Danny Frawley looks back at Moorabbin’s memorable moments

DANNY Frawley can still smell the Moorabbin mud and hear the crowd roar as Tony Lockett kicked his 100th goal in 1987. SUBURBAN GROUNDS INTERACTIVE

THE long-gone scent of Moorabbin mud still brings a smile to Danny Frawley’s face.

As a one-time “groundsman” during the 1980s, who worked in tandem with another likely lad from Ballarat, Tony Lockett, Frawley was in charge of applying copious amounts of water to the ground to ensure it was as muddy as possible for visiting teams.

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On occasions, even the coach and the chief executive would be out there with the hose turning it into a mud patch that suited St Kilda’s battling teams of the mid-1980s before a new wave of young Saints stars made the tactic obsolete.

“There was nothing like it,” Frawley said of Moorabbin. “You would walk out in the middle, especially in the mid ‘80s, and you could just sense the atmosphere of the place.

“We didn’t have much skill back then. So we used to water the ground, myself and ‘Plugger’ were groundsmen, so we made sure it was nice and muddy like Ballarat.

“Players from opposition clubs would shake their heads at how muddy it was at the start of April. We used to laugh our heads off.”

Tony Lockett breaks away from Stephen Silvagni in 1989.

Danny Frawley celebrates a win over Geelong in 1988.

Frawley said the beauty of Moorabbin back then was that “you would see the same faces every time you played there.”

St Kilda played at Moorabbin from 1965 until 1992, and kept the ground as its home base until the end of the 2010 season. But Frawley is excited by the club’s plans for a $29 million redevelopment of Moorabbin, complete with a purpose-built facility, which would see the Saints return home to Linton St by the end of next year.

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“The ‘Animal Enclosure’ was infamous for all the right reasons,” he said. “I think you needed a dozen (beers) or a slab to get into it. It was guarded by barbed wire. They were between us (the Saints) and the umpires’ race, so the poor old umpies used to cop it.”

Frawley played 72 of his 240 games at Moorabbin — more than at any other ground — and the memories still resonate.

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One of his best came in Round 7, 1991. It was his 150th game. The Saints beat the Crows by 131 points.

“There wasn’t enough room that day for a healthy sardine,” he said. “Plugger was making his famous comeback after a fractured vertebrae and Nicky Winmar was coming back from his suspension the year before.”

“I’ll never forget it — it was (Lazar) Vidovic, down to (Robert) Harvey, on to Winmar and a searing left-foot onto Plugger’s ample chest down at the South Rd end. Plugger ended up kicking 12 that day.”

Just as vivid in Frawley’s mind was the day Lockett kicked his 100th goal at the ground in 1987 just days after Saints coach Darrel Baldock suffered a stroke.

“I think it was Alex Marcou on the far side who kicked it to him, and the crowd went berserk when he kicked it,” he said.

“But the Bulldogs got a goal back and looked like winning. Then Plugger marked on a 45 degree angle, and he ended up kicking the winning goal as well as his ton.”

Frawley’s memories aren’t solely reserved for on field. He will never forget the after-match at the old Saints’ Disco — where he insisted players needed blond hair to guarantee entry, where the likes of Trevor Barker and Michael Roberts ruled just as much as they did on the ground, and where Mark Jackson once dropped a lit cigarette into the pocket of then president Lindsay Fox.

MOORABBIN

Also known as: Linen House Oval. Used as home ground by: St Kilda

First game: April 17, 1965 (St Kilda d Collingwood)

Last game: August 1, 1992 (St Kilda d Fitzroy)

Biggest crowd: 51,370 (St Kilda v Collingwood 1965)

Games: 254

Biggest crowd: 51,370 (St Kilda v Collingwood, 1965)

Highest score: Sydney 26.20 (176) (v St Kilda, 1985)

Most games: Barry Breen 128

Most goals: Tony Lockett 329

Most goals in a game: Tony Lockett 15 (St Kilda v Sydney, 1992)

What is it now? The Saints continued to use Moorabbin as a training base until 2010 when they departed for the fresh, new - and out-of-town - surrounds of Seaford. Since then Moorabbin has sat idle, but a push among powerbrokers and fans has seen the Saints lobby for a return to the club’s spiritual home.

Flashback - 1986 Footy Record

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Originally published as Danny Frawley looks back at Moorabbin’s memorable moments