When eighteen year old John Colgan was selected to play in Boulder City Football Club’s senior team midway through 1950 he had to ask permission from his parents.Two seasons later he was part of Western Australia’s sixty point victory over South Australia at Subiaco Oval. Selected again on the Tuesday, he was named best for the local side in a much closer two point win.Colgan went on to become one of the best wingmen produced in this State, and yet another from the Goldfields production line. Part of two premierships, he was an outstanding player in an outstanding team, playing 220 league games, captaining the club in 1957 and 1960, and represented Western Australia on ten occasions. The South Fremantle combination’s period of dominance from 1947, producing six premierships in nine years, has since been termed the “golden years,” and the yellow metal forms a tapestry for the John Colgan Story.The tough, no nonsense footballer no doubt inherited the qualities from his grandfather of the same name, who walked from Southern Cross to Kalgoorlie in 1895 in search of fortune and worked on the Golden Mile as an underground machine miner for thirty years. Tragedy struck his family in 1918 when two of his sons fell down an old mine shaft located at the end of their street, about five hundred metres from their home. Bill(fourteen years of age) was killed, and John(sixteen, and later to be John Colgan’s father) badly injured. After recovering from injuries the doctor recommended that John should, if possible, move away from the mines and the goldfields, the scene of the tragedy. At the age of seventeen, John Colgan’s father went initially to a family friend in Adelaide, then over the Mt Lofty Ranges looking for work, settling at Mannum, on the Murray River, where his work included on paddle steamers towing barges of rock upstream for building locks. John senior played cricket and Australian Rules in the country competitions. He married a Mannum girl, a teacher who had represented the SA Teachers Training College in hockey and tennis. In 1930, with impact from the great depression, John snr was out of work with a wife and baby(Bill). As history has shown, the gold industry booms in a depression, so the twenty eight year old John headed back to Boulder with wife and baby to rejoin his family. He found work on the Golden Mile, but on the surface, not underground.  John Colgan jnr was born in 1931 at Boulder. His parents loved sport and good sportsmanship, an ideal nurturing environment. Because of the austerity conditions during and immediately after World War 2, there was a lack of equipment and people to organise football competitions. Pick-up games in the street or on a vacant block near the kid who was lucky enough to have a football, one game at the primary school, and another at high school was John’s and the other Goldfields kids lot until, at fifteen years of age, he played his first game in the newly formed Goldfields Junior Football Association’s under nineteen competition in 1947. In 1950 John completed a three year engineering course at the WA School Of Mines, Kalgoorlie, and obtained an Engineering Assistant position at the State Electricity Commission in Murray Street, Perth, commencing in March, 1951.After ten senior games with Boulder City Football Club during the last half of the 1950 season, he had won the Goldfields League’s best first year player award, and was looking to have a game in the city, but didn’t count on the attention he received from WANFL clubs on his arrival. There was no country zoning those days, and country players could go to any WANFL club, while a WANFL club could recruit a player from anywhere in the State. Country recruitment was to become a “bidding war” between WANFL clubs.   “I had found accommodation in Subiaco and joined West Perth Cricket Club at the WACA, where a friend from Boulder was playing,” he said. “My accommodation, employment, and cricket venue was on the same tram route. This was important, as I didn’t have a car and was about to begin earning money.”  A promising cricketer, Colgan had already represented the Goldfields at Country Week cricket in February, 1951.  “As far as football was concerned, I had no idea where to go. I had never seen a WANFL match, there was no television, only ABC wireless.” “Among my workmates at the SEC was Tom Soutar, a West Perth committeeman who quickly struck up a friendship. Sonny Maffina, who was from Boulder Football Club, invited me to Claremont, Bill Kingsbury from Swan Districts was in touch, and Jerry Dolan urged me to go to East Fremantle, but to a young bloke new to the city and without a car, Fremantle was too much to contemplate. I trained at Leederville and Claremont. It was then that South Fremantle made contact with me because my brother had trained with them the previous pre season. I trained with them and took part in a scratch match.” A letter from South Fremantle secretary Frank Harrison made his mind up for him. “Frank’s offer was to play for a season at South, and they would guarantee me a clearance anywhere if I wanted to leave. Frank Fuhrmann picked me up for training so I decided on the red and whites.”Colgan played his first WANFL game on the WACA ground in the opening fixture of 1951 on Perth wingman, Brian Wheeler. “I touched the ball twice,” John recalled. Thirty years later, John’s daughter, Jay, would marry Brian’s son, Kim.He soon established himself as a regular, playing in a losing grand final against, ironically, West Perth that year. He has some advice for any aspiring footballers based on his experience. “In my first grand final, I was well aware of the old saying about one percenters, and tried to do all the right things, the tackles, shepherds, etcetera, but after putting in a shocker, realized that it’s far more important to get the other ninety nine percent right..possession. Without that you aren’t really contributing.”  After a scintillating 1952 season, including State representation, he was unfortunate enough to miss a premiership win over the Cardinals through injury. A year later he was one of South’s best when finally part of a winning grand final side, again at the expense of West Perth.John recalled the match winning display of  Des Kelly in the 1952 premiership, and told of the taxi driver who took the ruckman to a reunion half a century later. When Des enquired about the fare the driver replied: “You gave me plenty of enjoyment in ‘52, this one’s on me.” Colgan struck football gold at South Fremantle in 1951. History now shows it was in the middle of the club’s Golden Years. He was later selected as vice captain in the club’s official 1946-76 Allstar team.Although clocking up two hundred and twenty games of league football, Colgan didn’t suffer many major injuries, but being forced to miss the 1952 premiership grand final as well as the opportunity to captain his State in the legendary Brisbane Carnival of 1961 were severe disappointments.“The South Fremantle style of game when I joined was the stop and kick game, and with the team boasting at least fourteen outstanding, skilled players, they were super efficient at delivering the ball to the next line. I wasn’t in this mould,” he said.Colgan had natural running stamina, and from his fathers guidance could read the play and knew to whom he was going to deliver it before he received it. With these attributes, his natural game was to play on and run across the lines. This was contrary to the successful club style. John’s good fortune was that the club’s football personnel at the time believed Aussie Rules was a players game, the players natural ability was the key to their performance, and it was their job to enable the player to fully express his ability. This approach was bestowed on John in his third season, when Bill Collins, chairman of selectors in the Golden Years, arranged a one on one football discussion with Colgan. He talked of  how the game was played, and his vision for playing the game. To John’s surprise, he said: “You are the player of the future,” and encouraged him to keep playing that way. With this confidence and improved fitness, Colgan was ready for the play on game introduced to WA by Haydn Bunton in 1961….it was his game. In the fifties there were no restrictions on player’s movement at centre bounce downs. Also most grounds had cricket pitches in the middle, which bogged down the centre area. Being built close to the ground, the contested play below the knees was John’s ball and his territory. Knowing what to do with the ball before he got it, and having developed the skill to grab and handball in one action, or grab and kick in one action, made him an effective player at bouncedowns or boundary throw ins. The flat punt, an untidy kick, was the only kick available, as the wonderful drop punt field kicks hadn’t evolved at this stage.The glittering career of John Colgan was scripted to reach it’s zenith with Australian Carnival glory in 1961, as part of Western Australia’s legendary win in Brisbane. Named as captain of the side, John was forced to forfeit his place through injury, but a club-organised public appeal raised enough funds to enable him to attend the carnival and act as team runner. Retiring at the end of that year,(“my game was based on running, leg injuries didn’t help”) Colgan, as a playing coach, coached Gosnells for two seasons, in which they were runners up in 1962 and premiers in 1963. Gosnells was an ideal setting for applying John’s coaching regime, with excellent facilities located in the centre of the suburb where the players lived and could readily attend training. The officials and players were very proud of the club’s heritage.After a few years break, Colgan coached an under eighteen side at his local Collier junior club in Como. He commenced attending coaching courses at Perth Football Club and the WANFL. With  Sports scientist Dr Frank Pyke, John soon realised that there was the need for graduated training for each junior age. In 1974 Colgan returned to South Fremantle after coach Colin Beard issued an invitation to be a selector and coaching assistant. Colin had come back to Perth after playing with Richmond, and he brought with him the very successful Tom Hafey play on game. At the same time, the club appointed him Director of Coaching, and on finding like-minded personnel at the club, he was able to institute co-coordinating coaches for each junior age group in the club’s zone. The outcome was the introduction of modified rules to WA, and created freeball( now known as Auskick Australia-wide). This is a story still to be told. “The process of the VFL expanding their competition to form the national AFL competition and then taking over control of development has seen two decades of regression in development knowledge, and the creation of a gap in the learning pathway from modified rules to AFL-ready standard. This gap is a black hole for the career hopes of a teenager,” John said. “I have written a book entitled “Rebirth of Aussie Rules Football,” which addresses this development problem and proposes a plan for development of Aussie Rules Football from grassroots to AFL-ready, Australia wide.”   John Colgan’s brother, Bill, is well known in the country as a player and administrator in both football and cricket, and was mine host at a variety of country hotels over many years. Bill had a run in a pre season game at South Fremantle and played cricket for Fremantle under Keith Carmody before vice captaining a Western Australian country eleven against the West Indies. He was on the South Fremantle Football Club committee in the early seventies.John had some great duels with Keith Harper from Perth, and is adamant that Steve Marsh was the best ever rover. He marveled at the skills of John Gerovich, who practised as a kid by leaping up and balancing on the clothesline imagining the clothesline was a pack of opposing backmen. John Colgan has lately encountered sight problems, which limits his activities, but is an almanac on the subject of football. His knowledge of the game is second to none, and the added benefit of being one of the real exponents make him a fascinating person to have a yarn with.An all time favourite son of South Fremantle Football Club, John, along with Bill, was included in the official Boulder City Allstars team from 1950 onwards. He played in two Australian Football Carnivals, and was initially selected in a third as captain. Colgan’s mantle as one of this State’s best ever wingmen is well deserved.