Paul Rowe swept into the Goulburn Valley League like a breath of fresh air in the early 1960s.
In 1962, a relative of his at Tongala had approached him to take on the coaching job with the Blues in the following season. He jumped at it and it eventually led to him spending two stints as coach of the Blues in their GVL days.
But at the time he took his first coaching role at Tongala he was suffering a chronic groin injury, which had ended his career with VFL (now AFL) side North Melbourne. There were also some personal doubts about whether he could do justice to the role with Tongala as a playing coach.
Three seasons with North Melbourne, starting as a 17-year-old in 1960, had yielded 15 senior games on a back flank.
Paul chuckles as he reflects on those years with the ’Roos.
‘‘When I was there I was a little more than a skinny runt of a kid with not too many footy smarts,“ he said.
“We got the unwanted hat-trick of finishing last each year I was there, which some of my so-called mates keep reminding me of today.”
Paul said he owed the fact that his playing days were far from washed up when took the Tongala coaching reins to the principal at the Girgarre school at the time, Alan Greene.
It was Paul’s first appointment as a teacher in the Goulburn Valley and he also taught at Girgarre.
“Alan had had similar groin problems as I had and had overcome them with certain exercises, which I decided to try,” Paul said.
“I had a March deadline to start training with Tongala and I was able to meet that only because I did what Alan told me to do.
“I often did them (exercises) when I was taking a class, which raised a few eyebrows from the students.”
In what was a miraculous recovery Paul missed only one game in three years coaching Tongala in two separate stints and that was due to concussion after a run-in with Tatura legend Freddo McMahon.
Paul was immediately able to stamp his authority in the GVL as a defender, with his mobility and ability to read the play making him one of the standout defenders in the league.
So much so that in the three years he initially coached Tongala he won every Shepparton News award for the league’s best player voted on by journalists covering the games.
After he finished his first stint as Tongala coach in 1965 his journey took him to a one-season coaching stint with Hampden League club Cobden and then on an overseas trip that resulted in a whirlwind courtship and marriage to his English wife of 52 years, Patricia.
‘‘I even had to leave her in England for a while to get home for a teaching appointment,’’ Paul said with a laugh.
After a season with VFL cub Coburg on his return to Australia in 1969 Tongala officials were on the phone and he spent 1970, ’71 and ’72 back coaching the Blues and then a season coaching Letichville and a year playing with Kyabram before the curtain came down on his playing career.
Tongala played finals regularly in his years at he club, once missing a grand final berth in the preliminary final at Kyabram against Euroa in agonising circumstances.
‘‘We were down a couple of points and big Garth Honey marked the ball for us in the last few seconds straight in front. He needed only to kick the goal and we were in the grand final but he missed,’’ Paul said.
It has been often said that Paul was one of the best players in the Goulburn Valley League never to have won the Morrison Medal, the league’s best and fairest award.
But Paul thinks he knows the reason why.
‘‘I used to tell, diplomatically mind you, the umpires what they were doing wrong,’’ he said with a chuckle.
Ironically after his playing days he turned his hand to umpiring, initially with the Kyabram Umpires Association and then with the GV Umpires Association after the two bodies had amalgamated in the early 1970s.
One of his biggest thrills in football was umpiring with his son Corin in his first senior game appointment.
Corin went on to be a top AFL umpire, officiating in 123 games.
He now lives and works in Melbourne, employed with petroleum giant BP, and responsible for the re-fuelling of the major airlines at Tullamarine.
Paul said Corin was a near certainty to umpire his first grand final in his best season, but was only selected an emergency for a last Saturday in September.
He was only in his late 20s when he retired.
Paul’s eldest son, Jonathan, is principal at Monivae College at Hamilton, a prestigious Catholic boarding school.
The college alumni includes Allan Myers, legal counsel of tobacco companies and a member of the 2010 BRW Rich 200.
Jonathan was appointed to the principal’s role in the last two years. His wife also teaches at the school and they have two teenage daughters.
Paul rates Kyabram players Charlie Stewart, Dick Clay and Ross Dillon among his toughest opponents in his GVL days.
‘‘Charlie was a beauty,“ Paul said.
“Dick and Ross were just starting off at the time but you could see both had the potential to become stars at a higher level, which of course they were.’’
Since his playing and umpiring days Paul and Patricia haven’t ventured far.
He spent 13 years as headmaster at the Kyvalley school and after his teaching days ran the Top of the Town fish and chippery in Echuca.
Now 80, Paul still lives in Echuca today with Patricia. He said his thoughts often drifted back to his playing days and the enjoyment he had derived from then.
And likewise GVL fans of long standing continue to bring up Paul’s name when mentioning the elite players in the GVL over the years.
Editor’s note: Paul was good enough to give me a bit of a rundown on my father and uncle’s football ability, which I have only ever heard second and third hand.
My uncle Wayne returned to play with Tongala as an ex-radius player while he was playing reserves for St Kilda, while my father, Haydn Aldous, was also playing at Tongala when Paul was coach.
"Wayne was a terrific mark and kick, while Haydn was one of the up and coming junior prospects,“ Paul said.
He said because of Tongala’s population the club was allowed to have four ex-radius players, to try and be competitive.
“They encouraged us to recruit players and we aimed mostly at the VFL and AFL seconds, because we couldn’t afford the seniors,” he said.
More notably, at least for my trips to Echuca as a young adult, was the stopovers at Paul’s Top of the Town fish and chip shop, which he opened in 1990.
“We were in the shop for 15 years, first at Top of the Town was the first and then at Fish in a Flash, in the port,” he said.
