Percy, Sid

IN 1961 HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN approved a name change to the 'Royal Melbourne Yacht Squadron', but it was known as the St Kilda 14-foot Sailing Club before it amalgamated with the St Kilda Yacht Club on Cup Eve that year. Back in 1949, a band of the club's enthusiastic yachtsmen decided to form an ice hockey club. Known as the Pirates, there was one particular man among them who, after many years of playing, put much back into the club as committee member, vice-president and later president. He was also Victorian association secretary in 1951, when Sydney Hiort was president, and manager of the Victorian Brown (junior) team. In fact, at state level he was "always active filling countless roles as referee, interstate selector, tribunal member and vice-president," according to Syd Tange.

He was there when the St Kilda breakwater was built in the mid-1950s to form a harbour as the headquarters for sailing events during the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne. The victory ceremony and presentation of medals took place there on the lawns on December 6th. Today he would be impressed to find a colony of 1200 Little Penguins inhabit the breakwater and his former yacht club invested in a marina development and restoration of its historic 1926 clubhouse.

His ice hockey contribution ended after more than twenty-years with a certain symmetry; on water where it began. During his term as Pirates' president in 1971, he went on a cruise and died at sea. The next year, the national association decided to create an award in his memory and his valued contribution was memorialized with the Most Valuable Player award for the Brown Trophy from 1972. It was discontinued in 1982 and this national tournament, second only to the Goodall Cup, went on without an award for individual excellence.

In 1983, the trophy for the televised SLAPSHOT 83 tournament in Sydney was named after Ken Kennedy. When he died in August 1985, the "Ken Kennedy Most Sportsmanlike Trophy", donated by the Kennedy family in Sydney, was introduced as a perpetual trophy to the Brown Tournament. Each year the national association awarded a replica from a cast made by the New South Wales association. But this too lapsed until, in recent times, the Ken Kennedy Trophy was awarded to the Most Valuable Player of the AIHL Finals.

Today the Brown Trophy is contested by men 17 years and older, excluding AIHL players aged 24 years and over. Once part of the grand traditions of a century-old Australian sport, these named individual awards are but a fading memory. For a time, the national association thought the memory of Sid Percy should never be lost. Perhaps with the passing of time, with a better appreciation of your sporting heritage, his legacy may even return to living memory.