The opening round of the 1955 WANFL season was notable for the  much anticipated league debuts of four  rovers…..John Todd(South Fremantle), and Claremont trio Murray Ward, Les Mumme, and Kelvin Alsopp. Todd’s seven goals in the 1954 reserves grand final as a sixteen year old had already stamped him as a future star, but not far behind him was another onballer, who had dominated in Alcock Cup competition with Aquinas.  Murray Ward was already a well known name in athletics circles, having broken an Australian  Junior hurdle record and was also a State athletics representative, but his football credentials were also impressive. Captaining the Aquinas first eighteen, he was the winner of two fairest and best awards, and a ready made league player.He had impressed coaches such as Jerry Dolan and Mick Cronin, but it was Austin Robertson senior who was his greatest mentor, both in football and athletics. “The best schoolboy rover I have ever seen anywhere in Australia,” was the appraisal of Murray from champion footballer and athlete Robertson, who had starred in both the VFL and WANFL. Ward was also an accomplished cricketer, a good batsman and handy spin bowler who was vice captain of the Aquinas cricket side, and swam in inter college competition. As a sprinter, Murray went on to make two Australian Athletic Championship Finals during his five years in the Western Australian team.Ward continued to run at the top level during the summer, and regarded it as a big factor in his leg speed on the football field. “It was also good for my balance,” he said. He was also regarded as one of the first players to use the drop punt. “Because I was moving so fast I was having trouble in getting the ball down to my foot quickly enough for the dropkick.”  “I had wanted to play with the Tigers since watching Les McClements, Sonny Maffina, Sid Young, and Maurie Bridgewood play, despite the attempts from Cronin to lure me to East Perth, ” Murray said. A visit from newly appointed coach, Victorian John Hyde, saw him at Claremont Oval in 1955.The first two games of the 1955 season in Claremont colours only enhanced the wraps about Ward. In the opening match, in which Mumme and Alsopp also made their league debuts, Murray was the best player on the ground and he followed that up with another outstanding performance  a week later. Big things were already being forecast for the nineteen year old, and his worried mum had concerns for his welfare against some of the big bodies he was getting tackled by.  She confided in the mother of one of the club’s top players, John O’Connell. “Don’t worry about him, Mrs Ward,” was the advice. “He’ll be alright.”In game number three a heavy tackle resulted in a broken leg. That injury was the forerunner of several fateful interruptions that were to prove a thorn in Murray Ward’s career. Hitting his straps again in 1956, he was leading in the club’s fairest and best voting when another broken leg in round seventeen relegated him back to the sidelines, mate Alsopp taking the award.  An employment transfer with David Jones to Sydney in 1957  put Ward out of the game for two years.Back in 1959 under ex South Fremantle full back Ray Richards, Murray returned in good form, and shared the goalkicking award with Percy Johnson. When Peter Pianto took the helm in 1961 it was apparent to more than Ward that opportunities may be better elsewhere(club legend Kevin Clune was another). Attracting plenty of interest from the Royals, Ward decided to transfer to Leederville, where he played twenty eight games before returning to the fold in 1965 for one last season. Murray then embarked on a spectacular career of coaching.His involvement with football mentoring at Claremont began with the reserves in 1966, 67, and 68, before ten seasons at the helm of Aquinas from 1971, where  he guided the first eighteen to six Alcock Cup flags. His ongoing record in athletics is no less impressive, with his forty years thus far as athletics coach at the college yielding twenty six Interschool Sports victories. After Claremont’s first semi final failure in 1980, coach Graham Moss made a prophetic statement. “Soon playing coaches will be like the dinosaur - extinct. " Moss may not have realised it at the time but he almost became extinct as a coach sooner than hehad anticipated. After the 1980 failure in the first semi final,there were rumblings that heshould be replaced. It was touch and go and even Moss at one stage was ready to hand in the job. But a compromise was reached when a small, quietly spoken man with an astute football brain and aniron will was recruited to help Moss throw of  the "weakie" stigma with which they had been tagged. The Graham Moss-Murray Ward combination proved to be one of the success stories of the 1981 season, the club defeating South Fremantle in the grand final.  After three grand finals in three years with Moss at Claremont, Ward received an offer from East Fremantle, who saw him as the perfect fit for a similar role with Ron Alexander in 1984. In the doldrums for several seasons, the blue and whites had been thrashed by Swan Districts in the 1983 first semi final.  Beaten by the same side in the 1984 grand final, East won a cliffhanger over Subiaco in the 1985 decider by five points. Whilst the work of both Alexander at East Fremantle and Moss at Claremont must be acknowledged, the influence of Ward as a communicator, tactician, and mentor was undeniable, and stamped his credentials as a coach. After the euphoria of a great premiership win had died down there was much speculation about which direction the club would take.  It was understandable and predictable that the club would stick with Alexander, but it must be said that it’s a shame that Ward never had the opportunity to coach a league side in his own right.  It’s the essence of the man that he didn’t dwell on what might have been. The limelight has never been Murray’s focus. Happy behind the scenes, Ward has been involved with young sports people for many years, and his expertise and mentoring skills are legendary at Claremont and Aquinas. He was a steadying influence on Jim and Phil Krakouer in the early eighties, when the magical duo were experiencing problems adapting to the pressures of city life and were vulnerable.   He said, “With the Krakouers, you had to allow the brilliance to bubble over for your own benefit. You’d think of instances and say, ‘Well, I saw it and there was no plan to it. How on earth did that happen?’ That was the brilliance of them.”University Athletic Club won twenty seven State titles and produced some outstanding athletes such as Colin O’Sullivan, Glen Stuart, and John Sheridan in Murray’s ten year tenure as coach in the eighties.   A man who spent most of his working life in the retail world, where he opened Murray’s Childrens Shoes in Royal Arcade and Eagle Wools in Fremantle,  Murray Ward is still busy these days, albeit as a consultant to import groups in China.  He is still an avid football fan, with a continuing interest in the way games are played, but an even bigger interest in Claremont and West Coast.Haydn Bunton, John Todd, and Peter Medhurst hold pride of place as hardest opponents for Murray, while he regarded co rover Mumme as a great player.Murray Ward was a speedster for Claremont, a stylish, talented rover who, but for career setbacks at crucial times, would undoubtedly have achieved more, and was well worthy of higher honours.  Chatting with Murray, there is no doubt that any disappointments he experienced as a player are well and truly outweighed by his achievements as a mentor and coach of young people, and they are the personal highlights of his career in sport. A quiet achiever in the mould of a Jimmy Conway or Ern Henfry, it’s one of the travesties of the game that Murray Ward never coached a league side. His influence behind two premierships at different clubs is undeniable, and coupled with the success that he enjoyed at Aquinas and athletics in general, Ward’s contributions both on and off the sporting arena in Western Australia have been outstanding.