Collingwood Forever

Keith Bromage is one of those rare things in football: a player whose name is almost as well known outside his own clubs as it is within them.

Not because he played 300 games or won Brownlow medals or kicked bags of goals. But mostly because, for the best part of 60 years, his name has been written in history books as having been not only Collingwood’s youngest debutant but also the youngest player in VFL/AFL history.

That’s quite a claim to fame. And it was brought up again every time some new wunderkind came through – whether with Collingwood or anywhere else – and played his first game.

As it turned out, though, it wasn’t quite accurate. New research came to light in 2012 which revealed that the honour should have belonged to a St Kilda player called Claude Clough, who was 15 years and 209 days old when he debuted for the Saints back in 1900, just beating out Keith’s record of 15 years and 287 days.

Keith probably wishes that research had been known back in 1953, because it might have saved him from a lot of unwanted attention.

But even so, it was an extraordinary feat for Keith to have made his senior debut before his sixteenth birthday. Think of the other Magpies who had done it before him – guys like Albert Collier and Len Fitzgerald – and it’s no wonder that many observers quickly concluded they were watching someone who would go on to be a Magpie great.

Keith was born in Abbotsford and did most of his schooling at Victoria Park State School, then Collingwood Tech. He was a mad Magpie fan from day one, and would often pretend to be Bill Twomey when he was kicking a paper football in the street after school

By 12 it was becoming obvious that he was something of a prodigy: he was playing (on the wing) in a Victorian schoolboys team, and starring at junior level. He played for the Vic schoolboys again the following year at centre half-forward, and then again the year after at his preferred position of full-forward. There aren’t many who play for the schoolboys team three years in a row.

One story has it that Magpie scouts noticed him having a kick on the ground after a game at Victoria Park and invited him to training when he was just 14 (a slightly different version of the same story is that they saw kicking a paper footy outside the ground with his mates before and after games). But he didn’t love his first experiences at Victoria Park, and returned to school footy, and playing with his mates at a junior team in Richmond.

He came back in 1953, however, and after playing in some practice matches the 15-year-old was given a couple of games in the thirds early in the year. The Magpies liked what they saw and promptly elevated him to the reserves. And after a batch of games there he completed the rare feat of skating through all three grades in one year when he was named at full-forward against Richmond in Round 17, on the back of successive bags of six and eight goals with the seconds.

The newspapers loved the story of the kid plucked from nowhere – the youngest ever. And Keith played his part, registering a goal with his first kick and managing two for the game in a creditable first-up display. He followed with two more the next week.

Even in those two cameos, he showed why the Magpies were so excited about his prospects. He stood just under 6’ in the old language and was a solid 12 stone. He was a wonderful mark, both in terms of the stickiness of his hands and his judgement of the ball, and a superb kick for goal. As The Sun noted: “He is a fine judge of a mark, moves smartly and kicks well – often shooting for goal with long drop kicks on the run.”

Another magazine of the time was even more effusive. “One of those bright young men with all the brains of a veteran,” it read. “His grey eyes twinkle and his sturdy frame moves with the grace of a gazelle – like which beautiful animal he can leap with almost magical judgement when a football looms in sight.”

Keith returned to the seconds after his initial two-game stint at the top, and was an emergency when his teammates took out the 1953 flag a few weeks later. And when he returned in 1954, things began to click. He played 15 senior games, twice kicked bags of four and ended up topping the goalkicking (albeit with a miserly total of 22 goals). As The Sporting Globe wrote that year: “Keith Bromage has improved out of sight. His marking is developing the touch of shrewdness a forward must have. A safe pair of hands and a trusty boot … he looks like being one of the Magpies key men of the future.”

Unfortunately things didn’t quite pan out that way. He had three separate bouts of knee surgery over the next three years, a stop-start period further interrupted by a stint in national service. He just could not get a clear run at things. His weight increased, his mobility dropped and, having grown only an inch since starting as a boy, he found that he was neither tall enough to compete against the bigger defenders, not mobile enough to run them off their feet.

In 1957 he could manage only five reserves games for the year, at the end of which Collingwood lost patience and left him off the list. He was friends with the great Kevin Murray, who persuaded him to try out with Fitzroy. He would go on to spend four enjoyable seasons with the ‘Roys, playing 41 games, kicking 48 goals and generally enjoying his football again.

But it’s hard to get your head around the fact that, when his time at Fitzroy ended, he was still yet to turn 24.

From there it was a successful stint as captain-coach with Manuka in Canberra, (where he kicked more than 100 goals, won the competition best and fairest and a Fiat car!), then Dimboola as captain-coach, where he also topped the Wimmera League goalkicking with 98. He ended up staying nine years at Dimboola, including a stint as President, mentoring a young kid called Tim Watson, who would go on to make his VFL debut when he was just a few days older than Keith had been.

Many years later, Keith would reflect and say that he hadn’t enjoyed wearing the tag of ‘youngest ever’. It had given him “the shits”, he said. “It is a tag I never enjoyed wearing because I wasn’t that good … I was just lucky to be selected at that particular time,” he said. “It has never meant much to me.”

In the end, Keith Bromage’s football journey took him far and wide, and encompassed a hefty number of both highs and lows. He is no longer known as the youngest man ever to play League football – but that won’t worry him one bit.

– Michael Roberts