Ex-Glenelg forward Darrell Moss recalls missing out on 1969 SANFL grand final against Sturt as Richmond star Royce Hart played
Glenelg made headlines in 1969 when it brought VFL superstar Royce Hart in for the grand final. Fifty years on, Darrell Moss finally ends debate about if he was injured or dropped for Hart.
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It has been something of a SANFL mystery for 50 years.
Was Glenelg centre half-forward Darrell Moss dropped for the 1969 grand final against Sturt so Richmond champion Royce Hart could play a one-off game for the Bays?
Or was Moss actually injured?
As with many footy tales, this one has grown legs over the years — and some of Moss’s ex-Glenelg teammates have even been unsure of the truth.
So five decades on from the famous match, Moss is happy to set the record straight.
“There’s been innuendo and speculation for 50 years and no sporting journalist has ever, ever asked me the true facts,” Moss, now 74, says with a laugh.
“It went from I was left out of the side, I was a paid a new car (not to play) … there was all those stories going around.
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“People have quite often rang up Graham Cornes’s radio show and he didn’t even know the truth, only Kerls (Glenelg player/coach Neil Kerley) knew the truth.
“But in actual fact, pure and simply, the full story was in the (preliminary) final before against West Adelaide I did a shoulder.
“People ask me millions of times in my life about it but if you tell them you weren’t dropped, they probably believe that you were, so I never got into the argument much.
“I got a bit sick of it, really.”
Moss cannot believe it has been 50 years since the grand final, which lives on in SANFL folklore largely due to Hart’s inclusion and Sturt’s 65-point victory.
Hart — the centre half-forward in the AFL’s Team of the Century — was an All-Australian in 1969 and had helped Richmond win the VFL premiership a week prior.
It became massive news when he was believed to be paid $2000 to line up for Glenelg while based in Adelaide on national service with the Royal Australian Army.
Under the National Service Act, Hart was eligible to play for different clubs in other states without a clearance.
But any chance Moss had of lining up alongside him in the grand final was quashed at training the week leading in.
“Kerls didn’t know how my shoulder would pull up for the grand final and said to me he’d give me every opportunity to get it right and play,” Moss remembers.
“He said ‘you’ll be playing in your normal position and Royce Hart will be playing but if you’re playing, he’ll be playing in the midfield’.
“As it turned out, my shoulder, which I now assume was an AC joint (injury), didn’t come up so I missed out.
“I had to be helped to get my shirts on for weeks and weeks afterwards.”
Moss cannot recall much about the build-up to Hart’s selection, other than thinking “he was a great player and he should probably play”.
Unfortunately for Hart and Glenelg, the superstar was concussed early in the first quarter of the flag decider and, although he recovered to be named in Glenelg’s best, he could not stop Sturt, which kicked a record grand final score.
Moss recalls watching the grand final among the Adelaide Oval crowd.
“(Hart getting knocked out) was one of those unfortunate things,” he says.
“They beat us quite comfortably.”
Moss missed out on playing in another grand final four years later.
In 1973, Glenelg beat North Adelaide by seven points, ending the Tigers’ 39-year flag drought, and Moss was sidelined with a cartilage injury.
“That was worse than missing ‘69 because I … was in a purple patch then did my cartilage,” Moss says.
“I tried to come back, played one game in the seconds, but it kept locking up, so I had it operated on after the grand final.”
Moss became Glenelg’s reserves captain/coach the following year.
He retired after the 1975 season as a Tigers life member with 146 A-grade matches and 78 goals.
These days, Moss lives on a 4ha property at Onkaparinga Hills, heads along to reunions of the ‘73 team “because I like catching up with the guys” and continues to support the Tigers.
He was at Football Park for Glenelg’s back-to-back grand final triumphs in 1985-86 and its losing flag decider in 2008.
On Sunday, Moss will be cheering on the Tigers at Adelaide Oval with his wife and friends.
“It’d be fantastic if they can get up,” he says.