"White, with kitchen, dining room, lounge, bathroom and interior toilet. Anyone seeing a building answering this description should contact their local police station."This advertisement appeared in a local newspaper many years ago.Ray Marinko, returning from an overseas trip, was left with a bare piece of ground where his house stood before he left. “I actually read about it while I was in Texas,of all places,” he recalled.  It transpired that the house had been sold in Marinko’s absence, and it took years for the matter to be resolved.Son  of  the late Don Marinko senior and brother of champion centreman Don junior, Ray Marinko was a very good footballer in his own right, at his peak in the 1960 and 61 seasons, when he played a significant role in a premiership and finished third in the following season’s Sandover Medal voting as well as second in the Daily News Footballer of the Year competition.Don Marinko senior was one of many fine exponents of the game to come from the Goldfields. A West Perth Premiership Player in 1932, 1934, and 1935 (Captain 1934, 1935),  he was the club’s fairest and best in 1933, and has in recent years been honoured with inclusion in West Perth’s Team of the Century and induction into the Western Australian Football Hall of Fame.His skills were carried on by Don junior and Ray. Don, one of the best centremen this State has produced, played a hundred and sixty four games for West Perth and thirty two at East Perth as well as being a permanent member of State sides throughout his career. Ray Marinko was an outstanding junior, playing with the under thirteens as an eight year old and was nine when lining up with the fourteens. He represented Western Australia in a junior championship with many others who would go on to league ranks, including Ray Gabelich, Wally Brown, Laurie Kettlewell, Bill Leuzzi, Roy Harper, Gus Glendinning, Des Foynes, and cricketer Ron Gaunt.At the championships the young Marinko was taken under the wing of ex Collingwood star Gordon Coventry, who knew his Dad, and stayed with the Coventrys for the duration of the team’s time in Melbourne. It proved to be a good move, because many of the others in the touring party had their clothes stolen from their lodgings at the YMCA.      Marinko went to Leederville in 1954 as an eighteen year old, and went straight into the league side for the opening clash with East Fremantle, which the Cardies lost by twenty two points. Put  into the centre as replacement for the Victoria-bound Brian Falconer, he was opposed to Jock Laurie, and performed well. Ray played twenty two league games that season, and continued to excel, albeit as a half back or half forward, with Don taking over in the middle.Renowned for his long kicking, Ray Marinko was strong overhead, with high marking a feature of his game. The famous John Gerovich mark over East Fremantle’s Ray French was captured for prosperity, but a similar feat the same season, also over the hapless French,by Marinko was shown on television but didn’t survive the ages.   Despite their obvious value to the club, both Marinkos had a bumpy road at West Perth behind the scenes, and Ray was the first to lock horns with the hierarchy. “I had the OK from coach Frank Sparrow to miss a game against one of the lower sides so I could attend my best mate’s wedding,” Ray recalled. “I played with the reserves, but the league side lost, and I was selected for the early game again the following week.” A subsequent confrontation with a committeeman led to disciplinary action being taken. “It was totally unfair, and I was unhappy about it, and did my training at Osborne Park,” he said.Marinko sought a clearance to East Perth, and played twenty four games with the Royals in 1957 and 58 before returning to Leederville to play with Don, who had been appointed coach of West Perth. When Don Marinko was replaced by Victorian Arthur Olliver, Don and Ray played leading roles in the 1960 premiership, but the harmony was shortlived. The brothers had a falling out with the club and applied for clearances to East Perth, a request that was flatly refused, and the matter eventually went as far as the courts.  Ray then offered to stay if Don were allowed to leave, and the club reluctantly cleared their star centreman.Ray Marinko retired from league football in 1965, after playing just four games less for West Perth than his father, a hundred and sixty, but more league appearances with the twenty four at East Perth included.“My wife Rose had just had our first child, so I wanted to concentrate on building a future for the family ,” he said. Despite offers from Sunday League clubs, he never donned the boots again.Marinko diverted his attention to the business world, and a chance involvement with a refrigeration engineer led to him pioneering the cold storage of apples in controlled atmosphere. The venture spread to the Philippines, New Zealand, and the USA.He is now retired and trying to conquer the Wembley golf course. He and Rose have enjoyed a marriage of six decades. “I was fourteen and a half when I met her and I told her I was fifteen and a half,” he recalled. It was around that time that the young Ray Marinko was selling cool drinks on game day at Leederville Oval. Ray claims that the nickname “garlic munchers,” attached to West Perth, emanated from his father’s market garden. “A lot of Slavs and Italians would gather there for a yarn, then go to the footy to watch Dad  play,” he recalled. “They got pretty animated, so the tag “garlic munchers” was used by others at the ground and it stuck.”The champion John Todd is on record as crediting Marinko as the hardest defender he’d played on,and the honour has been reversed, as Ray named the South Fremantle star as toughest to beat. Others he paid tribute to were Ray Sorrell, Steve Marsh, and Lorne Cook.  No prize for guessing the best he played with. “Brother Don.”Among this State’s leading defenders in the late fifties and early sixties, it was a travesty that Ray Marinko never won State selection, having been mooted by many critics for a berth in the 1961 Carnival squad. Although not always in favour with the hierarchy at Leederville, he was always popular with the fans, his dashing style of play making him a crowd favour