Messenger, Keith

BORN IN 1945 IN QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA, Keith Messenger played local ice hockey as a Centre for the Brisbane Falcons club, which changed its name to the Maple Leafs around 1971-2, coached by Dan Saunders. The Falcons won the 1963 State Premiership and Messenger won the State premiership with the Maple Leafs in 1973. He represented his state as a defenseman in the Brown Trophy when it was a Reserve-grade competition to the Goodall Cup.

He was Captain of the 1963 state squad, Alternate Captain with John Nixon to F Dodson in the 1967 squad, and Captain of the 1974 squad. His speed and accurate shot made him one of Queensland's top scoring centres and, according to Peter Nixon, he was a solid body checker with a very accurate hip check. In the early Seventies, 15 year-old Nixon’s dry land training involved carrying Messenger up and down the Trades Hall steps in Brisbane.

Keith's father established Brisbane's first ice rink in 1960, the former Mowbray Park Picture Palace in today's East Brisbane. Managed by Brian Crossland and his wife Shirley, who came to Australia in May 1958, the state’s first representative ice hockey team traveled to Sydney in 1962. A state association starting with 38 members, increased to 90 after five seasons. Peewee and girls ice hockey teams competed from within a year or two of inception. The take-up of the sport in the early years was strong and well-organised.

The rink passed on to Keith, but burned down in 1967 after seven seasons, and later the City widened Shafston Avenue across part of the site. Mowbray Park enabled Queensland to form its first ice hockey association, to ice its first ice hockey teams, and to compete nationally in the Brown Trophy. The small ice rink also enabled competition speed and figure skating to commence.

It was some years before Keith Messenger opened a replacement ice rink at Toombul (Kalinga Park) in 1971 with Dick and Mavis Webb, and a little help from the players themselves. From that time, hockey continued to expand at the Four Season Ice Palace, mainly due to visiting Canadians, many of them school teachers. So, too, did the other ice sports.

Queensland reached the grand final for the Brown Trophy for the first time in 1972, and in 1977 won the Goodall Cup, the symbol of Australian ice hockey supremacy. The state was first to win the Cup after Victoria and New South Wales and Doug Waymarch became the first Queensland league player to win the John Nicholas Trophy (Goodall MVP). Much of the credit for that is attributable to the pioneering work of the Messenger family.