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.
