{xtypo_dropcap}B{/xtypo_dropcap}efore the advent of Graham Farmer, Merv McIntosh was Western Australia's best ever ruckman.

Standing at six foot five and a half(196.5 cm) and sixteen stone seven(105kg), McIntosh played 217 games with Perth, between the years of 1939 and 1955, represented Western Australia twenty times, won three Sandover Medals, a Tassie Medal, three Simpson Medals,  seven Perth fairest and best awards, and was All Australian.

Recruited from Maddington, McIntosh played twice with Perth as a  sixteen year old in 1939, before World War Two intervened, and he returned in 1945. At that time there was another champion on the scene, Claremont's legendary Les McClements, a mercurial player who left this State after the 1950 season to set Tasmania alight. Together they were a potent force in State matches for the remainder of the forties.

McIntosh captained the side in his first State match, in August, 1947, with Jerry Dolan as coach.

With a magnificent temperament for a big man, he was an extremely skilled player, with a penetrating drop kick and good disposal by hand. A publication of the day noted that “he could short pass daintily and turn as nimbly as any footballer of more reasonable proportions.” But it was his strength that won him many ruck duels, when he would outposition his opposite number, and deftly palm the ball to his rover. McIntosh was also well renowned as an immaculately fair player, despite his size.

 In 1947, his third season of football, still to reach his greatest achievements, he was nominated by the Eastern States magazine, “Sporting Globe” as Australia's leading footballer.

It was also in 1947 that he was installed as captain of Perth, a position he held for five seasons. In 1948, still smarting from their loss to WA in Hobart the previous year, Victoria played two games in Perth, hellbent on revenge.  With McIntosh heading the ruck, and McClements lending support and proving a headache in the forward line, the home side proved victorious in both contests. 1948 was the year of the big man's first Sandover Medal, with South Fremantle ruckman Dave Ingraham runner up.

During Merv's association with Perth, the club had always been a strong side, but, apart from being runners up in 1949 and 50, had not won a flag since 1907, and so when the Demons qualified for the 1955 premiership play-off, against East Fremantle, not a lot of their supporters could remember premiership success.

Sandover Medallist again in 1953 and 54, McIntosh was still in scintillating form, but approaching thirty three years of age, it was well known that this was to be Big Mac's swansong.

And what a testimonial the game was to be for the champ.

Behind by thirty four points at the main break, Perth fought back in a wind assisted third term to be within two at three quarter time, but with a strong breeze against them in the final quarter, looked to be up against it.  When the deficit quickly ballooned to fifteen points, the Demons looked gone, but goals from Dickie Walker and Bert Wansbrough lifted the side, and when Tommy Davis goaled from a mark with seven minutes left, they were in front.

In what may have been a forerunner of today's flooding tactics, McIntosh followed the ball wherever it went, keeping it in the dead pocket and thumping it out of bounds continually.

Amid the jubilations and pandemonium, McIntosh was awarded the Simpson Medal, in what was surely an appropriate send off for an out and out champion of West Australian football.

Merv McIntosh was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996, followed with Legend status in the West Australian Hall of Fame in 1953. A gate at Subiaco Oval is named after him, as is the medal for best on ground in the reserves grand final each year.

The term of champion is bandied around far too loosely these days. But in the case of Merv McIntosh it is a worthy description.