Great at 38: The enduring legacy of South Croydon mainstay Daniel King
Daniel ‘Dano’ King is the heart and soul of South Croydon. And, in his 20th year of senior football in the strong Eastern league, he’s still getting close attention from rival teams.
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As he went into the 2025 season, his 20th of senior football, South Croydon great Daniel King considered quite a few things.
The juggling act between family (he and his wife, Kate, have three young daughters), work (he has his own heating and cooling business) and the Bulldogs.
How his body was holding up.
What he could contribute to the team.
The outlook for the only club he has represented.
King gave no thought to being tagged. He assumed those days were over.
But there it was two weeks ago at the Pat Wright Senior Oval in Noble Park, 38-year-old “Dano’’ King being tailed by young Bull Kane Marshall.
“Hey, I’m old enough to be your dad!’’ King told him before the game. He also set out the rules of engagement: mate, you can run with me, but go easy on the scragging. Keep your hands to yourself.
“I felt somewhat bad doing that,’’ Noble coach Steve Hughes says of hollering for Marshall to follow King.
But he had watched the vision of South’s match against Vermont and thought the veteran best-afield. He saw a player winning a “ton’’ of clearances, using the ball well and “taking grass”.
“If you remove the age thing and just watch the game, you’d say, ‘This bloke’s the best player on the ground by quite a bit,’’ Hughes says.
“You’ve got to judge it on what you see. He was highly, highly influential the week before and we’ve been tagging every week since the Vermont game and it’s working reasonably well. So he was the target.’’
Hughes adds with a laugh: “Apparently at the start of the game he said, ‘Come on boys, what are you doing, I’m 38 years old’.’’
King confirms the comment.
It was something he didn’t think he’d have to put up with this season, but with other midfielders out of the team he understands why the focus was back on him.
It’s testament to his enduring excellence in Eastern that King still figures at the forefront of opposition coaches’ thinking.
In 10 matches this season he’s been named in the best players six times, including last Saturday against ladder leader East Ringwood.
King has been playing senior football for his club since 2005 and is its most decorated and respected player.
He’s won five best and fairests, the 2013 Chandler Medal and captained South Croydon’s first top-grade premiership team in 2017. He holds the games record – his next major milestone will be 350 – and he’s represented the Eastern league.
At a time when all the players he came through with are long retired, he continues to play the highest level of football in one of Victoria’s best local competitions, in the No. 30 jumper with the three-quarter sleeves.
What’s driving him now?
“I have my own business, so work-wise, family-wise, it’s a pretty busy lifestyle when you chuck footy in there too,’’ he says.
“But I still enjoy it. If I didn’t enjoy it, I wouldn’t keep doing it. Any competitive person wants to do well and be successful. I’ve been happy to have a lot of that along the way. Now it’s more the enjoyment side and the friendships I’ve got at the footy club that keep me playing. Having said that, I want to play well each week. I’m a competitive and I have a responsibility with the team to play well and win games.’’
What’s the hardest thing about playing senior football when you’re approaching 40?
It’s what you give up to do it, he says – the family time, the social occasions.
He’s been lucky with injury, so his recovery doesn’t involve a “crazy amount’’.
“There’s no great demands in that regard to put me off it,’’ he says.
“It’s just more motivating yourself to get up and train and play. I’ve been doing it a long time. I’ve got mates who say jokingly, ‘Why are you still playing?’ Then you’ve got guys who say, ‘Geez, I wish I was still playing too’. I don’t want to be that old fossil who’s there for the sake of it, but if I’m playing good footy and being good around the club, I’m happy. Age isn’t a massive thing for me.’’
He is playing good football – good enough to warrant a tag.
*****
Cheong Park, South Croydon’s home ground, hosts football with the synthetic cricket wicket running through the middle.
If they were to stop the game and bring out a bat and ball, King would still star.
He was a most accomplished cricketer, playing in Ringwood’s inaugural Victorian Premier Cricket flag in 2007-08 and adding a second premiership the following season.
King bowled leg-spin but, owning a watertight defence, he also opened the batting in both grand finals.
Often he played with his cousins, David, Matt and Michael King.
As a state under-age representative, he was in Cricket Victoria’s Academy system, and he went on to play for the state Second XI in 2009.
Here’s some trivia: substituting for Glenn Maxwell, he took 7-74 off 19.4 overs against Queensland, counting Joe Burns and Chris Lynn among his victims. His Victorian teammates from that match included Aaron Finch and his great mate Tom Stray. The scorecard is linked on Cricinfo, where King, the suburban footballer, has his own profile.
His football brought him no similar recognition – no listing with the Eastern Ranges, no invitations to train with Box Hill Hawks or any other VFL club.
“I was never in the pathway. I’m not super-quick, I’m not tall, I don’t have any of those attributes that, particularly in that era, they were looking for,’’ he says. “I was never really on the radar. I was just a local footballer playing with my mates. That was pretty much it.
“It was different with cricket. I was in the pathway early.’’
But, after 126 First XI matches with Ringwood, he gave cricket away to focus on football.
“I sort of decided I didn’t love it as much as I had,’’ he says.
“We’d lost the Premier grand final the year before to Melbourne. I remember sitting there after we’d lost and I was probably wasn’t hurting as much as the others. It was hard to do both. I was basically training every week 12 months of the year.’’
By that stage he was entrenched as a senior star at South Croydon, which he had joined as a junior through his cousins Chris and Stevie Dinnell.
His senior debut came in 2005, when he was still an Under 18 player.
Four years later he was in the grand final team that defeated Mulgrave to lift the club into Division 1.
His first best and fairest was in 2011 and he was appointed captain the year after.
Honours kept coming to him: the league medal, the Chandler (beating out Vermont champion Ryan Mullett and forward Justin Van Unen by two votes), the 2012, ’15, ’17 and ’18 best and fairests, regular team-of-the-year recognition and Eastern league selection (he’s always thought training and playing with leading Eastern players at interleague took him to another level).
The 2017 Division 1 premiership crowned it all. As skipper, he was best-afield as the Bulldogs rolled a hot Vermont team.
It was South Croydon’s maiden Division 1 flag.
When he retired from cricket, King thought he’d be leaving behind a lot of team success at Ringwood and perhaps having little of it at South.
“I was resigned to us not being able to compete with the big boys,’’ he says. “There was no salary cap, there was no points system. I thought we’d be punching so far out of our weight division. I just didn’t think we could ever get there.’’
Brilliantly, boldly at Bayswater Oval, they did, under the coaching of former AFL player “Patch’’ Adams.
King believes South Croydon wasn’t the best team in Eastern that season, but it was the best team on the day.
“We could have played Vermont another ten times and they might have won nine or 10 of them,’’ he says. “But we were clearly better than them in the grand final. I’m proud of that part of it because we’d played them three times that year and lost by 50, 50 and 70 or something like that. No one thought we could win.’’
He said at the time that it was the “icing on the cake’’ of his football. Eight years on, he’s added a few plump cherries.
How has he done it? If he isn’t quick and he isn’t tall, how have all these honours piled up around him? What’s taken him to the upper echelons of Eastern?
“I reckon … I don’t know. Probably the agility side of it, the sideways movement,’’ he says. “Because I’ve been fortunate with my body, there’s a fair bit of trust there. I’m not fast by any stretch — over 100m, even less so — but I reckon I can move around a contest OK. That’s why I’ve played 99 per cent as a mid, because I don’t mind being in the contest, as opposed to be on a forward flank and having someone up your bum.’’
His durability has matched his ability: he has never missed a game through injury.
Aside from the Eastern interleague strip, he has only ever pulled on the South Croydon jumper.
King hopes to do it for a while yet.
“You want to go out on your sword a little bit,’’ he says.
“I don’t want to go out getting carried or not being able to perform or holding anyone back.’’
In other words, he’ll put up with a tag or two.
Originally published as Great at 38: The enduring legacy of South Croydon mainstay Daniel King
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