Collingwood Forever

For a few weeks in 1954, Collingwood selectors thought they had hit the jackpot. They felt, with good reason, that they had added a brilliant young rover to their Premiership-winning list of the previous year.

That player was Kevin Wylie. A brave and brilliant rover with a terrific eye for goal, he burst onto the scene and won rave reviews after his early outings. But a broken leg soon afterwards halted his progress, and meant he never quite ended up having the career that he might have.

Kevin was a product of Abbotsford Tech, where he won the A Grade’s best-and-fairest in 1949. From there he went to Alphington in the Amateurs. Although he was small he became a star rover with the local club, and tried out with Collingwood before the 1953 season. Rejected, he returned to Alphington and had a superb season, winning a spot in the Victorian team that played in the Australian Amateurs carnival. He also earned a call-up to the Magpie reserves late in the year, and did well.

It was no surprise he ended up at Victoria Park, as his grandfather (Bob Bird) had played there in the 1890s, and he was part of the wider Bird clan. He’d also played under former Machine team member Leo Wescott at Alphington.

On the back of his promising reserves showing in ’53, Kevin was invited back for 1954. Despite missing most of the practice matches with appendicitis, he played the first eight games with the seconds, kicking more than 15 goals (records are unknown for some of those games). When Collingwood played a South Australian side in June, he was part of the team and kicked three goals.

That was enough to earn him a senior debut in Round 10, named at half-forward against Hawthorn. Officials later pronounced that they were “satisfied” with his debut game. The next week, against Footscray at Victoria Park, he kicked four goals and the Pies had a new young star on their hands.

The Argus gave him one vote for the game. The Sporting Globe described him as “small, but game”. There was even talk that he might knock Ron Richards out of the second roving spot. “Kevin Wylie … played dashing football as a third rover and on the half-forward flank, cannot be discarded lightly,” The Argus said. “Wylie, who has done so well in his two games with the team, might be preferred to Richards as second rover.”

And he was. But in that game – just his third – he broke the fibula bone in his ankle. He’d already kicked two goals and shown more signs of his promise, but the break was a bitter blow. He missed the rest of the season.

But that didn’t stop the rave reviews coming. Hec de Lacy, in The Sporting Globe, included him among his recruits of the year, despite playing just the three games. “He looked the answer to Collingwood’s stricken roving forces until he broke a leg,” Hec wrote. “But no one shaped better in his debut this year … [so] I’ll include him in my list.” The Age was also impressed: “He is fast, a neat ball-handler, a good mark and a well-developed goal sense,” it wrote. As was The Herald: “Rarely do I name a player as a star on one appearance, but Wylie showed enough in that [Footscray] game to suggest he will be a regular Collingwood rover next year.”

Unfortunately, things didn’t quite work out that way. He managed only six senior games in 1955 and another three in 1956. He kept kicking goals in the seconds, averaging nearly two goals a game from his 31 games at that level. But he couldn’t get a decent run at it in the seniors, and never quite regained the form of his first few games.

The story might lie in this ditty that the club penned in a 1955 club publication:

“Kevin Wylie is a handy man around goals,
Into opposing defences he drills many holes.
He’s a tiny rover who is very game,
But since his leg-break he’s not been the same.”

Kevin was obviously frustrated, and tried to get to Hawthorn, Fitzroy and Footscray at different times without success. Eventually he went to North Albury in 1957 as captain-coach, where he spent several seasons.

There seems little doubt that it was the broken leg which cost Kevin Wylie a much better shot at a decent League career. Had that not happened, who knows how we’d be remembering him today?

– Michael Roberts