It was here that the David Neitz Testimonial Dinner was held. All present had the chance to share the ups and downs, the insights, difficulties and humour of the Club captain, part of the red and blue since the early 1990s – well before that first senior game in 1993.
From his father, Alex, and school friends who knew the boy in acid washed jeans well before he became the captain of the oldest club in the AFL, the gathered audience had a taste of the person behind the profile. Anecdotes revealed an ambitious cricketer, a ‘dodgy carpenter’ who made a chair that nobody could sit on – but more than that, a compassionate and generous personality.
Despite taking the chance to relate some embarrassing episodes, teammates (past and present), friends and others also had nothing but good to relate of Neitz. He may have thought Keysborough Golf Course was the centre of the sporting universe, and may have – once or twice – worn his tracksuit pants inside his socks. But these incidents, along with the ongoing affair of the missing Mars Bars, were put firmly in second place to his personal and sporting achievements by the admiration of all those who spoke.
Former recruiter Richard Griffiths spoke of the awe of the young Neitz, well and truly ready to play the game before his age permitted. Russell Robertson told of feeling ‘bigger and stronger’ with Neitz stationed alongside him. Coach Neale Daniher, while laughing at Neitz’s vagueness, compared that with his intense focus, and ‘passion for the Club’. A telegram from Barassi mentioned his ‘persistence….great heart’, and the pattern was set for celebration and congratulation complemented by a sense of goals still to be fulfilled.
But it was left to Neitz himself to reveal the most. Thanking all those who had helped him in football and life, and particularly acknowledging his parents for passing on a mix of ‘compassion and passion’, he remembered his first senior game. ‘I was hit in the face and got sent to the bench’, he recalled with a grin. ‘But they kept selecting me – they kept persevering!’
And now he has a niche in the Club records – the all-time record for goals, mere weeks away from the all-time games record - that shows the value of such persistence and perseverance. David Neitz, Norm Smith, Robert Flower – all three emerging from such different eras, all three proudly part of this great Club and bound to be for time immemorial.
