It could be said that Lindsay Carroll was a player ahead of his time.At six foot two and eleven and a half stone, and the ability to play anywhere on the ground, he was the prototype of the modern day AFL player. During his one hundred and forty three game league career with Claremont, Carroll filled most positions on the ground, and on many occasions played in several of them during the course of a match.  For much of his time with the Tigers they were a struggling outfit, and the continual swapping of positions, coupled with a long list of injuries, prevented him from becoming a great player in either a key defensive or attacking role. That’s not to say that Lindsay Carroll wasn’t a good player.Starting out as a skinny rover with the Floreat juniors, he went on to play for Western Australia as a full forward and centre half forward, booting three goals against Victoria on the MCG in a five point loss, and repeated the effort two days later in Hobart when WA went down to Tasmania by two points.Attending Perth Modern School, he was only sixteen when playing in the Westcom under eighteen competition, and was selected in the combined side as a centre half forward or full back.  A better than average cricketer, he opened the attack for Floreat under fourteens with Sam Gannon, and  won the under fourteens Interschool two hundred and twenty metres swimming event while at Perth Modern. The Tigers were quick to entice Carroll to Claremont Oval, and he spent the 1964 season in the Colts, where he was runner up for the club’s fairest and best, playing mainly as a full back. The following year he was runner up for the reserves fairest and best. He would often alternate between full forward and full back, depending on which way the wind was blowing, and was on the bench for the league side in the last qualifying round of the season, against Perth, where he played the last ten minutes of the game. Selected at centre half forward for that year’s second semi final clash with Swan Districts, the youngster had a torrid welcome to the big stage. It was a wet and heavy Subiaco Oval that day, with the conditions completely against the newcomer. “I was dragged at quarter time,” he remarked. Spending the first four games of 1966 in the reserves, Carroll became the league full back for the rest of the season, and soon became a leading player for the club. A high marking player with a long and accurate kick, his ability to play anywhere made him a valuable commodity. Coach Jimmy Conway used Lindsay all over the ground, and he began to spend more time in the forward line in 1968. Selected for Western Australia as a forward in 1970, he did well, kicking six goals in two games, Carroll was a key mover in the Claremont side of 1972 that lost only three home and away games but were beaten by East Perth in the grand final. Carroll was hampered by osteopubis from almost the onset of his league career in 1966.“We didn’t know what it was at the time, and I had all sorts of treatment for it, including electric shocks and painkilling injections,” he said. “The pain in my groin eventually threw me out of kilter with my running, and contributed to an ankle injury.” Carroll also had a broken ankle, two broken noses, dislocation of both shoulders, a cracked sternum, and was knocked out half a dozen times. After eight seasons of league football, Lindsay Carroll finally succumbed to injury and retired from league football in 1973 at the age of twenty six.  Taking a year off, he lined up with Harvey-Brunswick in 1975, and showed he’d lost none of his ability by booting eleven goals in a game against Busselton and winning the Pike Medal as best on ground in the SWNFL grand final, which his side won.  He then bought a farm at Manjimup, where he coached Deanmill. Carroll then hung up the boots, but an SOS from the club in the 1980 grand final saw him back in the action. “The side was hit by injuries, and I got a call asking me to help out,” he recalled. He not only helped them out, but grabbed a bag of goals to be instrumental in a flag. Lindsay later coached the club again, and was president of the juniors.      His son, Renny, was a very promising young player, winning fairest and best trophies in most of his under age years, but joined the Army at fifteen and gave the game away.Formerly a bank officer, Carroll later joined with team mate John Parkinson and cousin Russell, who played league football with West Perth, to form a business partnership before eventually buying the South West dairy farm, with over a hundred cows.  He has since sold half of the farm. These days, Lindsay drives a bus for Worsley Aluminium at Bunbury. His football legacies restrict him, but he manages to get out on his motor bike whenever the opportunity arises, and he follows Harvey-Brunswick. “Austin Robertson..fast over twenty five metres, a sure mark, and deadly accurate kick,” was his summary of the man he regarded as his toughest opponent. “I didn’t mind playing on Ocker too much because he always had a tribe of female followers near the goals cheering him on, and I got a stiff neck checking them out.  Of the backmen, Fred Castledine was tough, as was Bradley Smith.“ One day Brad knocked me out cold and I ended up with the pack on top of me after they bounced the ball.”He recalled the day that opponent John Gerovich went missing when the ball came his way. “I looked around and there he was punching someone on the boundary.”  Another memory was he and Parkinson’s infamous escapade at the zoo, when they were responsible for the escape of the monkey population.   Lindsay Carroll made his mark as a full back, then went forward and played there for Western Australia. He was a very good player in either position, and a star of the WANFL in the late sixties and early seventies. But for the hampering effects of injury, which eventually caused early retirement, he could well have become a great.