50 years on: Peter Bedford on the year he won Sheffield Shield and Brownlow Medal
It would be nigh on impossible today, but Peter Bedford was part of Victoria’s champion state cricket team and won footy’s highest honour in 1970. And the sporting great’s recollection of his “pretty good year” remains as sharp as a pin.
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The flip of the calendar to 1970 presaged a fabulous sporting year for Peter Bedford.
Two months into it he was part of the Victorian cricket team that won the Sheffield Shield competition.
By September he was playing in the league football finals for South Melbourne and being toasted as the Brownlow Medal champion.
Recollections of those sporting successes 50 years ago remain as sharp as a pin for 72-year-old Bedford, a natural storyteller who can summon names and numbers in an instant.
“I had a little bit of good fortune come my way in 1970,’’ he was saying last Tuesday as he watched the Sub-District Craig Shield match between Malvern and Oakleigh at the Oakleigh ground.
“It was a pretty good year, it’s fair to say.’’
Bedford was a gifted cricketer and footballer at a time when he could pursue both; the professionalism that forced dual sportsmen to pick one over the other had yet to be cemented.
For about “seven or eight seasons’’ his sporting seasons ran into each other.
Invariably he would play in the District cricket finals for Melbourne, then a short time later pull on the South Melbourne jumper in the VFL.
“I was fortunate that ‘Smithy’, Norm Smith, was coaching South,’’ Bedford said.
“He was very accommodating because he felt one sport complemented the other. I’d quite often go into a football season having played only one practice match. It would probably take me a couple of games to get into the flow. Obviously it was a different era back then, mate.’’
Which did he prefer? Football or cricket?
“I was a cricketer,’’ Bedford said. “When I was a kid I couldn’t get enough of it. Loved the game.’’
Half-a-century on, he still does. He was at Oakleigh in his capacity as an assistant coach of the Malvern Craig Shield team, backing up another former state batsman, Shaun Prescott.
As he spoke, his eyes rarely left the play, particularly relishing the sight of leg-spinners operating in tandem for the Malvern side.
Bedford was a leggie too. In fact, although he made a century for Victoria at the MCG against a WA side featuring DK Lillee, he considered himself a better bowler than batsman.
There is a scorecard floating around on social media showing he dismissed Ian and Greg Chappell in the same innings.
In fact, he removed GS Chappell twice in first-class cricket, feats to lodge alongside the MCG ton and the Shield victory.
Bedford grew up in Port Melbourne (and has lived in Port and South Melbourne all his life), and he said it was common to see youngsters playing kick-to-kick in the streets and using electricity poles as stumps in spirited games of cricket.
After getting his start with the Garden City juniors, Bedford played as much organised cricket as he could: on concrete wickets on Friday nights, turf on Saturday with Port Melbourne and matting in the Sunday churches competition. If he could find a fourth fixture, he would take it. The 1960-61 series between Australia and West Indies fascinated and inspired him; he idolised Richie Benaud as much as he did Bob Skilton.
At City, Harry Halfpenny, who’d played District cricket at Northcote, was a mentor to him.
“Respect be your constant companion,’’ Halfpenny would tell his young charges. The words stayed with Bedford like an old song.
At Port Melbourne, he found another good coach in Fred Lalor, a former Carlton player who bowled leg-break.
At the age of 14 Bedford batted well for Port in a seconds final, and word of his ability reached Melbourne Cricket Club and its shrewd recruiter and chairman of selectors Clive Fairbairn.
Bedford had ties to the South Melbourne club through the Dowling Shield team. But the persistent and persuasive Fairbairn enticed him to the Demons.
“My mum was working in Coles in the city, where David Jones is now, and Clive would drop in once or twice a week during his lunch break and have a chat to her and ask when I was coming to Melbourne,’’ Bedford said.
“He wore her down! I went to Melbourne. And I ended up having a fantastic time there.’’
He was in the Melbourne First XI at the age of 16. And three years later, in the 1966-67 season, he made his debut for Victoria under the captaincy of Jack Potter.
Bedford was making his name in football, too. From Port Melbourne he went to South Melbourne, taking his senior bow in 1968. The following year he won the best and fairest. The following year he won the Brownlow Medal.
That, of course, was in 1970 and his Brownlow triumph had been preceded by Victoria’s Shield victory.
Then it was based on points, and the Vics had effectively wrapped up the title early in February by defeating South Australia by six wickets in Adelaide.
Bedford took 5-40 off 14 overs in SA’s second innings after frontline spinner Blair Campbell broke down with injury.
“Our captain, Bobby Cowper, threw me the ball and I was fortunate enough to get the five wickets, and help us get an unassailable lead going into the last match of the season,’’ he said.
The Shield title was a highlight of a career that took in 39 first-class matches, the last of them in 1972-73.
They made for a lot of memories, but little money. Bedford said he was paid $7 a day to play for Victoria. He remembers laughing with Paul Sheahan at the fact that the gateman at the MCG was making more in one day than they were in four!
Bedford finished his cricket and football with one-season cameos at Carlton, coaching the cricketing Blues in 1973-74 and playing eight league games for Carlton in 1977.
While he returned to Port Melbourne in the VFA, he was finished with good cricket at the age of 27.
In the years since he’s played many matches for the Crusaders, often as captain.
He’s also coaching Malvern juniors again. He was there seven or eight years ago, but a couple of mates asked him to help re-form juniors at Donvale. It was a “cut lunch’’ from his home, but he took it on and oversaw the establishment of six under-age teams.
Former president Mick Arbon brought him back to Malvern three years ago.
“The best thing about it is seeing them improve,’’ he said, nodding to the young Roosters in the field.
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“They love their cricket and they want to learn. We’ve got some good young boys in this side. They’ll be good cricketers.’’
He tries to instil in them the advice he received from Harry Halfpenny all those years ago – “respect be your constant companion’’.
“We don’t want them to get ahead of themselves,’’ he said with a laugh, Melbourne’s sporting champion of 1970.