Port Adelaide legend Mark Williams inducted in the Australian Football Hall of Fame
Mark Williams’ two most precious gifts are football and family, now the Power premiership coach has been granted the ultimate honour, inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
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In 2018, the year Mark Williams was inducted into the Port Adelaide Hall of Fame, he stood on stage clutching an old, wool prison-bar Port jumper and sobbed.
The heart-breaking moment was about football and family, his two most precious gifts.
The jumper was made by his mum Von and the tears, in part, were for his old man Fos, a legend in South Australia who passed away in 2001, and mostly for his twin brother Anthony, who died when a wall collapsed on him in April, 1988.
Go on, have a look at the video of the speech.
He was 60 then, and had achieved so much in the sport, but at that moment, he was just a son and a brother in a family which might just be the most famous and most successful in all of footy’s time.
On Tuesday night, Williams — known by all as “Choco’’ — was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
He’ll talk about Fos no doubt, but he isn’t planning to talk about Anthony. He can’t, he said, because if he did he wouldn’t stop crying.
What would dad say to you about this achievement?
“He’d be very proud, but he wouldn’t say too much, he never said too much,’’ Williams said. “My mum would be more talking and giving big hugs and joyful. My dad would say, ‘that’s great’ and that would be it. He had so many wins, achievements and experiences, and privately he would be warm and proud, but he wouldn’t be spruiking it very much.’’
And Anthony?
There was a long pause before more choking words. “I find it difficult to talk about him and I won’t even mention him on the night because there’s no way I could talk about it,’’ he said. “He and I did everything together. He had blonde hair, I had black hair, so we were complete opposites as twins. We competed for everything and that competitive spirit is no doubt because of him. I had a 1v1 contest man in my back pocket the whole of my life whether it was footy or cricket or tennis or running or whatever.
“He’d be completely proud but at the same time his role in my achievements is huge. Without him I would not have got to where I have. Any achievement is kind of hollow without him.’’
Williams played in four flags with Port Adelaide — in 1979-80 and two of them wearing Anthony’s famous No. 9 in 1990 and 1992 — and coached Port Adelaide’s first AFL premiership in 2004.
Another premiership, a most cherished premiership as a player, was won when he played with Windsor Zillmere in Queensland in 1988, months after the death of his brother.
Such is the power of football, Windsor Zillmere, who was then coached by Wayne Brittain, sent Williams and his family some flowers. It just so happened that when Williams returned to Brisbane after the tragedy, he needed to play local footy for a month. The team was Windsor Zillmere. “I played the three games and they said I had qualified for finals, and would I like to play. I said, I’ll play and I played well and we won the premiership against Southport,’’ he said.
“To this day, I remember it was one of the great joys of my football career playing for Windsor Zillmere. Because of the care they showed me and my family I committed to them. And I still I’ve got the guernsey.’’
A hard-nosed midfielder who strived for and thrived in the contest, William played 377 games for West Adelaide, Port Adelaide, Collingwood and Brisbane Bears. He won best and fairests, represented South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, was an All Australian and even was a leading goalkicker at Collingwood. “Don’t you forget to put that in,’’ he smirked.
A pioneer off the ground, he coached — or is that educated? — at Glenelg, Essendon, Port Adelaide, GWS, Richmond, Ajax in the Victorian ammos, Werribee in the VFL and is currently at Melbourne.
It is a fabulous CV, yet Mark Williams the person is arguably more captivating than what Mark Williams was as a player and is as a coach.
He’s unique Choco. He brandishes an inquisitive mind not unlike Kevin Sheedy but probably with an even more emotional intensity than Sheeds. He has energy and enthusiasm and demands success and excellence. At times, that intensity could be confronting, at other times confusing, always intriguing.
“I understand people don’t quite get my intensity,’’ he said. “I care about people, that’s what I do. I expect quality and one of the things from dad was about perfection. I search for it, not that we ever get it, but I’m not satisfied with things that are half measures. People who don’t reach their potential I push, I want them to get the joy out of that effort. I don’t make excuses for it, that’s what it is. Hopefully along the way I’ve shown the care and understanding that not everyone is the same as me, I get that. In the world, people are outliers and I’m probably the one different down the end, and that’s probably what’s worked for me. If people don’t understand me, they will judge me the wrong way but that’s who I am.’’
A friend called him the nutty-professor.
“Yeah, maybe,’’ he said of the wacky description. “But people don’t understand. The nutty professor is only because most people probably do the same as everyone else, whereas I’m always searching for a different way or a better way. You learn you have to be able to solve problems, and innovate and motivate people in the classroom or in a group of players. And no doubt it was based on how my dad was.’’
Reflecting on himself it was impossible for him to not to reflect on his dad’s influence.
“He won nine premierships, he came second eight times, he was captain coach of South Australia, he played 35 state games and did it all when he came back from the war when he was 24,’’ he said. ‘’It’s quite remarkable. Port has won 36 premierships. He was born in 1922, so you can’t win a premiership then, but if you look at the years he was alive to now, there’s been 24 premiership at Port Adelaide in that time and we (the Williams family) have been involved in 22 of them.’’
Choco loved playing because of its competitiveness. “It’s the ball rolling and see if you can win it and what you can do with it, and it’s the joy of that competition,’’ he said. “That’s the thing you missed the most. You feel the competition as a coach, but the actual competitive nature of bodies colliding and winning each little contest is what turns you on.’’
And he loved footy long before he became a player.
Dad’s first club was West Adelaide. Choco and his brothers, Anthony and Stephen, and sister Jenny, would dag around the rooms at training and on game day. And even more so when dad made the shift to Port Adelaide at the end of the ‘78 season. “You can talk about the smell of penetrene, the liniment, the joy of singing the club song at the end of the game, walking into the old spriggers room and seeing the spriggs being knocked into the boots … all those things bring a smile to my face and take me back to being a little kid. That’s what footy has done. It’s kept me curious and the little kid has always been inside of me.’’
He has a memory to die for. A playing highlight, he said, was when he played for the Big V after a handful of games for Collingwood in 1981. He flew to Western Australia for the carnival in an eight-seat Cessna plane because of a plane strike. It took them 18 hours. On the flight, he said, were Neale Daniher, Peter Daicos, Michael Tuck, Geoff Southby and Wayne Schimmelbusch. “I remember thinking I’m living my childhood and playing for the Vics, it was unreal,’’ he said.
After playing, coaching beckoned. His last playing game of footy was the ’92 premiership with Port, and his very next game had him coaching Glenelg who Port had beat in the GF the year before.
He was two years there before Sheedy got him to Essendon, and two years more before Port summoned him home with a five-year deal, and in the third year he replaced Jack Cahill as the senior coach.
He was in his element. He even had written notes from his first training session under the legendary Tom Hafey at Collingwood. “I’ve still got it. How hot it was, where it was, it was unreal that I wrote all that stuff down for some reason. I had watched dad coach, be coached by him, and I never thought I would one day be a coach. But the minute I finished playing, I thought let’s coach. I loved playing the most but the coaching is a very close second.’’
In ’99, his first season, Port played finals. In 2000 at the halfway mark of the season they had one win, a draw and were bottom of the ladder.
An inspiring and demanding figure, from 2001 to 2004, Port then won more games than any club, capped by the premiership win over Brisbane. They also lost six finals during that period which had his team and him labelled chokers. “It was tough living in Adelaide,’’ he said.
One time, the club’s major sponsor, Allan Scott, nailed Williams. “On national TV, Allan Scott said we would never win a premiership with me as coach. That’s the major sponsor. That wasn’t easy to live with.’’
Famously at the siren in 2004, Williams, with tears in his eyes, choked his tie around his neck. On the podium, he told Allan Scott he was wrong. “I never thought about doing it until I was standing up there. I said he was wrong, I didn’t say anything else about him.’’
Not for the first time, Williams had proved himself.
It felt like, he said, he had something to prove all his life.
Being the son of a legend had him in the spotlight from an early age.
“There’s a famous cartoon in my dad’s scrapbook, of Fos at 36 when he was still playing, and it was saying he was old and behind him was Anthony and me, and we were about to play our first game,” he said.
“That inspired me forever, that cartoon had me wondering if I could play. The challenges dad went through, going to the war before coming back and getting his degree in economics, all of these things were inspiring for me.’’
Choco learned later in life his great, great grandfather was a Jamaican slave, which maybe, unknowingly, helped infuse a lifelong attitude of us against them.
“The idea that we had a line of black heritage means something to me,’’ he said.
“Maybe that is proving yourself, who knows, but I’ve always had a fantastic allegiance and alliance to Aboriginals and multicultural people. Dad came from a small country town called Quorn near the Flinders Ranges and mum came from Hawker which is the next town, and there were a lot of Aboriginals and a lot of racism up there, and dad had dark skin. There was a lot of calling of names. He probably tried to keep us away from that sort of bullying at school. Spookily, my twin brother had the whitest hair, the whitest of hair, and I had the blackest of hair.”
Footy and family have always been linked.
He met his wife Pauline in the Collingwood social club in ’81, the pair introduced to each other by Peter Daicos. They had five kids and now a granddaughter, and her father is Essendon’s Dylan Shiel.
“My wife had five different houses in four states. To have that support and friendship, to come to the footy, be with other wives, help them through the ups and downs of football … there’s no way you could be coach without a supportive wife.’’
Undeniably, it’s a famous family devoted to football.
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Originally published as Port Adelaide legend Mark Williams inducted in the Australian Football Hall of Fame
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