St Kilda, football fans unite to mourn a true Saints champion Danny Frawley
The football world has united to pay tribute to much-loved St Kilda legend Danny Frawley after his death on Monday, remembering him as a fierce competitor beloved by Saints fans who spent more than 30 years chasing an elusive flag.
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“There’s only one Danny Frawley”.
Usually reserved for Tony Lockett, the chant was altered by the Saints faithful for Frawley’s final game.
It had seemed fitting, and it was right.
The boy from Bungaree’s footballing journey began as a teenager in Ballarat and took him to the big time.
Educated at football institution St Patrick’s in Ballarat, Frawley started out like the many generations before him — as a potato farmer — before a pre-season at Geelong over the summer of 1983-84 and his subsequent drafting to the Saints at the age of 20.
He started in red, white and black in 1984 and had an immediate impact.
Strong. Fierce. Hard-running. Beloved in the No. 2 by supporters and his teammates alike.
The fullback was named captain in 1987 — aged just 24 — and became the Saints’ longest-serving captain until Nick Riewoldt surpassed his total of 177 games in 2014.
“I thought, ‘this is the way out for me off the farm’. And I liked the farm, but I didn’t love it,” Frawley said in 2017.
“The reason I got off the farm was because I was a competitor.
“(My Bungaree mates) had a crack at me at the time for not going down the pub and having a couple (of beers), but I had this thinking … ‘I think I’ve got the talent’. Not the skill, but something inside of me to think, ‘I’m going to be good enough to play league footy’.”
He had started as a forward soon moved to defence and proved uncompromising and respected across his 240 games.
He won the club’s best and fairest award in 1988 under Darrel “Doc” Baldock and was named in the AFL Team of the Year before he led the club to its first finals series in 18 years in 1991.
He represented Victoria 11 times.
Big V teammate Gerard Healy last night described Frawley as “a champion” who had died in the town that he loved — and loved him.
“(Ballarat was) where he grew from an overenthusiastic young footballer to local royalty,” he said on 3AW.
“Spud was a champion of St Kilda — his beloved club, where he captained so many times. “He was a great State of Origin player, he was coach of the Tigers and took them to finals and he was a great football administrator. Spud did it all.
“Always happy to play the clown, but at his very core he was a serious football person.”
In defence, he was one of the best with his battles with Geelong forward legend Gary Ablett Sr the stuff of football folklore.
The likes of eventual great mate Jason Dunstall and Wayne Carey were regular foes on the field.
One of only 14 people to have been a captain and a non-playing coach for at least 100 games in both.
Frawley was one.
“He was a legend of a player here (at St Kilda),” former teammate Nathan Burke said last night.
In 2015, Frawley was part of the reinvigoration of the St Kilda Past Players and Officials group and was passionate about driving player welfare.
In a Herald Sun series published in 2016, Frawley returned to Moorabbin and spoke about playing in front of the famous “Animal Enclosure” at St Kilda’s former home ground.
“I just remember the crowd — there wasn’t enough room for a healthy sardine,” he said.
Frawley — an AFL life member — was immortalised in the St Kilda Hall of Fame in 2007.
A PREMIERSHIP DREAM FULFILLED THREE DECADES ON
Lauren Wood
For three decades Danny Frawley chased an elusive premiership — as a player and as a coach.
He finally tasted grand final success in August last year.
Coaching daughters Chelsea and Keeley the three of them won a flag with Old Haileybury women’s team.
It was the first and last time he would lift a cup.
“So proud of each and every one of you,” he wrote on Instagram after the victory.
Frawley’s competitive edge meant he was a given to enter the coaching ranks.
Following his 1995 retirement, he was driven to lead a team in pursuit of a flag.
He said not winning a premiership in his 11 years at the Saints had left “a little bit of a black hole” in him as a player.
He spent four years as an assistant coach at Collingwood, before the senior coaching job at Richmond came up.
While he considered himself “probably 1000-1 to get the job”, Frawley was appointed at the end of 1999, guiding the Tigers to a preliminary final in his second year at the helm in 2001.
He coached 113 games until the end of 2004, having resigned mid-season.
Frawley coached Richmond great Matthew Richardson at Punt Road and provided the forward with some of his greatest football memories.
“More than anything for me Spud was a charismatic character who you wanted to be around,” Richardson said.
“He made you feel good, made you laugh, made you smile, which made it an enjoyable environment in his first few years at Richmond.
“I haven’t enjoyed a season more than 2001.
“It was because of those qualities that you wanted to play for Spud.
“He will be sadly missed by so many. Every time I’ve seen him since his coaching days
I’ve left with a smile on my face.
“I will miss bumping into him at the footy.”
But, by his own admission, Frawley had been stubborn, particularly when his tenure at Richmond was coming to an end.
It was trait he said he picked up while working as an assistant at Collingwood under Tony Shaw.
“The stubbornness can get in the way of having the clarity to move on,” he told the Herald Sun recently.
“But that’s the way I played my footy. I didn’t have a lot of talent. I was probably like that Monty Python film — no arms and legs but still biting your knee caps off.”
One of the most famous off-field stories also belongs to Frawley from his time at Richmond — the “chicken poo” moment.
After a 2001 loss to Geelong, a supporter followed through with a threat to dump a truckload of manure in the driveway at Punt Road, “because they played like chooks”.
Frawley recalled the incident just weeks ago in a Herald Sun podcast.
“In a roundabout way, it broke the ice. (CEO) Mark Brayshaw came into the match committee and said, ‘We can’t get out, some bloke has delivered five tonnes of chicken shit on the front door’,” he said.
“But on the inside I could see the funny side. What a lot of people don’t understand and that when all the dust had settled, and all the media guys were there for the lead story, I got the property steward to get a couple of the old chaff bags that we put the footies in.
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