George Coulthard playing in a game for Carlton vs Geelong at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground in July, 1880
George Coulthard, born August 1, 1856, was an early colossus of Australian Rules Football, a talented cricketer and a versatile man of many talents who attracted career threatening controversies and life threatening sharks with equal elan. In this series Pradip Dhole sketches the extraordinarily interesting life of this extraordinarily interesting man.
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“Did I ever tell youse chaps about George Coulthard, the ole’ Carlton man? No? Well, I will. Youse can take it from me that Coulthard was the best man that ever trod a football field … he wasn’t a big man. Sizeable, he was. Not big, but all whalebone an’ muscle. Fast, too. By jingo, yes! He was fast. Fast, an’ what they calls clever. You can talk about yer match winners. None er the chaps yer been speakin’ about was in the same street with George Couthard ..”
- “The Old Codger” Expands, Notes From a Sportsman’s Scrapbook, The Australasian (Melbourne, VIC 1864 – 1946) Sat 16 June 1928, Page 27.
The Birth of Australian Rules Football
The year was 1858, and Thomas Wentworth Wills, recently returned from England where he had been studying at Rugby School, had written a letter that had a
ppeared in the Bell’s Life in Victoria and Sporting Chronicle of Melbourne in Jul 10, 1858, in which Wills had proposed the formation of a “Football Club” in the Australian winter season so that cricketers could remain active in the off-season for cricket. He had further suggested that a committee of 3 or more members be formed to formulate a code of rules for the purpose.
A committee of 4 members had then been convened for the purpose, with Wills himself, his cousin Henry Colden Antill Harrison, sometimes referred to as being the “Father of Australian Rules Football”, William Josiah Sumner Hammersley, the Cambridge University, MCC, and Surrey cricketer, and Lieutenant-Colonel TS Marshall, to codify the rules and regulations pertaining to the setting up of what is now known as Australia Rules Football. It had been postulated in the Australian sports media of the times that if HCA Harrison was the Father of Australian Rules Football, TS Marshall had surely deserved the title of the “Godfather of Australian Rules Football” for his phenomenal contribution to the game.
This is the story of one who had strode the early history of the Australian version of the Rugby code of football like a veritable colossus, George Coulthard.
The Genesis of the Coulthards
It is said that history often breeds its own fables, some of which, fueled by the coffers of wealthy individuals with vested interests, are often made to masquerade as facts. One such apocryphal tale, surrounding a brave lieutenant of the Roman army named Coulthartus, begins in the year of our Lord 79 AD. The story goes that this Coulthartus had arrived in Caledonia, the earlier term for Scotland, in the company of the Roman general Gnaeus Julius Agricola, and had defeated the Scots and the Picts, the local indigenous Scottish clans of the time, at the famous battle of Mons Graupius. It seems that having subjugated the local inhabitants in battle, Coulthartus had married a daughter of the chief of one of the clans, the couple later settling down in southwestern Scotland, near the town of Whithorn.
The descendants of the above Coulthartus had supposedly built the Coulthart Castle in the barony of Coulthart, the local area taking the name of the nobles. St. Ninian, on his arrival at Whithorn, had apparently established the first Christian Church in Scotland, the “Candida Casa”, here in the year 397 AD, with many generations of the Coulthart family being laid to rest in the churchyard. As appealing as the story may seem, it is an established fact that the allegory had been written in 1854 at the behest of a wealthy banker named John Ross Coulthart living near Manchester, in an attempt to establish the provenance and authenticity of his largely fabricated family history.
In his book A Coulthard! The History of a Surname in Great Britain: One Family's Seven Hundred Years of Border History, English author Alfred Coulthard, who has been researching the family history for more than 60 years, feels that the family had, in all probability, arrived in the UK in the wake of the Norman Conquest of 1066. It is a verified fact that, with time, the descendants of the original Coulthard families had spread far and wide, primarily to different parts of the UK, and then to the Americas, the Antipodes, and to other areas of the globe.
Early days
The present story begins in County Durham, in north-east England, with the birth of one Thomas Coulthard in 1811, near the small market town of Stanhope. Thomas, a manual labourer, became a lead ore miner in adulthood. At the age of about 32 years, Thomas was united in wedlock in the year 1843 with one Elizabeth, nee Fleming, born in 1813 at Ireshopeburn, County Durham. The couple then emigrated to Victoria in 1854. They were to raise a family of 10 children, most of whom were to die young, and only one, the youngest son William, was to live past his 30th year.
The 7th child of the couple, a son, was born on Aug 1, 1856 at Boroondara, near the Victorian town of Kew, in the suburban area of Melbourne. The child, named George, was educated at St. Matthew’s School at Carlton. The child George grew up in a farm and learnt to play the Australian version of football and cricket in school. For a time, Coulthard worked as a farm-hand, later taking up lodgings as a young man in the “Little Italy” area of Melbourne in Lygon Street, where he began a business dealing with sporting goods under the title Carlton Sports Depot, located at 233, Lygon Street. His sports establishment also served as a club room and smoking room.
The Making of the Colossus
Coulthard was barely 18 years old when he joined the Carlton Junior Club, at the time thought to be a stepping stone for young Australian Rules Football players aspiring to become members of the highly prestigious Carlton Football Club, commonly referred to as the Blues, and established in Melbourne in 1864, one of the premier football clubs in Australia. George Couthard joined the Club in 1876, at the age of about 19 years, and represented Carlton till 1882.
George Coulthard in football uniform with Carlton Secretary EA Prevot in 1880
According to the archives of Carlton, footballer George Coulthard’s vital statistics are given as follows: Height – 181 cm/ 5’ 11.25”, Weight – 76.2 Kg/12 stone. During his time with the Club, Coulthard played about 140 games for the Club, 4 State games, and 2 Rugby matches. His total goal tally read about 102. He was the Carlton Vice-captain in 1882, and won the award of the Champion of the Colony for the seasons 1876 (his debut year), 1877, and 1879. George Coulthard was inducted into the Australian Rules Football Hall of Fame in 1996. Not everyone becomes a legend in his own lifetime in such a competitive sport in such a short time, but Coulthard was an exception to the rule.
A pamphlet of the Carlton Football Club carried this tribute to Coulthard when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1990; “Perhaps the first superstar of Australian Football (or Victorian Rules as it was then known), George Coulthard joined the fledgling Carlton Football Club as a 19-year-old in 1876. A local farmer, Coulthard had already established himself as a brilliant cricketer. But when he donned the blue cap of Carlton and ran out to join in the game that had gripped the colony like no other, Coulthard was a sensation.”
In a review at the end of the 1879 season, during which Coulthard had won his 3rd Champion of the Colony award, the Australasian had this to say: “"Now before going into club details, a word or two regarding players who have been conspicuous during the season may not be out of place, and there can be no two opinions as to who is entitled to first mention - George Coulthard, of Carlton. Back, forward, or following, and nowhere out of place, the grandest player of the day, it is doubtful if for general excellence his equal has ever been seen in Victoria."
The Argus of Aug 1, 1908, commenting on 50 Years of Football, said: “George Coulthard looms large in the football records of the eighties, when he was for years the best all round player for Carlton. He could not be misplaced. His clever handling, his pace, his expertness in dodging, his sureness in the air, and his masterful kicking were items proved invaluable to his team. He was the brightest star in the galaxy, such as does not, even today, shed its effulgent beams on Carlton".
A man of many talents, George Coulthard is known to have tracked down a notorious criminal, William Grieves, a fugitive from justice for many years, in March 1879, and to have handed him over to the constabulary.
In this context, there was an intriguing little news item right at the bottom of Page 3 of The Colac Herald (VIC) of Tuesday, Sep 16, 1879, as follows: “It was stated at Geelong on Saturday (Sep 13) that Coulthard, the footballer, has been admitted as a member of the Victorian detective force.” Coulthard would have been about 23 years of age at the time.
Apart from his three Champion of the Colony awards as a player, Coulthard appears to have distinguished himself considerably as an umpire in Australian Rules Football games. When he had appeared in an all-white dress as an umpire in the game between Melbourne and Norwood (SA) on 1st of July/1880, that was reported to have been the first instance of any Australian Rules Football umpire appearing on the field in a completely white umpiring uniform.
Standardisation in Victoria
The 17th of May, 1877 was to be an important date in the history of Australian Rules Football in the colony of Victoria. The secretaries of all the football clubs that had participated in the previous season’s games met for a discussion with the intention of forming a consortium to formulate the Laws of the game and to establish an administrative body for the game within the colony. The representatives of the five major clubs in the Metropolitan area of Melbourne, namely, Albert Park, Carlton, Hotham, Melbourne, and St. Kilda, were to be prominent affiliates of the newly-formed Association. Among the provincial clubs, the most significant member of the new Association was Geelong. The conclave of the 12 founding club authorities of May, 1877 resulted in the formation of the Victoria Football Association. The affiliation fee for each major club was set at 1 guinea per club.
Midway through the 1877 season, Coulthard was part of the Carlton team that sought to pioneer the spread of Australian Rules Football by travelling to Sydney to play against the Waratahs, a local rugby team, in a series of two games. The arrangement was that one of the games was to be played under rugby rules and the other under Australian Rules Football rules. Expectedly, each club won the game played according to its own code, and the local cognoscenti were of the opinion that the young Coulthard was one of the two Carlton players who were able to adapt to the rugby code best.
The clubs met again in Melbourne for another set of two games with the same arrangement of code switching. Carlton won their match with the Australian Rules code and drew the rugby game 1-1. Excelling in both the games, Coulthard joined the Waratahs for a brief period to play rugby. He impressed one and all in his two games for the club, and though he played in only 2 of the club’s 12 games in the 1877 season, Coulthard scored more goals than any other Waratah player and tied for first place for the number of tries. For many years, Coulthard was remembered for his expertise in showing “the rugby men how their game should be played.”
Shark Attack
Later in the same year, Coulthard was invited by Phil Sheridan, a trustee of the Sydney Cricket Ground, to travel to Sydney so that he could promote the Australia Rules code in New South Wales. He was to have a scary experience in the capital city of the NSW colony. Along with a group of local footballers, Coulthard had gone fishing in the Sydney Harbour area. Their boat was anchored near Shark Island, and George Coulthard was sitting in the gunwale on the side of the boat with his coat-tails hanging out.
He was suddenly pulled into the water by an enormous shark, estimated to be about 13 feet long and was dragged in the water for about 10 to 12 feet before the shark had torn his coat off his back. Managing to make his escape after imparting a sharp kick on the shark, Coulthard had reportedly then vaulted into the boat with some assistance from his footballer friends. According to a newsletter, the incident was said to be "one of the most marvellous escapes from a fearful death on record" and "probably without parallel in Australian waters".
The incident left Coulthard shaken and he returned to Melbourne within a week and resumed playing for Carlton. The unknown shark thus earned a place for itself in popular folklore as being the reason why the Australian Rules code was not popularised in Sydney.
The Ugly End of a Great Career
An on-field incident of the 1882 season, during which he was the Carlton vice-captain, was to end his football career. As reported, a trivial incident during a training session in April had escalated to the major incident later in the season. One Joseph “Joey” Tankard, a new recruit from the rival club Hotham, had clashed physically with Coulthard during practice. Following an altercation, Tankard had reverted back to his original club Hotham, and the incident had apparently been laid to rest as far as the protagonists were personally concerned.
When Carlton and Hotham had met next in August of the same year at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground, there was an unsavoury incident in the second half with Carlton leading. Coulthard had fallen on Tankard in a scrimmage, either accidentally or deliberately, “with both fists shut”, according to eye-witnesses. Regaining his feet, Tankard had struck Coulthard in the face, and the Carlton vice-captain had retaliated in kind. Sensing that the situation was rapidly getting out of control, the other players had broken up the physical confrontation and the foul language being used by both combatants. It is reported that Coulthard had challenged Tankard to a fight in the pavilion, but the latter had declined.
In the meantime, pandemonium had broken out in the stands, with spectators invading the field and mob violence had seemed imminent before the Police took control of the situation and brought matters under control. This very undesirable incident was reported in the Victorian Express (Geraldton) of Wednesday Sep 20, 1882 by a Special Correspondent as follows: “The crack clubs, Carlton and Hotham, met on Saturday and the game was one of skirmishes. First a player named Wilson had a difference with a bystander, and at it they went, till separated. In the next rally, Tankard, a crack player, was knocked down and sat upon by another shining light of the football world, Coulthard, and the moment he got up, he let fly and hit Coulthard. A stand-up fight ensued, the people rushed to the scene and at one moment it appeared as if there was going to be a general engagement. There would have been, had not the police rushed to the scene.”
As a sequel of the episode mentioned, a meeting had been held by the VFA 6 days after the event at the Young and Jackson Hotel under the chairmanship of Mr HCA Harrison to investigate the incident. In a detailed report of the meeting in the Leader (Melbourne) of Saturday, Aug 26, 1882, it was stated that: “A good deal of evidence was forthcoming the bulk of which very clearly proved that each man had struck the other, and that Tankard was in the first place the aggressor, and Coulthard would probably got off with a lighter sentence than disqualification for the rest of the season but for the evidence of Messers. Shaw, Jordan, and the umpire, which was to the effect that the Carlton man had used most abominable language.”
Opining that “bad language is far worse than blows,” the Chairman of the committee, HCA Harrison, and the rest of the members had imposed sanctions on both the principals, and they had both been suspended for the rest of the season, this being the first instance of such a punishment being meted out to any player imposed by the VFA. Matters did not end there. After the punishment had been handed down, the Hotham secretary, EJ Lawrence, had indicted Coulthard for insulting and threatening Tankard outside the committee room, and had thought of going to the police with a formal complaint. Mr Lawrence later made his displeasure public by writing a letter to The Argus (Melbourne) of Aug 22, 1882.
Carlton retaliated against the ruling by refusing to take the field against Melbourne in their next scheduled fixture unless Coulthard was allowed to play. Under the circumstances, Melbourne agreed to go ahead with the plan on condition that Coulthard “assumed the responsibility of defying the Association”. Coulthard refused, and in a subsequent meeting of the VFA, Tankard’s suspension was revoked, while Coulthard was still deemed to be under sanction. At the end of it all, Coulthard never played senior-level football again.