Collingwood Forever

Players from a junior football club called Edlington, which was based around Albert Park, were understandably dismayed when their club disbanded midway through the 1893 season after a string of ‘forfeits’ and poor performances.

But some of their former players received brief lifelines, earning trials with clubs then in the VFA. One such player was Ernst Wulff (sometimes spelled Wuilff or Woolf, and a christian name often presented as ‘Ernest’).

Wulff was born in Talbot around 1871. He was the third oldest of six children, with two brothers and three sisters. The family moved to Melbourne and he became a telegraph operator, playing footy for the Electric Telegraph team in the Trades League between 1890 and 1892. In 1893 he crossed to Edlington, where he played some good games as a speedy forward. When his club folded midway through the season, Collingwood quickly snapped him up and gave him a try, named on a half-forward flank against South Melbourne for the game at the South Melbourne Cricket Ground on July 8.

Unfortunately Wulff’s debut performance passed largely without notice, although The Argus did remark on his ‘smart manoeuvring’ in one early passage of play. And The Herald noted the following Friday that he and fellow small man Danny Flaherty were “like Magpies, quick and clean”.

Unfortunately that solitary game – a loss to South – would be his only senior appearance, though he remained in contention and was still a part of a couple of match day squads later in the season. By 1895 he had joined Richmond City, where he played with his brother Carl. The two brothers would later serve with the British Army in the Boer War. Ernst transferred to Ballarat with his railways employment at the end of 1896, and later moved to England to live.