With so much of this past weekend having been devoted to the celebration of a major milestone (congratulations to Harley Reid on his 50th game… oh, and to Scott Pendlebury also), it seems fitting to write about a milestone man who’s often forgotten today: Peter Burns, the first man to play 300 games of football at the highest level.
In fact, he retired on 302 top-level games, having played 125 games for South Melbourne in the VFA, 88 for Geelong in the VFA, and a further 89 games for Geelong in the VFL after Geelong joined seven other clubs in breaking away from the VFA after the 1896 season. It’s in part because he played in two leagues that his milestone is little remembered today – though, happily, the AFL website’s Hall of Fame page now recognizes his VFA games for South Melbourne and Geelong. Until recently that page had credited him with only the 89 VFL games, and it’s good to see that someone finally cared enough about the entire history of top-level football to correct that mistake.
Burns played as a follower and later as a fullback. A team would typically play four followers; these players took ruck contests in addition to “following” the ball and marking it around the ground. Some team lists in contemporary newspapers also name him as a rover. By all reports, Burns was an excellent mark and kick, including in the wet. An article from the Argus on Geelong’s 9-goals-to-3 win over Melbourne on 27 July 1895 highlights Burns’ brilliant marking despite wet weather and an injured leg. The match report in The Age goes so far as to suggest that it was the best game of his remarkable career to that point.
Burns began his senior career with Ballarat Imperial in 1882 at the age of 16. In 1885, he transferred to South Melbourne. South went undefeated to claim that season’s premiership with 16 wins and 2 draws. At the time there was no finals series, with the premier being the team that finished on top of the ladder. South Melbourne later achieved the second VFA “threepeat” (Geelong had accomplished the feat in 1878-1880), finishing on top of the ladder in 1888, 1889, and 1890.
Once – some of Burns’ recollections put the incident in 1889 – before a game between Carlton and South Melbourne, a Carlton gang known as the Bouveries, after the street on which they were based, marched around the MCG carrying a coffin into which they proclaimed they would put Burns. A South Melbourne gang known as the Flying Angels confronted them, and a fight broke out that lasted for an hour. Such fights were not uncommon at the time. I haven’t come across a report of the outcome of that fight, but Burns recalled that South won the game!
The 1890 season saw a controversy that led to Burns nearly giving the game away: he and other South players were accused of “playing dead” against Carlton in exchange for money. The game, which took place on 6 September, saw Carlton defeat South Melbourne 5 goals to 3. Unusual movement in the betting markets prior to the game had already aroused suspicion. In fact, the players had been told before the game that some of them had been accused of agreeing to throw the game, and a report in The Argus suggests, plausibly, that their distress over this accusation had itself thrown some of them off their game. Burns himself was so distraught that he nearly retired midseason but chose not to because he had bet on South Melbourne for the premiership – a fact that supports his innocence, since a win against Carlton would have clinched the premiership for South.
On 12 September, the VFA launched an investigation. South asked the players to sign statutory declarations affirming that they had tried their best, but they refused because they had already said they had tried their best and were offended that their word was not sufficient. The investigation concluded on 30 September and determined the accusation of “playing dead” to be unfounded. And, despite the loss, South ultimately finished premiers for the fourth time and the third year running.
Newspaper reports indicate that the result of the game against Carlton was uncertain until the last five minutes, the teams, in reality, were fairly evenly matched, South hit the post twice (behinds did not yet count toward the score), and two South players had suffered injuries early on. Indeed, Carlton finished in second place that season. Given these facts, the result on 6 September was not as surprising as some initially suggested. Accusations of throwing matches were not altogether uncommon in those days, to the considerable distress of players who were falsely accused. Interestingly, there was a widespread view that amateurism – the ideal at the time – made players less likely to “play dead”, rather than creating a temptation to do so. A common argument against paying players was that a man who would take money to win a game might just as well take money to lose it. While that particular argument is counterintuitive, I leave it to the reader to judge whether professionalism has reduced the number or the intensity of sporting controversies.
At any rate, it can reasonably be concluded that Burns and his teammates were innocent of the charge against them, and his contemporaries certainly continued to hold him in high regard.
The 1891 season saw another controversy, but fortunately this one was rather less serious. Burns was one of the players to take the field on 11 July, the once-infamous day known as “Flood Saturday”. The flooding that week caused considerable destruction, but its impact on football resulted in some very entertaining sportswriting.
South Melbourne faced Carlton, with umpire Jack Trait determining that the game should go ahead despite the ground being underwater – and despite the belief, widespread at the time, that getting wet could lead to illness. “Follower”, the football correspondent for The Leader and The Age, remarked that his column’s title of “Football Gossip” was “retained for the convenience of readers, but for which consideration these lines might more appropriately appear under the head of Aquatics”. And he added, “Football Gossip forsooth! Notes on Athletic Lunatics and their Vagaries would be nearer the mark!” Football writers for other newspapers were less colourful but equally critical of the decision to let the weekend’s matches go ahead.
Indeed, South’s captain, Sonny Elms, along with two teammates and three Carlton players, refused to play, leaving Burns to captain the South side. Discussing the game in an interview with The Weekly Times from 29 April 1942, Burns recounted, “I well recall Tommy Leydon, the Carlton captain, saying ‘Who wins the toss can kick with the tide!’” In the end, Carlton proved better able to adapt to the conditions, winning 2 goals to 0. Still, the defeat would have been greater without Burns playing, as the game report in the Herald records that he prevented two Carlton goals.
In 1892, Burns transferred to Geelong. A letter in the 17 May 1942 edition of The Sporting Globe states that continued hard feelings over the accusations of throwing a game had broken up the South Melbourne team, though a letter published on 10 May, the week before, attributes the break-up of the team to the Flood Saturday game. It may be that Burns’ decision had more to do with his move to Geelong after taking a job there, as noted in the 27 April 1892 edition of the Herald. In any case, Burns maintained his excellent form at Geelong, where he served as captain in 1896 and again in 1900.
An article by Bob Gartland that appeared on the Geelong and Sydney websites in 2016 reports that Burns played his 300th game on 31 May 1902, against South Melbourne. My research on Trove suggests that the milestone passed without fanfare; match reports make no mention of it, and reports in the previous weeks did not mention that it was coming. Reports of Burns’ retirement mention that he had played senior football for 21 years – a figure that includes his three years with Ballarat Imperial from 1882-1885 – but do not list a number of games played, perhaps because record-keeping was less detailed in those days. The work of football historians to determine the number of games played by Burns and others is much appreciated.
What newspaper reports do make clear is that Burns was still an excellent player in 1902, his last season. “Old Boy” (Reginald Wilmot), writing for The Argus about Geelong’s game against Melbourne on 7 June, remarked that “once in that quarter [the third], just as Melbourne looked like scoring, Peter Burns dashed in, marked, and with a fine run carried the ball half the length of the ground. The veteran has been playing senior football for 20 years, but showed the way to the youngsters in that run in a way which was marvellous.”
Geelong went on to win 3.8 (26) to 2.13 (25). And although Geelong lost the final game he played for them – against Carlton on 14 June – “Old Boy” records that “Burns was good full back”.
His last game would be an interstate game. Burns in fact represented Victoria a number of times; a 13 September 1924 article in the Geelong Advertiser credits him with “about 14” interstate games. Playing at fullback, he captained Victoria in their game against South Australia in Adelaide on 26 June 1902. Victoria won 11.15 (81) to 9.8 (62). Unfortunately, having already been dealing with leg injuries for some time, Burns injured his leg again in that game. On 12 July, he announced his retirement at a meeting of the Victorian team. Jack Worrall, the manager of the Victorian team – as non-playing coaches, still a rarity, were called at the time – praised Burns for his excellent and fair play throughout his career. (Worrall would later coach Carlton to three premierships and Essendon to two.) Burns was 36 and had played 21 years of senior football with Ballarat Imperial, South Melbourne, and Geelong.
In 1905, Burns became Geelong’s timekeeper, a position he held through 1941 and again at the beginning of 1944. The two-year recess occurred when Geelong did not field a team in 1942-1943 because of the ongoing world war and the resulting disruptions to train services. He ultimately retired as timekeeper in April 1944 at the age of 78, but he was so much in the habit of timekeeping that once in May 1944 he automatically walked into the timekeeper’s booth, having forgotten his own retirement!
Burns died on 13 October 1952 at the age of 86. He had continued to faithfully attend Geelong games until the death of his wife fourteen months prior.
Burns witnessed many changes to the game, including during his playing career. Behinds were not counted as part of the score until 1897. It was also in 1897 that the “little mark” was abolished: since 1887, the ball had to be kicked a mere 2 yards (1.8 metres) for a mark, but starting in 1897, a mark was paid only if the ball had travelled 10 yards (9.1 metres). Teams played twenty a side until 1899, when the number dropped to eighteen. When he retired, players had yet to wear jumper numbers for the first time: numbers were first worn as a one-off when Fitzroy and Collingwood played in Sydney on 27 May 1903 and were first regularly used by Port Melbourne in 1905 to discourage theft. Handballing seems to have developed in the 1880s, though at the time of Burns’ death, it was still far less common than it is today; a young Western Australian ruckman by the name of Graham Farmer had already begun handballing out of the ruck but would not play his first WAFL game until the following year.
Looking back on his career in a Sporting Globe interview published on 28 September 1935, Burns reflected on how differently players trained than they had in his era. During his career, players trained twice a week, after dark; they would run and then hit a punching ball, with never a footy to be seen. And, of course, he made sure to note that his generation had it tougher: “Practically the whole team gets together in daylight, having plenty of ball practice, hot baths, masseurs, and other aids to mending injuries. All I can say is that if they are not champions today – well, they should be!”
Some may wonder why I haven’t mentioned Burns being named Champion of the Colony, an award the AFL’s Hall of Fame page credits him with. It’s because careful historical research by Ross Smith and Armin Richter revealed that the Champion of the Colony award never existed and was invented by C.C. Mullen for his Footballers’ Almanac, published in 1950 and 1951, as well as his 1958 History of Australian Rules. Hopefully this error will be corrected as well. There’s no need to add fictitious awards to Burns’ remarkable record. 21 years as a top performer in senior football, in an era long before modern sports science, when careers were generally shorter than they are today, speaks for itself. That Burns captained the state side in 1902 indicates that he was still considered one of the best in the game. Being one of the league’s top players right up until retirement at age 36 would be an accomplishment even today.
During his playing career, Burns was known as “Peter the Great”, and those who saw him play continued to rank him among the greatest players they’d seen. For instance, a Saturday Evening Express article from 23 September 1933 cites Burns as “one of the three greatest players the game has produced” (without naming the other two). The same article recounts that South Melbourne-supporting children would pray, “God bless Daddy and Mummy and Peter Burns.”
In 1996, Burns was one of the inaugural inductees in the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
Even so, fame is a fleeting thing, and sportsmen who competed before the television era are at a particular disadvantage when it comes to having their careers remembered. A note in the 22 June 1897 edition of The Sportsman proclaims that “Every man, woman, and child in Victoria has heard of Peter Burns, the famous footballer.” But, as the poet A.E. Housman put it, “And early though the laurel grows / It withers quicker than the rose.”
Still, while Burns is less remembered today than he once was, he’s certainly not forgotten, and he did at least live in an era of thorough newspaper coverage of the game. As short-lived as the heights of fame are, Housman may have underestimated people’s interest in sporting history.
