Johnson, and Austin Robertson, all stars who were deserved selections, but there was certainly a case for Gorman’s selection, given his performance in his only exposure.. That he was denied the opportunity to take his game to another level was unfortunate, but is not a thing that the man himself is concerned about. “ I played for WA and did OK.  The competition was pretty hot” was his modest comment.

Eric Gorman went on to play 163 games for Swan Districts, heading the club’s goalkicking list for seven years in a row, before his occupation as a policeman prematurely ended his football career while he was in his prime.  Posted to Collie,  he was snapped up by Mines Rovers as captain coach in the1970 season.

Eric had no hesitation in naming the West Perth champ Brian France his toughest opponent, while giving Billy Walker, Keith Slater, Bagley, and Peter Manning  his best of many great players he played with.

He is another past player who has mixed feelings about the game today. “ While they are so much faster and the skills considerably higher,  players today appear to be deformed, as there don’t seem to be many around the neck or push in the back decisions,” was his wry comment.

These days Eric Gorman spends his retirement travelling and playing a regular round of golf.  While he does concede that the big opening at Bassendean Oval was considerably easier to find with the oval ball than the little holes in the ground are with the round one,  he did volunteer the information  that he had achieved the feat  that most golfers find most elusive...a hole in one.