On the surface, John Bingley’s profile was nowhere near as large as others in the famous 1966 Premiership team.
But Bingley, who passed away on January 14 at the age of 82, played a major part on the club’s greatest victory. In containing Collingwood’s dynamic captain Des Tuddenham, he blunted the major threat to the Saints as the Magpie star had bagged seven goals in the semi-final.
It was only Bingley’s eighth game for the Saints, yet he was not just a rookie thrown in at the deep end. At 24 years of age he was the sixth oldest player in that Grand Final team and was a highly credentialled former Apple Islander who in 1963 had swooped the pool of awards ranging from a competition best and fairest through to best-on-ground trophies for the Tasmanian state team.
At various times, South Melbourne had pursued him and Melbourne’s legendary coach Norm Smith tried to lure him to Victoria. The small games tally was due to a protracted clearance delay which sidelined him for a season and when he was eventually cleared he copped several injuries.
His name will always be linked to Tuddenham because of that 1966 epic. Their relationship didn’t get off to the best of starts with Bingley refusing to shake hands at the beginning of the Grand Final.
Years later Bingley recalled: “Des came over to shake my hand before the game and I told him to **** off! I deliberately didn’t shake his hand. He held his hand out for a while and I just looked at him and told him to **** off. It was a spontaneous thing at the time, because I know he would not have been respecting me at all as a player and I was going to make him think about me as a player. Strangely enough he must have thought about it because after the game when I went to shake his hand he wouldn’t shake mine.” Bingley wasn’t surprised – “I would have done the same thing as he did."
The paths of the two men did not cross again for 30 years and even then, Bingley was not expecting it.
His friend, the former Melbourne ruckman Bob Johnson, invited Bingley to lunch at Johnson's house on the Gold Coast.
"I've got someone coming around to see you", he told Bingley and it wasn't until Tuddenham walked through the door that Bingley discovered the identity of the mystery guest.
"That was about two o'clock in the afternoon and we talked till midnight," said Bingley in recalling the start of an unlikely friendship. After that, the old adversaries became firm friends with Tuddenham and his family holidaying at the Bingley unit on the Gold Coast.
Bingley’s arrival at St Kilda was complicated.
“In 1964 I came over from Tasmania from the North West Coast with East Devonport. I was appointed coach of Glenorchy in the TFL. I was one of the youngest coaches ever appointed in Tassie at 21. Only Darrel Baldock at 20 had been younger. I hadn’t signed anything and after that, Ian Drake and Graham Huggins from St Kilda and approached me. In ’64 I was refused a clearance and I had to stand out of football and that cost me a lot in my football career from the point of view of being a VFL player. In those days if you represented Tasmania, you signed a contract which meant that you couldn’t leave Tasmania the following year.”
Bingley believed that Glenorchy’s anger about him not taking up the coaching position had been crucial: “I had verbally said I was going to coach them, but hadn’t signed."
Halfway through 1964, just before the interstate clearance deadline on June 30, Bingley was picked to play in St Kilda’s side. He received a clearance from the Tasmanian Football League, but on the morning of the match St Kilda received another telegram from the TFL to say they had made a mistake and wrongly ticked the box which said 'approved'.”
It was a frustrating time, but Bingley felt even more frustrated in 1965 after getting his clearance. A year out of football meant he had lost the footballing touch and confidence that originally been at peak level in an all-conquering 1963 campaign in Tasmania. That situation wasn’t helped by an ankle operation which cost him 14 weeks on the sidelines. He had only two senior games and watched on as the Saints lost the 1965 Grand Final.
In effect, Bingley only had one full season with St Kilda.
“My ankle injury was on my right ankle. I was lacking confidence in kicking. The last time I went over on it all the ligaments were gone and they had to graft tendons from the side of my leg into my ankle. Put the tendons through the bone and graft it back up. Through 1966 I can’t say I played any game in the reserves where I said I’ll be in the seniors next week. We had Des Kennedy, Ray Cross - all half back flankers - and others like Teddy Schwarzman.”
Late in 1966, Bingley’s football improved and when the reserves side played in the first semi he was one of the better performers at centre half-back. “As a senior contracted player I still trained and I was training not believing I was going to be selected.”
Fate intervened when Des Tuddenham cut loose in dynamic fashion in the second semi with seven goals against Daryl Griffiths. Bingley was told that if St Kilda got through the preliminary final and met Collingwood again he would have the job on the Magpie.
“I think they wanted a certain type of player to play on Des Tuddenham who had kicked seven goals on Daryl Griffiths in the second semi, and I was told during the next week they would definitely not be playing Griffiths on him if we got over Essendon. On the Tuesday night (before the preliminary final) I was training with a group of about 14 other senior players over on the other side of the ground and was called over to train with the senior players. It happened to be my best training run in 12 months and everything stuck to the hands.”
At 9pm, club secretary Ian Drake arrived at Bingley’s house and told him he was in the side for the preliminary final. Bingley recalled that it was a shock more than anything else and he wasn’t daunted by it. “Not fazed, not nervous at all. One of the things about me playing football I’ve never been fazed about playing on anybody. I’ve played on Baldock in Tasmania, on Austin Robertson for WA. He kicked 14 goals the week before and he kicked one on me in the state game.”
Bingley, renowned in Tasmania as a wet weather player, was a steady performer in the preliminary final win. But the lack of football under his belt contributed to a setback.
“In 1966 I was getting soft tissue injuries because I had been out for so long. I got a corked thigh in the right leg in a pack, and halfway through the third quarter they moved me to the forward line then I went off at three quarter time. It was the corkie of all corkies. You could have belted it with a sledge hammer and it wouldn’t have hurt, that’s how hard it was. I kicked a goal, my only goal for St Kilda when it came off the pack.”
Looking back, Bingley reckoned he should never have been there in the Grand Final side. He didn’t train on Tuesday night and as the 18th player selected it made it difficult to justify his selection.
It all came down to proving his fitness to a demanding coach Allan Jeans on Thursday night. A drama played out while the majority of the senior team had completed their session and gone into the changerooms.
“On the Thursday night Yabby Jeans was the closest man in the world to be punched by a player. We trained, and then he kept half a dozen of us out there. He paired us off one on one for about half an hour. I can tell you I smacked a few teammates in the mouth in that practice who were trying to get in front of me. I know one of the guys wouldn’t get in front of me because I kept on clocking him.
“It got to the stage where I went back and I was seeing stars. I thought if he throws that bloody ball out in front of me again I was going to walk over and knock him out. I don’t know whether Yabby looked at me and saw it in my face, but he called us in and said do a lap. I could barely run the lap. I’ve never been more furious with anybody. I felt it was over the top. I got inside and spewed for about 15 minutes. Then I went straight home. I was informed later at home by Ian Drake I was in the side.”
Then it came down to the huge task of curbing Collingwood’s greatest threat. The advice form Jeans was succinct: "Play inside him, play tight and don’t let him get away too much." Bingley says that the sum total of direction he received across the two finals was no more than 15 seconds. “I believe Yab ended up being a better coach at Hawthorn than he was at St Kilda.”
Bingley didn’t need a confidence boost.
“I was fazed about two things – one that I was fit enough and two, the most important thing was about John Bingley not doing the wrong thing by his teammates and feeling I could justify myself in that team and be able to look at players after the game and know I hadn’t cost them the game. The last thing I remember running down the race, I was never thinking of Des Tuddenham, only of me, John Bingley, being the 18th player picked in the side, letting the team down.”
“We said a few things to each other, just the normal elbowing and showing a bit of strength . I never got in a position where I could have hurt him either way. He probably thought he didn’t have to hurt me. I know that once he went after Ian Stewart and he missed Stewie by about a fifth of an inch. We laugh about it now. I said to him, ‘you know if you had hit him I would have kicked you in the head’.
Tuddenham only had five kicks in the first half and he kicked a goal in the first minute of the second half.
“It was a goal out of the pack and I was on the wrong side of him. I was pissed off with myself. He didn’t say one word and just ran back to his position. Tuddenham’s return of three goals was well within reasonable limits, although Bingley wasn’t happy to concede any.
“Before the game I was talking to a few teammates and we were thinking if I kept him to three goals we would win the game. They weren’t particularly great on the forward line as individuals apart from Tuddenham. I was thinking I’d keep him down to one but a few like Breeny said if we kept him down to three we will win the game. The one he kicked in the last quarter wasn’t actually a goal. Thompson was in the goalsquare and he actually touched it two meters before the line. If you look at the DVD and stop it you can see it clearly that Thommo touched the ball and see it clearly at a different angle. Look at Thommo and his reaction afterwards. You can see he knew he touched it. It was a good goal."
Bingley was keen to emphasise one thing about those hectic final minutes when Tuddenham charged down the outer flank.
“I was not playing on Tuddenham when he ran down the wing.”
“He went on the ball with about 15 minutes to go. Henderson came onto me when Tuddenham went up the field. I called the trainer out and said ‘he’s got no-one on the ball and there is no-one on him. Do you want me to go on him?’ No message came back and I called him over and I said he is still running around on his own, but I wasn’t given the authority to follow him onto the ball. When he got the ball I honestly thought no-one is on him and reflected afterwards that I’ll get the blame for that if he kicked the goal.”
Decades later, Tuddenham and Bingley were having lunch when Barry Breen happened to call Bingley. Breen chipped “Tell him about not running further. Tell him because he was scared.” And quick as a flash Tuddenham said “I might have been scared but I made you famous!”
For Bingley, the immediate future involved a return to Tasmania.
“I intended to stay in 1967 but I hadn’t had any plans one way or the other. I went back to Tassie for a bit of a weekender and I was approached to coach Clarence. I started to enjoy my football again. I started to play football and started to be a footballer again I never ever felt I was a footballer at St Kilda. That’s not critical of St Kilda. I certainly would have been a better player in '67 than '66. I went to Hobart and was approached. I moved back to Tasmania in December.”
At Clarence he coached members of the Riewoldt family and he always closely followed the progress of Joe Riewoldt’s son, Nick.
As for his own career he summed up: “It was a tough time. I was bloody lucky, I am absolutely proud of the fact that I played with St Kilda and played in a premiership side.”
John Bingley was a tough, hard footballer and he needed all of his iron will in latter years following the removal of a spinal tumour that meant had to use walking sticks and would eventually be wheelchair-bound. Despite that he built a hugely successful business creating licensed merchandise for virtually all the major sports in Australia which reached an annual turnover of $50 million.
Vale, Saint Binga.
