For Andrew 'Andy' Smith: 'Cheer, boys, cheer we’re for Melbourne', by MUFC club president Andrew Donald - 2023

25 January 2023, Le Pine Funeral chapel, Essendon, Melbourne, Australia

During the last Test Match, I took a friend from Sydney to the Museum at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. On display were handwritten rules for the game of Australian football and dated May 1859, being the first recorded rules of the game. On Saturday, 28th May 1859, University played St Kilda in our first match with the match reported in Bell’s Sporting Life published on 4th June. Such was his longevity that one half expected to see the words “Timekeeper A. M. Smith Esq.” recorded in the match summary. Although self-evident, such is the esteem in which Andy was and will forever be held, we have called upon our most senior official to deliver this eulogy on our behalf.

Fifty-year celebration

On Saturday 4th August 2012, the Blacks held a luncheon in the old pavilion to celebrate Andy’s fiftieth year of honorary service to the Blacks and to the men’s football programme at the University. That service included occupying nearly every post, including two years as president of the M.U.F.C. in 1984 and 1985, performing a myriad of tasks for Blacks and managing teams in the M.U.F.C. intervarsity programme.

 As one would expect, the luncheon was fully subscribed with attendees from five decades from the halcyon days of premierships in the Victorian Amateur Football Association’s A Section to the equally celebrated premierships in the sections below.

The renowned scribe and keen observer of life, the Black Hack (one suspects a nom de plume) observed in his article published on 9th August 2012, “in any case, my choice of attire for this Saturday gone was a very straightforward affair. It was Andy Smith Tribute Day and a V-Neck pullover was the only way to go. As I packed my tram timetable and handkerchief in order to complete the outfit, I considered all that had occurred during Andy’s 50 year tenure – from wars to droughts, from colour TV to iPhones, from woollen to lycra jumpers – and that if Andy were to have a sav blanc for every year of service he could give you an opinion on all of them.”

A marvellous luncheon was had on a memorable day for the Blacks.

 The universal theme from those speaking on behalf of generations of Blackers was a deep affection for Andy and a genuine appreciation for his tireless work. Of course, Andy’s service didn’t end there and continued for more than a decade and into the 2022 season during which after more than sixty years of service Andy called time on his life as an official and life as a spectator beckoned.

Ern Cropley

Andy was chuffed when, in 2014, the new pavilion was aptly named the “Ernie Cropley Pavilion” after his great friend and house mate of many years, “Croppo”: curator of the hallowed turf for fifty years and described on the M.U.F.C. website as “the most colourful and best-known and best-loved character in University cricket and football circles.”

Blackers’ reflections upon Andy’s passing

 I have been provided with many reflections, a selection of which is as follows:

“A wonderful selfless servant of the club.”

“Andy was there at my first game in Reserves in 2001 and last game 2015.” He loved regaling me with stories of swindles he and my old man got up to at intervarsity games in the seventies. Something along the lines of cash bets and getting the opposition drunk with free booze before the games. I loved his brutal assessments post-match which were delivered with love.”

When letting a Blacker down lightly having missed a mark at a crucial time in a match “Moff, your old man wouldn’t have dropped that.”

“A warm man who made everyone welcome. No one went through our club without being bailed up by Andy for a chat.”

“Heart and soul of the club and part of the old firm along with Jack Clancy who schooled new players on the history and what it meant to play for Uni Blacks.”

 “So loyal and such a supporter of all who represented the Blacks. I rarely got to the Pavvy without a post-mortem and a 3.2.1 of the best and, at times, a 3.2.1 of who shouldn’t be in the best.”

 “My earliest memory of the Blacks was in 2001 after playing a practice match at Williamstown. My first game of football in years, lying on my back after the game exhausted with no skin on my knees and dazed. I am jolted out of my daze when Andy’s dogs are doing a great job at licking the wounds on my knees with Andy standing beside them with a cheeky grin.”

 And I remember a conversation out at C.B.C. St Kilda’s ground in Murrumbeena around 1990 when I was Blacks’ secretary Andy “Can you look after m’dogs, while I time-keep?” Me “Do I have to?” Andy “Yes”

And one final quote which transcends the generations of Blackers and ultimately defines the mood “Part of the Blacks’ furniture who helped make the University Main Oval such a special place for us all.” Such a special place for us all.

The A.M. Smith Perpetual Trophy for the Best Clubman

 Presentation nights represent the finale to a season and provide a serious forum in which serious awards are presented, serious speeches are made, and a club reflects in an earnest manner about the season just completed.

The best club person award is more than an award for significant contribution but is an acknowledgement of the value of the selfless acts of one person for the benefit of others (and the cohort generally) and an appreciation that those acts underpin a club’s very existence.

In the early nineties, the Blacks annual award for the best clubman was changed to the A.M. Smith Perpetual Trophy as a permanent acknowledgement of Andy’s contribution to the life, times and prosperity of the Blacks. To better understand how valuable this work is, it is worth spending a moment on the concept of the best club person. Although awarded on an annual basis, the truth is that usually the recipient has years of honorary service week in week out under his or her belt: managing the teams, keeping the time, field umpiring the reserves, (back in the day) numerous trips to V.A.F.A. HQ to register players, sweeping out the rooms after an under nineteen’s match, spending hours on a Saturday morning preparing for a legendary Blackers’ afternoon tea, sitting in a car listening to a player earnestly express his feelings about his relationship failure of three months.

The list is endless but, in essence, for up to eight months a year, it is assuming operational responsibility for the logistics in deploying more than a hundred players and officials to somewhere in metropolitan Melbourne and dealing with what has now become the complex business of running a community football club especially in a grade where the competition is fierce.

But Andy was not simply an official who came on matchdays, kept the time and went home. He was far more than that. He knew all the players and officials young and old well and was a welcome and active participant in the Blacks’ social life including the famous Black Spot which for many years held top billing on Thursday nights at the Clyde.

Andy’s love of the game of lawn bowls

It would be remiss of us not to talk about Andy’s love of lawn bowls a fact well known to all at Blacks. We enjoyed the fact that it gave him so much joy. We note that the Moonee Ponds Bowling Club was established in 1891 is situated in Queens Park, a beautiful garden, a short distance from here and is noted for having among the best bowling greens in Victoria and priding itself on providing a great family environment to around 150 social and bowling members.

It is a rarity for a person to be a life member of three sporting clubs with the M.U.F.C. (since 1980), the M.P.B.C. and the Carlton Bowling Club now the Princes Park Carlton Bowls Club.

Andy’s health no bar to his support for the Blacks

Over the past few years, Andy had his health issues but that didn’t stop him from attending the footy and expressing his views about all things Black in his usual forthright manner.

Last year, I visited Andy at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Our salutation was that of two blokes who had known each for a long time as I was allocated to Blacks in 1979. We vaguely nodded at each other. Shooting the Blackers’ and general M.U.F.C. breeze and happily discussing the Blackers’ return to the Premier Division where the Blacks belong, well over an hour passed effortlessly.

As I left, our exchange embodied the idea that the ties that bind are often in what is not said. Me: “S’pose I’d better go” Andy: “S’pose you’d better.” Me: “Good luck with the operation.” Andy: “Thanks”.

Loyalty

In an age of fatuous over-statement, the word “loyalty” gets a fair work-out but one wonders how often its meaning is considered or used carefully. Synonyms are “faithfulness”, “constancy”, “commitment”, “dependability” and “reliability”.

In the mid-nineties when the Blacks were collapsing through the grades, at a low ebb, and where resources were very thin, one A.M. Smith stayed the journey, continued and remained faithful to the cause: constant, committed and dependable. Values which by his conduct Andy imparted to generations of University footballers who have gone onto to lead the way in business, the professions, academia, the arts, science, government and public administration and in professional sport.

Vale Andy

Our condolences to Andy’s family. We thank them for giving us an opportunity to speak.

“Cheer, boys, cheer we’re for Melbourne. Now we’re on the road to victory. We will beat them all round, at our home and any ground” the first lines of the traditional song of the University Football Club and successfully reintroduced into the Blacks after Andy led a long campaign.

And so we say goodbye to a favourite son. Blackers unum et omnia, Blackers one and all.

For Peter Heerey: 'Dad, you’ve had a good life. You’ve had a great life', by Ed Heerey - 2021

14 May 2021, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne, Australia

Speech starts at 8.00

I speak today on behalf of our family: our mother Sally, my brother Tom who joins us by web-stream from Dublin with his wife Jen and their children Emma and Conor, my brother Charlie and his wife Anna and their son Nick, and my wife Mim and our children Sass, Gus and Nevie.

I must admit this is a very difficult task. I have a short time to sum up a long and eventful life.

How do I sum up the life of a man who achieved so much in the law, who loved literature, history and Louis Armstrong, and who only last Christmas was learning new Tik Tok dance routines from his grandchildren?

Dad’s many achievements as a barrister and judge are well-known and well documented, so I won’t focus on them now.

Rather, I want to focus on his greater achievement in life. That achievement was building a rich web of attachments to a wide range of family, friends and colleagues, who I am very glad to see here today.

This achievement became very clear over the last few months, as Dad received a steady stream of visits, phone calls, emails and letters from so many different people from so many parts of his life.

And it occurred to all of us, that this was truly Dad’s greatest passion: cultivating strong connections with the people around him, and nurturing them throughout his life.

As you all know, Dad’s story begins in Hobart, where he grew up with his younger sister Sue. Sue lives in New Zealand and we are very glad to have her and my cousins James and Sarah joining us on the web-stream from Auckland and Hong Kong.

There is no doubt that Dad’s father Francis Xavier Heerey loomed large in his life. Frank Heerey was a veteran of World War One, where he served in Egypt, France and Belgium. After the war, he ran a string of successful pubs around Tasmania, and was elected to the Tasmanian Parliament as a member of the Labor Party.

Dad learned early from his father that true friendship can and should accommodate any difference in opinion. Some of Frank Heerey’s closest friends were his political opponents Leo Doyle and Bill Hodgman, whose sons Brian and Michael became Dad’s own lifelong friends. That provides a lesson for all of us: we must focus on the many things that unite us, rather than the few things that divide us.

Dad was only 25 years old when his father died in 1964. Any time is too soon to lose a father, but aged 25 is sooner than most. There is no doubt that Dad missed his father greatly, and deeply wished that Frank could have known our Mum, and us, his grandsons.

But while Dad carried that regret through his life, he also carried an absolute confidence of his father’s love and support.

Dad only told me a few weeks ago that he was by his father’s side when he died. His father told him “I am proud of you.”

Dad never had reason to doubt his father’s pride and approval.

In our lives, he also made sure that his own sons had no reason to doubt their father’s pride and approval.

Dad moved to Melbourne in 1967 and has lived here ever since. However, he always remained a Tasmanian at heart. Many of his old friends from St Virgil’s College and the University of Tasmania have told us recently how Dad was instrumental in orchestrating regular catch-ups which preserved their friendships over the decades.

And many, many times Dad provided mainlanders with enthusiastic Tasmanian holiday advice, entirely unremunerated by the Tasmanian Tourism Commission.

On moving to Melbourne, Dad gravitated to Hawthorn, where his mother Jean Eileen Brady had grown up near the Church of the Immaculate Conception. In fact, his parents Jean and Frank were married at that Church. Dad used to take us to Mass there when we were young.

He often told the tale that, back in the early 70s, the church once put up a sign which challenged locals to consider “What would you do if Jesus came to Hawthorn?”

One local character wrote the answer: “Move Peter Hudson to centre-half-forward”.

As it turned out, Jesus did not move to Hawthorn in the 1970s, but Dad’s mother Jean did, and she lived not far from us until she passed away in 1976. I remember fondly how she used to add an extra sugar cube to each glass of lemonade when she looked after my brothers and me. We were bouncing off the walls!

Dad threw himself into community life in Hawthorn. Somehow, as a busy barrister with three small children, he found the time to get elected and serve on the Hawthorn City Council, where he made more friends who are here today.

Charlie, Tom and I attended Auburn South Primary School, where our family met a fantastic bunch of local families who became life-long friends, and are also here today.

During that time, Dad was also forging deep ties with his colleagues at the Bar. Many of his contemporaries who started at the Bar with him became his solid friends for life. Very early on, a group of those young barrister friends, and their much better halves, had a Christmas dinner together. They enjoyed it so much they have kept doing it for over 50 years.

As a barrister, Dad was more of a quiet achiever than a loud attention-seeker. However, he was prepared to make a rare exception. Once he was part of a delegation of Australian barristers who travelled to Dublin to meet their counterparts at the Irish Bar.

At their black-tie dinner, it turned out that one of the Irish barristers was a famous tenor who proceeded to entertain the crowd with song after song. The Australians were completely at a loss at how to respond, until Dad jumped up, stood on a chair and recited from memory the whole of Banjo Patterson’s “The Man from Snowy River”. By all accounts, he brought the house down.

The Bar has a strong tradition of formal and informal mentoring. Dad forever appreciated the guidance and assistance provided to him by his mentor Jim Gobbo, and other leading barristers with whom he worked as junior counsel, like Jeff Sher and Tom Hughes.

As he progressed up the ranks, it became his turn to mentor junior barristers. Dad had a string of readers who started out with him and went on to illustrious careers of their own. He took immense pride as each of them took silk and four of them became judges. Again, we are delighted to have them here today.

Dad’s focus on mentoring junior lawyers continued when he was appointed to the Federal Court. Over 19 years he had a string of associates working with him. Each new associate joined an expanding club of former associates which enjoyed an annual Christmas lunch and other ongoing contact with Dad so that he could keep up with progress in their professional and family lives. Many of them now live in other states or countries, but we are delighted to see so many of them here today.

A new chapter opened up for Dad after he retired from the Federal Court at the mandatory age of 70. He returned to the Bar to work as a mediator and arbitrator, and spent 11 years with a group of younger barristers in Dawson Chambers, and later Castan Chambers, named after his old mate Ron Castan. Throughout that time, Dad was the convenor of a regular Friday morning coffee catch-up, and took great interest in how his younger colleagues were getting on.

Those friends at Castan Chambers kindly hosted a farewell function for him in February this year. As it turned out, it was the last public event he attended. All that week, he was quite unwell and it was touch and go whether he would make it at all. In the end, he tapped into some hidden reservoir of energy so that he would not miss the opportunity to spend some quality time with a range of friends from so many different chapters of his life.

His old friend Alex Chernov gave a great speech about their decades together as colleagues and friends at the Bar. Then it was Dad’s turn, and he delivered the last speech of his life. I can’t do justice to it now, but we have a video of the speech skillfully recorded by my brother Charlie on his iPhone – if any of you are interested to see it, please send me an email and I will send you a link.

By that time, Dad had been fighting various types of cancer for several years. He did not want to draw attention to it. On the contrary, he was determined to carry on business as usual, enjoying his regular contacts with old and new friends and colleagues. Somehow, numerous bouts of chemotherapy made no dent at all on his thick head of hair, and he was able to keep doing most of the things he loved right up to late last year.

There is no avoiding the fact that the last four months were difficult for Dad, and for all of us, as his health steadily deteriorated.

But Dad was repaid in spades for all the efforts he made throughout his life, nurturing his wide range of friendships. Day after day, he received visits from friends old and new, travelling from near and far to come and spend time with him. He also received countless calls and emails from those who were unable to travel to Melbourne.

And, thankfully, despite all the challenges of the pandemic and various hotel quarantine debacles, our brother Tom was able to visit from Ireland and spend some significant quality time with Dad and all of us in February and March.

And I would like to pay a special tribute to my mother’s younger sister Jane. We call her Cool Aunt Jane. Back in the day, Jane was a registered nurse. For the best part of three months this year, she put her life in Brisbane on hold and came down here to live with Mum and Dad. She provided priceless care, company and a cheeky sense of humour. Jane: we can never thank you enough.

Only a few weeks ago, I had a brief discussion with Dad which took a sudden profound turn. Indeed, I was running late for a meeting when he decided to raise the biggest question of all: is there a life after this one?

I said to Dad, well, that’s why we make the best of this life. And I held Dad’s hand and said to him: if someone offered me a contract, and that contract guaranteed that I would live 82 years, that I would have children and grandchildren who love me and love each other, and that I would spend the last four months of my life receiving a constant stream of visitors wishing me well – I would sign that contract.

He nodded. And he said: “I’ve had a good life.”

Dad, you’ve had a good life. You’ve had a great life, and you touched the lives of so many others.

On behalf of our family, I thank all of you for the parts that each of you have played in making Dad’s life the life that it was.

A long life, well lived.