Southern league: games milestones for Keysborough stalwart Dave Paten

Dave Paten started playing for his local club in 1984. Despite his wife’s reservations, 35 years later he’s still at it, the “out and out clubman” notching up his 500th game on the weekend.

Dave Paten played and coached at a few clubs in the southeast.

Heatherton. Skye. Pearcedale. Chelsea. One year he went further out, to Longwarry.

But he’s always found his way back to Keysborough.

He started his senior football with Keysy 35 years ago and he’ll finish there when he finally hangs up his boots.

On Saturday, wearing the No 82 jumper, the 55-year-old played his 300th game for the club — and it also happened to be his 500th senior game overall.

He wanted no banner. But the club selected him in the reserves rather than the thirds, the later start allowing more supporters to clap him on to the ground.

Brandon Mather was one of his teammates for the milestone match. Years ago Paten played with Mather’s father, Scott. It made him feel his age just as much as the exertion of playing the game.

Paten is Keysborough’s senior runner. For the past couple of years he’s also played a few games in the thirds, on the quiet to avoid the admonishment of his wife, Linda.

Four years ago Paten hurt his Achilles and spent weeks on the couch and in a moon boot. Linda hoped that would be the end of his football.

But he gradually regained his fitness and decided to play again.

He told his wife he was umpiring for the thirds and in the meantime arranged for the team manager to take his gear to the ground. But he was found out when a mate of his son’s remarked how well Paten had played that day.

“I was caught, badly. I was in the doghouse for a while!’’ he said with a laugh.

Paten played Under 18s with Noble Park, joined the Springvale Under 19s and transferred to Keysborough in 1984.

He was a bit of lad.

“I was a ratbag, a scallywag,’’ he said.

But he said senior figures at Keysborough looked out for him, and he felt a “sense of family’’.

“Blokes like ‘Graf’ (Paul Bryan) and ‘Googy’ (Steve McLean) took me under their wing,’’he said.

As a young man he also coached the Under 17s. Years later he remains friends with a lot of the players.

Paten left the club only because he wanted to be a senior coach. Someone told him he would never get the Keysborough job.

He headed for Heatherton as an assistant in 1992. A few years later he returned to Keysy — as senior coach.

Keysborough president Manny Scata.

Under his charge the club made the 2000 grand final. The following year it went up a division and failed to win a game; Paten has seen the ups and the downs at Rowley Allen Reserve.

Keysy last won a senior flag in 1976. Paten was part of the losing the 1989 and 1992 grand final teams. He never got to play in a senior flag, although he did have premiership success in the reserves as a player and coach.

Apart from Keysborough and Heatherton, Paten was senior coach of Skye.

Weighing up his time in the game as a player, coach, assistant coach and runner, he said he’d a “great journey in footy’’.

MORE: LACHIE QUAIFE'S EMOTIONAL DEBUT FOR NOBLE PARK

KEYSY BOUNCE SPRINGVALE DISTRICTS

Keysy president Manny Scata said he had no words that could do justice to Paten’s contribution to the club nor the respect he commanded from everyone attached to it.

He said he remembered the times when the reserves were short of players and Paten would ring around to fill the side.

“Others would have struggled to do it, but because it was him, he made it happen,’’ Scata said.

“I listened in to the huddle a few times and the way the players paid attention to him was unbelievable.

“He’s an out and out clubman.’’