MORE THAN 100,000 people witnessed Ian Graham's wonderful goal for Collingwood in the epic 1964 Grand Final against Melbourne, yet everyone missed it.
In perhaps the biggest statistical blunder in League history, Graham's team-lifting snap in the heart-stopping premiership play-off won by the Demons had been wrongly attributed to teammate Terry Waters, and the mistake was perpetuated for 55 years until it came to light recently.
Incredibly, the staggering clanger has also forced a change to the Magpies' honour roll, with Graham's extra goal elevating him to joint winner of the club's 1964 goalkicking award, alongside Waters.
Waters had previously held the honour outright (as he had the previous year) with 43 goals, with Graham next best on 41, but subtracting one goal from the former and adding it to the latter has resulted in revised tallies of 42 apiece.
Waters had long been credited with two goals in the Grand Final while Graham was deemed to have been held goalless (for the first time in 13 outings), when in reality they had scored one goal each.
The revelation lifts Graham into esteemed company as one of only three Magpies to win the best and fairest and the goalkicking award in a season where they made the Grand Final, following his former coach Bob Rose (1953 – premiership) and ex-teammate Peter McKenna (1970 – runner-up). In contrast to the late Rose and McKenna, Graham was just a second-year key forward who'd made only three senior appearances in his debut season.
"It's an incredible situation and a complete surprise, particularly with how one goal has made such a difference to what my playing record looks like," a chuffed Graham, 77, told AFL.com.au.
"The next time I see Peter (McKenna) I'll tell him I've joined his exclusive club."
Graham and Waters, who were just 21 and 20 respectively when they spearheaded Collingwood's forward line in 1964, shared a flat in South Yarra during their playing days and remain close. This latest development has led to some playful banter between the old Magpies.
"I'm quite pleased to share that goalkicking award with Terry, but he won't be happy at all about it. I will get a caustic response from him, I'm sure," said Graham, who lives in Sydney.
Sure enough, Waters, 76, took some convincing, initially believing he'd kicked two goals in the Grand Final, although he could remember only one of them: a superb angle shot that gave the Pies first blood just three minutes in.
Waters insisted the truth didn't bother him, but that didn't stop him from calling his old mate "Storky" Graham and, in jest, accusing him of being "desperate" and declaring he'd fight the ruling until the end of his days.
"Storky and 'Tuddy' (Des Tuddenham) kicked 1.3 in the '64 Grand Final, so I told Storky, 'If either of you kicked straight we would've won the bloody premiership'," Waters said.
A surprise discovery
Ironically, the head-shaking howler was discovered by a Demon diehard, author Adam Woolcock, during the preliminary stages of his research for a book on the 1964 Grand Final. Woolcock, who also produces the Demonwiki website, became curious when he stumbled across a glowing newspaper description of Graham's goal but noticed his name was missing from most lists of Collingwood's goalkickers and hadn't been credited with a goal in official records.
Graham scored the last goal before half-time but, as was deduced from newspapers that listed the quarter-by-quarter goalkickers in chronological order, it became clear that Waters had been incorrectly awarded the goal.
Woolcock shared the discrepancy on the BigFooty website and soon another poster ('35Daicos') tracked down video highlights of the game, which just so happened to feature the goal in question.
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The black-and-white footage removes any grey area, proving that Graham was the goalkicker and that Waters was about 50 metres from the action.
However, Waters still had a good hand in it.
Late in the second quarter Waters clung to a "fingertip" mark on the boundary at half-forward before kicking long to the left forward pocket, the ball swinging one way and then the other in flight.
Key forward Graham judged it better than his opponent Brian Roet (a fellow University Blacks product) near the boundary and broke clear of three other Demons to open up the goalface before expertly curling it through from 15 metres at the Punt Road end, arousing a loud cheer from the Magpie faithful. Not only had Graham partly made amends for missing his previous four shots at goal (one of which failed to score), but he'd put Collingwood back in front for the first time since Waters' opening goal, and the Pies would remain in front at half-time.
'Distracted by a pretty girl'
It's almost inconceivable that Graham's six-pointer was of such quality and importance that it was deemed worthy of mention by journalists – The Sun's Jack Dunn hailed it a "spectacular" effort – but was overlooked in goalkicker lists.
After all, player identification shouldn't have been difficult, as might have been the case if for instance there had been a scrambled kick out of a pack. Indeed, we suspect thousands of fans would have marked 'I' in the goal column beside Graham's name in their A5-sized copies of The Football Record.
It's not surprising Graham didn't notice the error himself, given football was never his be-all and end-all, which he showed most strikingly when he spent the subsequent 1967 season travelling around Europe with two Melbourne uni mates.
It's also astonishing the anomaly survived so long given the magnitude of the occasion. It wasn't as though it was a dead rubber between cellar dwellers on a wet, dim day at an old suburban ground – this was a classic Grand Final between arch enemies at a sun-drenched MCG in front of 102,471 spectators!
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It hadn't exactly been raining goals, either. Goals were like gold in a high-pressure clash in breezy conditions in which both teams scored just eight goals apiece and fluffed some seemingly elementary chances, so Graham's crafty conversion – probably the biggest moment of the first half – should have stood out.
So it's unusual no one took up his cause in the case of the mistaken major. Given the result, perhaps the Magpie army was too deflated to bother. The matter surely would have been rectified sooner had the Pies won.
The 'Gabbo' and 'Froggy' show
In any case, Graham's goal was relegated to relative obscurity by two legendary late goals that instantly entered footy folklore.
Twenty minutes into the last quarter, Collingwood skipper Ray Gabelich, a man-mountain ruckman, lurched forward on a fumbling, bouncing odyssey that became known as "Gabbo's Run", which resulted in another lead change. (Just minutes earlier Gabelich had goaled from a boundary throw-in. They were his only two goals of the season.)
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Soon after, Melbourne back pocket Neil "Froggy" Crompton defied the express orders of his coach Norm Smith by drifting forward to kick the matchwinner.
Even allowing for these distractions, and understanding that those were the days before instant video replays and social media outrage (which would have promptly resolved any slip-up), the misreporting of Graham's go-ahead goal was inexplicable and a complete mystery.
An early clue
Adding to the incredulity, the truth was there all along, buried in Collingwood's 1964 annual report. Although the report didn't detail the club's goalkickers in the Grand Final, it effectively confirmed them by noting: "The goalkicking performances of Ian Graham, Terry Waters and David Norman are all worthy of recognition here. Together they were responsible for 124 goals … with individual scores of 42, 42 and 40 respectively."
However, the situation wasn't helped by the Magpies' low-key attitude toward its award winners at the time. Graham only found out about his Copeland Trophy victory via a phone call from the club secretary, while the club's leading goalkickers didn't receive trophies or any other tangible acknowledgment of their feat.
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"You don't deserve anything for kicking 40-odd goals anyway – that's nothing," Waters said.
Alas, the goal gaffe persisted and found its way into the official records of both club and League.
Sadly for Graham, he's remembered more for his misses in the Grand Final than his goal, given it was his only major from six shots. The youngster could have covered himself in glory but two late opportunities went begging: in time-on he sent a long set shot across the face of goal and out of bounds; and he would have lined up for an after-the-siren shot for the flag from 35 metres out, directly in front, had he been paid a free kick for high contact in the frantic final seconds when umpire Ron Brophy, officiating in his first Grand Final, effectively put the whistle away.
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"If I'd been paid that free kick I would have been famous one way or the other. I would have been the guy who either won the premiership or lost it," said Graham, who'd missed two set shots from similar spots further out in the second quarter. "I wasn't the straightest kick for goal so who knows how it would have played out."
A prominent pair
Hailing from the country town of Tongala in northern Victoria, Graham finished with 63 League games and 132 goals, winning another goalkicking award in 1966 with a career-high tally of 58.
Like Graham, Waters also won a best and fairest in a season in which Collingwood came agonisingly close to a premiership, in 1966. Recruited from Dandenong, he later captained the club and played 163 games and kicked 181 goals.
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In 1964, the duo finished equal third in the League goalkicking behind Hawthorn's John Peck (68) and North Melbourne's John Dugdale (46).
It's just the third time multiple Magpies have tied for the club's goalkicking award, with Lou Richards and Bob Galbally booting 26 apiece in 1944, and Anthony Rocca and Chris Tarrant tallying 38 goals each in 2002.
Footy history is regularly rewritten or modified. Geelong has just added another name to its list of club champions after it was discovered the Cats had presented a best and fairest award in 1929, the recipient being wingman/half-back Jack Williams. Richmond has also made changes to its list of club champions pre-1940.
