Jack Clarke and Percy Johnson were about as good a pair of ruckmen as you would find in any club of any era, and they led the East Fremantle following division in a premiership year of 1957.But an unsung hero of that year’s final series was the backup sitting on the bench.Down 16.17 to 9.6 at three quarter time of the preliminary final against Perth, East Fremantle coach Steve Marsh put nineteenth man Laurie Nugent on to the ball with outstanding results. Nugent won every tapout in the final term, the ruck ascendancy triggering the blue and whites amazing recovery, and they ran riot to add ten goals four to the Demons 1.1 to win by four points, and avenge the loss of the 1955 grand final.  It wasn’t a repeat of the same proportions a week later in the big one, but the strategy worked a treat again.  Nugent took the field in the third quarter when his side was five goals down,  engaged in a contest with East Perth champ Polly Farmer, and East Fremantle fought back once again to get home by sixteen points.Laurie Nugent played a hundred and twenty eight games for East Fremantle, before retiring from league football prematurely at the age of twenty eight, in the process kicking seventy seven goals. A solidly built six foot three ruckman, his tapping of the ball to rovers such as Vic French, Steve Marsh, Jack Sheedy, Oscar Howard, and Jimmy Conway was a feature of his game. A good team man, he used handball at a time not many did, and was a reliable mark and kick for goal. Nugent’s tally of league games suffered from the presence of players like Clarke and Johnson, but he was a very good ruckman in his own right.A product of North Fremantle juniors, Nugent was plucked from the Ex Scholars competition(where Conway and Marsh were mentors) to go straight into the East Fremantle side for round one of the 1952 season, accompanied by two other debutants, Jack Clarke and Alf Backshall. The following week the trio were the three best players for their side. Backshall had only one year in league ranks before returning to amateur football. “Players like Vic French, George Prince, Harold Jeffries, Merv Cowan, Bob Hicks, and Ken Ebbs were heroes of mine, and there I was out there with them,” he recalled. “I couldn’t believe my luck.” Playing the first nine games of the season, Nugent went to the reserves for the remainder of the year, returning to the league twenty for the last six matches of 1953, before becoming a permanent member of  the side. Runners up in 1954 to South Fremantle,  then two point losers to Perth the following season, it was the signing of South Fremantle rover, Marsh, as captain coach in 1957, that turned the tide for the blue and whites.  Marsh used the three ruckmen in tandem, with Clarke in a back pocket, Johnson forward, and  Nugent taking the ruck, changes dependent on where the ball was, and it worked to a nicety.Nugent was by no means a spent force when he left East Fremantle at the start of the 1960 season. “ I decided to earn a quid, so went to play with York in 1960, after doing pre season at East Fremantle,” he said. “Then I got the captain coaching job at Tammin, so I spent two years there.”In 1963, he was at the helm of Armadale, before deciding to give umpiring a shot. “I wanted to become a league umpire, and was ready to go, but was told I had to do a couple of years in the country first,” he explained. “I had already been around the bush playing for three seasons, and with a wife and kids didn’t relish the idea of doing it again. The league was adamant, so I did the next best thing: boundary umpire.”Nugent says he relished the two years he ran the boundary. “It was very enjoyable,” he said. “With blokes like Ray Scott, Ray Montgomery, Lindsay Johnston, Freddy Woods, Ray Whitfield, and Charlie Pratt it was a good time.”    He recalled a humorous moment during a game at Claremont Oval.  “East Perth coach Kevin Murray was chasing the ball, but couldn’t get to it before it rolled over the boundary line and into the fence, which was close to the line. As Kevin brushed past the fence, a woman leaned over and shouted abuse into his left ear. Murray reached over and grasped the umbrella she was waving frantically, and broke it neatly in two. The lady yelled to me: “did you see that? report him.”“I didn’t see a thing.”In 1966, at the age of thirty four, Laurie defied father time and wife Maureen to take on the playing coach position at the East Fremantle Sunday League club. When East Fremantle  amalgamated with Cockburn the following year, Nugent stayed on as a player, with Cockburn coach, ex South Fremantle wingman Paddy Daly at the helm. When the sixth addition to the Nugent family arrived in June of that year, Maureen decided enough was enough, and Laurie was grounded.That wasn’t quite that, however.Oscar Howard, who was coaching Yealering, sent Laurie an SOS late in the season. With three games to play, his side needed three wins to make the finals, could he be of assistance?  Nugent obliged, but two wins and a loss later, that really was that.In later years Laurie Nugent travelled the State looking at talent for the East Fremantle Football Club, among those he recommended being Stephen Bilcich and Chris Mainwaring.  A BP Australia employee for all his working life, Laurie is now retired, and enjoying a round of golf at Point Walter. He and Maureen have four sons, three daughters, fifteen grandchildren, and five great grandchildren.  Boys David, Jeffrey, and Steven all played football, David with East Fremantle reserves, Jeff thirds, and Steve Sunday League. David’s son, Luke, inherited much of his grand dad’s ability, representing Western Australia in under eighteen competition and playing with Perth in the WAFL, before employment took him to Kalgoorlie, where was part of two premierships in as many years with Mines Rovers, in the process winning two fairest and best awards and being selected in the Western Australian country combined side.  Laurie played against some great ruckmen, but couldn’t go past Merv McIntosh and Polly Farmer as best. “I played against Polly for the first time in the seconds, and he was a star then,” he said.Laurie Nugent was a fine tap ruckman in an era of great exponents of the art.  A loyal East Fremantle clubman, he is a life member of the Sharks, his contribution to a premiership flag not forgotten.