When he holds onto Melbourne’s 1941 annual report, Stan ‘Pops’ Heal - football legend, wartime sailor, and one of the newest inductees into the AFL Hall of Fame - is holding onto his life from nearly seven decades ago.  This is a document he’s never seen before, and his eyes light up with a mix of many emotions.  There it is:

‘We are particularly pleased to specially record the fine services rendered by S. Heal, of Western Australia.  After playing 8 games with the Club, including a particularly good effort in the final, he was transferred back on service to his own State and assisted his old Club (West Perth) to win the Western Australian Premiership.’

In a season in which Melbourne was a powerhouse, with Norm Smith topping the VFL goal kicking with 88 goals, and Essendon falling to the Demons by 29 points in the Grand Final to give the ‘Checker’ Hughes-led outfit its third flag in a row, the war had well and truly infiltrated the nation’s, and the Club’s, psyche.  Ron Barassi Snr fell at Tobruk, and tribute was paid to all those ‘On Service’, with particular note made of Keith Truscott, who wore a ‘Red Demon’ as his mascot.  While he did not meet Barassi or Truscott, Heal’s story ran along parallel lines to theirs.   ‘I had the No. 1 guernsey, and the player who wore it after me - Keith Truscott - was killed in the war.’  Truscott wore the No. 1 on just one occasion - his final game.  Heal wore it for eight.

An exciting youngster in Western Australian football, Heal generated much delight with his temporary availability to play in the VFL, and Melbourne was at the front of the queue for his services.  ‘The only one I met off the train was a Mr Saunders - he was a committee man from Melbourne.  I think someone from West Perth must have rung him up.  Then, during that week, a committee man from Essendon came down - Essendon used to get a lot of WA players in their side.  But, Melbourne was a very strong side then, so I decided to go there.’

Tied as he was to wartime demands, Heal ‘thought I was very lucky, because I only got every second Saturday off.  When I played with Melbourne, they had to drop one of their players for me.  I never trained with them, and it took me a while to get to know them.  They treated me very well.’  In his other life, Heal was doing a course at the naval base at Flinders - HMAS Cerberus - and football was a huge relief in tense times. ‘We knew when we were over here that we were only here to finish our course, and then we went back.  The course was at Cerberus.  When I was over here, HMAS Sydney was operating out of Fremantle.  When I got back, my best friend was transferred to Sydney - his first trip out - and the ship was sunk, lost all on board.’  It was only by chance that Heal himself was not on Sydney, one of 645 personnel lost in action in November 1941.

Taking his place in the Melbourne team, Heal played on the wing, and was an important part of the Demons’ premiership win in 1941, named in the best by both the Club and the sports media of the day.  Soon after this, he was transferred back to Western Australia, and his home base of HMAS Leeuwin.  But football was not far away, as clearance restrictions had been lifted, and he was able to return to playing for West Perth, the club with which he had made his WAFL debut in 1939.  In a turn of events that still makes Heal shake his head, he played in his second premiership in two weeks.  ‘It was an amazing experience’, he says with definite understatement.  After all, in future years he would play while serving as the Labor member for West Perth, and he still had a great deal of naval time to see out before being demobilised in 1946.  Based primarily on corvettes, Heal’s service card shows that he served mostly on HMAS Dubbo and Tamworth, as well as HMAS Geraldton.  ‘On my first trip, we were based at Colombo, doing minesweeping and escort work.  We were there for about nine months.  Then we came back to Perth - I was based at Leeuwin - and I boarded the Tamworth, and we were based at Manus Island, where all the American and English ships were.  I was there for quite a long time, and when the armistice was signed, I was in Hong Kong.  I was a Seaman Torpedoman.  The ships weren’t big enough to have torpedoes, so we had what were called depth charges.  When the submarines were around, you’d hear a ‘ping’, and we’d drop depth charges to stop them.’

Once the war was over, Heal headed back to playing football with West Perth, although it was not completely smooth sailing.  ‘After the war years, housing was a problem, and we had a little boy.’  Resources were scarce, but Heal persevered, and in 1947, was appointed coach of West Perth, and five years later, entered WA state politics.  Before that time, however, he took West Perth to ‘6 successive 2nd semi-finals, 5 grand finals, and premierships in 1949 and 1951.’  He was also an outstanding representative for Western Australia, playing eighteen State games and winning a Simpson Medal.  In a telling example of his standing, despite having retired some time before from playing, on the day that he took the field in 1953 as a serving MP, Heal kicked five goals.

Throughout the era during which he was excelling in Western Australian ranks, Heal’s fascinating cameo appearance at Melbourne was never forgotten - and hasn’t been since that time, either.  The Melbourne players kept in touch with him, and he retained friendships with teammates.   ‘Melbourne was my team afterwards.  People always talk to me about it, but I was only here for a short time.  And they’d visit me when they were over in the west - I kept in touch with Norm Smith and Jack Mueller.  West Perth has the same colours as Melbourne, too.’

Since then, deserved honours have come Heal’s way.  In 2000, the West Australian newspaper selected its Team of the Century, and Heal was named on the wing.  In the same year, he was named by West Perth in the club’s Team of the Century, as both captain and coach.  He is one of only twelve Legends in the WA Football Hall of Fame, and now adds AFL Hall of Fame induction to that distinguished list.  So, what does Heal make of the game that he first played over seventy years ago?  ‘It’s always a great game, but the rules have changed a lot.  It’s a lot faster, and it’s a full time job.  I miss the long kicking and more high marking, but it’s a spectacular game.  I always watch it, but I enjoy the old style.  I miss the drop kick - the ball used to go like a bullet.’

Stan ‘Pops’ Heal - we congratulate you.