Blackhawk Down

Noel Derrick and the glamour boys

I never saw an ice hockey game or even heard about the sport until late 1945. I went over to St Moritz to try my skill at skating and took to it immediately. — Noel Derrick, Allsport magazine, Melbourne, 1972. [1, 14]

Once the other torch was lit, someone fiddled with the bottom of this one and then it was out and I haven’t been able to figure out how to light it since. — Derrick laughing as he showed off the torch he carried down the Nepean for the Sydney Olympics in 2000 when he was 74. After the torch left Greece in May 2000, 11,000 people carried it from June 8 during the vast traversal of Australia. [2]

Playing coach of the Blackhawks, 1972. [1]

NOEL DERRICK SAW HIS FIRST GAME OF ICE HOCKEY about a month after exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6th 1945, Japanese time. That was the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima. On September 2nd, the Japanese signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II, and the first ice hockey matches of the season got underway in Melbourne and Sydney.

"After the Second World War was over," he said many years later, "a group of former players attempted to revive ice hockey, so I joined them. We only had one exhibition game that year, and that was about it". [1] Something similar happened at Sydney Glaciarium on September 6th, "The Rest" defeated "Services" 3-1. Derrick was 19 when he hit his first puck.

The sport did not resume at Melbourne Glaciarium until 1947, but the players resurrected the Victorian association at St Moritz in 1946, starting with four teams. Derrick played left-wing for Western Suburbs on a line with Jim Lawrence and Ron Amess, one of the highest scoring combinations of the time.

Warwick Harrison supplied the trio from the blue line, wreaking havoc on the slow, defensive combinations that were common among opposition teams of the day. Netting early in his rookie season in the 4-0 defeat of Southern, [8] his club went on to win the first A-grade Premiership after the war, yet he had never played before.

Sid Hiort ran the new association, a former player with the Monarchs and Easts in Sydney, who moved to Melbourne during the war years. Ken Stott from Derrick's team was elected secretary with treasurer Syd Bysouth. The junior vice-president was John Goodall, fast approaching a fourth decade in the sport.

Four New South Wales clubs also formed in 1947. Eastern suburbs and Western Suburbs played until the late-1960s and St George and Glebe survived until 1980. The Victorian association renamed its four post-war start-up teams Red Arrows, Demons, Tigers and Monarch, and expanded the league to five teams with the new Wildcats.

"In 1947, John Tuckerman and Stan Gray formed the Blackhawks," the soft-spoken Derrick recollected in the Seventies, "and I shifted over to that club. Our new entry captured the crown in its initial attempt." [1] At that time, "Chook" Tuckerman had some of the finest young talent in the country under his wing, including Rus Jones and Dave Cunningham. He studied the game.

The original Blackhawks included such players as Europe's Frosty Miller, the giant Tiny Mitchell, the Cunningham brothers, Ron Amess, veteran Warwick Harrison, Jim Lawrence and Kevin Hickey, with two outstanding keepers in net, Arch Reekie and Kevin Sheehan. They went undefeated all season. [4]

IN A FLAT BEHIND LUNA PARK'S MR MOON, a stone's throw from St Moritz, Stan Gray eats, sleeps and breathes ice hockey. Long-standing fans claim it is the best season ever, right from the opening games — Demons versus Tigers at St Moritz on May 9th, and Wildcats versus Blackhawks at the Glaciarium on May 13th. The 'Hawks have their own change rooms, unheard of in local hockey up until then, and the club is also first to give its players all their personal gear except skates.

This means a lot to them, up to £20 worth of gear when sticks are 30 shillings apiece. The 'Hawks are the "glamour boys" of the competition. Run "in the truest American tradition", by a manager who does everything including coach, Stanley Gray's club is the best disciplined and most organised in the business. [7]

With an A-grade premiership from his first season of hockey, Derrick joins others in staging an exhibition game to raise money for the Lord Mayor's Olympic Games Fund that will help send a Victorian athlete to the Games. The event is at St Moritz on Melbourne Cup night, hosted by Sir Frank Beaurepaire, chairman of the Fund. Russell Mockridge, the road-cycling champion selected for the 1948 Summer Games, rides on rollers with ace cyclist, Hubert Opperman, [3] and the match between Jack Miller's "Four Aces" and Dave Prince's "Four Kings" is further augmented by ice ballet, skating and dancing.

But, it is not sanctioned, and the association suspends six participating members from playing — Binnie Stewart, Ron Matkin, Ted Eldred, Bob French, Vic Westwood and goalie, Clarrie King. [1, 6] A deep wound opens and with it a rebel league, the first in Australia since Bendrodt's breakaway Sydney association nine years earlier in 1938.

The Wildcats, Blackhawks and the new Golden Bears coached by Canadian Left Winger Al Sengotta form the new, 3-team Victorian Ice Hockey League at the Glaciarium. Top players "kiss the association goodbye" [6] and are lost from the Goodall Cup squad for the next three years. Among them are John Tuckerman, Jim Lawrence, Ray Sullivan and Noel Derrick. [6]

Over 1,700 people attend the second replay of the 1948 grand final between the Golden Bears and Wildcats for the inaugural VIHL Gange Trophy. [5] The Wildcats win. Broadcaster Ron Casey says "It is a pity that the Victorian's strength should be tapped, but with two competitions it might be better for Ice Hockey." [6] He is right. Gray shifts into overdrive, scouting players from overseas such as Wembley's Carol Martin, Czech national team player, Jan Kurzweil, and even World No 1 tennis champion, Jaroslav Drobny.

His 1949 expansion team is pointedly branded "White Knights". Gray to the aid of players, riding over the ice on a steaming steed, counter-offers, player security and contract agreements in an outstretched gauntlet. It's a holding bay. Next season, Gray unleashes the more ominously named Raiders, half composed of talented New Australians. They win the Gange Trophy in their first season. Sid Hiort and the local association are besieged. Their six-team league is cut to four and duplicated in just one season.

This boom lasts five seasons from scratch after the war, but the VIHL disbands at the end of 1950, still unrecognized by the controlling authority in Sydney. The clubs join the Victorian association.

The top scorers in the 'Hawks early years are the youngsters, Dave Cunningham and Derrick. [9] Ron Amess replaces Tuckerman as coach in 1949 and Hungarian sharp-shooter, Sandor Miklos, is appointed captain in 1950. The squad also includes the Cunningham brothers, Laurie and Dave, Jim Lawrence, Wally Hanlon, Parry Dolphin, George Endrei, Graham Argue, and Kevin Hickey. Kevin Sheehan and young Jack Kidman are in net.

"I believe we had much better crowds during that period," says Derrick. "Ice hockey was booming and all the clubs had good followings". [1] The Raiders win the next four VIHA premierships, and the Blackhawks the four after that. In August 1952, eight of nine club delegates pass a vote of no confidence in Sid Hiort's administration. The underlying cause is "the falling away of spectator interest and the lack of ideas in the presentation of the game". Hiort is replaced by Miklos Sandor and a new Executive in 1953. [15]

When the dust from Gray's marauders finally settles, all but one of the ten premierships between 1951 and 1960 belong to two of Gray's former VIHL clubs. Of those, only the Blackhawks survive.

THE ARRIVAL IN VICTORIA OF SO MANY PLAYERS with overseas experience led local teams to follow the "modern trend" of hockey in 1950 and play the five-man game. The red line at centre ice had just been introduced to speed up the game and cut offside calls. It was the rule that many consider marks the beginning of the modern era in the NHL, enabling players to pass the puck out of their own zone, which had previously been illegal. Scoring averages in the NHL went from 2.5 goals per game in the late-30s, to 4.08 gpg in 1944, the first year of the new line. Delayed penalty rules were also introduced at this time.

The Victorians stripped two complete playing combinations of five men for the first time making the goalkeeper the only man who remained on the ice for the entire game. This made a huge difference to the speed of the game. "Attacks are still being made in the last period with all the spectacular speed and aggression that in the past we have expected only in the early stages". New South Wales did not follow suit for many years and this was a key to Victoria's domination of the Goodall Cup after the war.

Back in the association, Derrick married Melbourne figure skater, Joy, in 1951. Appointed Vice Captain of Victoria to Warwick Harrison, his first Goodall Cup squad included only one International, Wally Vaterlaus from Switzerland. Earlier squads in recent years usually carried three or four overseas players. [10] In 1952 he played wing to Jan Kurzweil with Geoff Henke. A few seasons later in 1954, only Dave Cunningham and he remained from the original Blackhawks. Derrick won five straight Cups.

Like many others, he studied the game under Chook Tuckerman, and later teamed-up with Dave Cunningham and various others to produce some of the greatest offensive setups in the Australian game. Derrick possessed a long, smooth skating style that made him a favourite with fans, and his steady but deadly shot made him the top point scorer of several seasons. [553]

In the dead rubber of the 1953 Goodall Cup, he helped produce a 17-4 victory, putting up one of four hat tricks with Dave Cunningham, Keith Jose and Ron Amess. It topped the 12-2 score the year before when Bud McEachern first played for the Cup, and that was the highest interstate win margin since Victoria shut out New South Wales 12-0 in the second match of the second Goodall Cup forty-two years earlier in 1910. [11]

That same season, the Derrick-Jose-Cunningham forward line took the 'Hawks into the Four almost without help, scoring 70 points (42 goals, 28 assists). Their goal tally was greater than the entire team totals in the case of at least four of the teams in the competition. Jose 15 goals 9 assists; Derrick 14-9; Cunningham 13-10 — the three top places on the scoring list. [12]

By 1954, Victoria "could strip at least two teams that would beat the present NSW team. What chance would you give them against the following: Campbell, T. Endrei, Mulloy, Nicholas, Krista, Stuart, Ekberg, Derrick, G. Endrei, Snooek and Sengotta?" [13] Gray thought the New South Wales officials were still oblivious to the change to the red line game. "The whys and wherefores of this fantastic, head-in-the-sand attitude is something for the NSW people to work out for themselves, but until they do, interstate matches are not going to be very interesting." [13]

In the mid-fifties, Derrick stood in for Al Sengotta as Blackhawks coach. [553] By 1956, renowned for having played every Blackhawks game, he had scored 100 goals and about 150 assists in his first 120 outings. [553] He totaled 272 games in a 19-year A-grade club career, 1947 to 1966.

He represented Victoria sixteen times in the Goodall Cup and the Brown Trophy twice. [1] He won five Goodall Cups for Victoria in consecutive years, 1951 to 1955, then five more in 1961, 1962, 1965 to 1967. He made the All-Victorian team fifteen times and the All-Australian squad on five separate occasions. [1]

He was a member of the Blackhawks when they captured the Victorian premiership on nine various occasions. [1] A plaque on the Blackhawks Trophy awarded to the Junior A-grade Highest Points Scorer is a memorial to the club's famous Cunningham-Derrick-Jose line of the 1950s and early-60s. It carries their names and their legacy of over 300 points from 111 games. Derrick also won the All-Australian crown twice with the 'Hawks, the Australian Club Championship.

"I've had many thrills in the game," Derrick reflected, "but when I was picked for the 1960 Olympic Games at Squaw Valley and the 1964 Games in Japan, it was an experience I'll never forget... I also had an opportunity to go to America in 1962 for the World Championships. However, I had to turn it down at the time because of an illness in the family". He believes his best year was in 1963, when he won the Spot Lloyd trophy for the highest goal scorer for the third time. "That same season I also captured the President's Medal for the best and fairest".

Born July 5th 1926 in Sydney, his game tally reached 530 regular scheduled ice tussles just after his 46th birthday, but this figure did not include playoffs, interstate cup affairs or Olympic games. "I started out the 1972 campaign as a non-playing coach," said the skipper that year. He had not missed a regular season ice hockey game in 27 years, despite being hampered with injuries and illness, and he was still going strong. [1]

"But guiding the team from the bench got to me. I couldn't stand it any longer. I've been active in ice hockey since 1945 and I didn't realise what it was like to be out of action. The inactivity was getting to me. I got right back into the line-up at the centre-position after our third game". [1]

"I've had numerous injuries, but they were all clean ones. No foul play was involved. My most serious injury came when I was playing in the Brown Cup Carnival at Sydney. I suffered a fractured cheek bone and they flew me back to Melbourne where I was operated on two days later. Fortunately, they operated on me from inside the cheek and it didn't leave any scars. I still managed to get back into action with the Blackhawks a couple of days later and didn't miss a game".

Noel Derrick is now in his nineties. Captain of the 1966 Blackhawks Premiership team, he wore No 6 throughout his prolific ice hockey career, and later donated the perpetual trophy for the highest point scorer in his local club. A Life Member of his state and national associations, the annual award once known as the President's Medal became the Noel Derrick Trophy in 2008 — the Most Valuable Player in the Victorian A-grade.

In 2000, Derrick carried the torch for the Sydney Olympics. "I was the only one in my family who didn't play football" he said proudly in 2016, "My father and brothers all played but not me!" [2] Of the ten goals Australia scored at the 1960 Games, Derrick netted two and assisted a third. He netted another against Japan in the 1964 Olympic playoffs in Tokyo.

With the torch, 2016. [2]