WHEN the Port Adelaide Football Club celebrated its centenary in 1970 there was no question as to the club's greatest player in its first 100 years.
They tellingly put his name on the new grandstand at Alberton Oval.
R.B. Quinn. MM.
Robert Berrima Quinn. Military Medallist.
Bob.
In 1970, Quinn was the only Port Adelaide player with two Magarey Medals - won on each side of World War II, the second in 1945 after he had returned from war service with shocking injuries that many thought would end his career and some feared would take his life.
(Sampson 'Shine' Hosking also has two Magarey Medals, 1910 and 1915 but was not awarded the second until 1997 as a retrospective medal after "losing" the trophy in 1915 in a countback to Charlie Perry at Norwood. Russell Ebert's record-breaking collection of four Magarey Medals did not begin until after the Port Adelaide centenary season).
Quinn's record in Australian football reads as a "man who needs no introduction". Three SANFL premierships - 1936, 1937 and 1939 as captain-coach in the season VFL club St Kilda thought it had signed the best rover in South Australia, if not Australia.
Four Port Adelaide best-and-fairest awards, 1937, 1938, 1945 and 1947.
First captain of an All-Australian team in 1947.
And beyond his greatness at Port Adelaide, there was an extraordinary dedication - as later continued by Fos Williams - to the State team as player, captain, coach and selector.
In recognition of the 108th anniversary of Quinn's birthday of April 9, 1915, the Port Adelaide Football Club pays tribute to one of its legends.
THE PLAYER
Allan "Bull" Reval and Bob Quinn made one of the most formidable ruckman-rover combinations in the game's history.
In retirement after his 187-game career with Port Adelaide, Reval answered the question - "What sort of player was Bob Quinn?" - by noting there were two careers, pre- and post-war with differing key points.
"For the first part (1933 until he enlisted for war service in 1941), he was an individualist, in respect that he needed no assistance in gaining possession or in disposing of the ball," Reval wrote.
"I know of no other player that could do the complete job - and do it so effectively. He was prepared to take on all-comers, big and small! And on gaining possession, he would get out of trouble and accurately dispose of the ball with a beautiful stab kick.
"I was surprised one day at Alberton, therefore, when an official asked me to look after Bob because an opposing rover had threatened to get him. 'Tell them to get someone to look after the other fellow if he intends to start anything,' was all I said. The official evidently had forgotten that Bob and I had been requested not to compete with each other at training, on the ground that we were making it too hard and were running the risk of injury.
"Bob's reaction to this request was typical. 'We may get hurt, but at least we will be fit,' he said.
"His grand performance in that game had much to do with the team's ultimate success by three points.
"After the war (when he carried the scars of shocking leg wounds), finding he had lost that 'little extra', he played accordingly. He still went into the crushes for the ball, but was content to use handball to a greater extent. But his game lost nothing in comparison with the pre-war champion.
"Bob Quinn was two footballers. Each one a Magarey Medallist.
"And, I might add, no better rover ever pulled on a guernsey."
Quinn's remarkable return from war to league football with Port Adelaide - and interstate competition - in 1945 was marked with an emphatic win of the Magarey Medal.
The newspaper editorials were more than a tribute. They were a statement of the man's character: "When news came through of the war wounds sustained by Bob Quinn (at Tobruk in 1941), it was accompanied by disturbing prophecies that he would never play again and that he would be virtually a cripple ...
"He is now approaching the climax of his greatest year in league football, a season in which he has been hailed here and by interstate critics as the footballer of the year.
"A broken arm last year should have been a further setback, but the gritty Port Adelaide captain and coach came to the fore. His brilliant dash, flawless handling of the ball and unerring foot passing are features of his own play which would make him the outstanding player of the year."
(Quinn played the second half of a semi-final for Port Adelaide-West Torrens in 1944 with a broken right arm, a wrenched left thumb and a badly bruised hip after falling heavily in a marking contest in which he held the mark).
In an era when South Australians were considered inferior to Victorians in Australian football, the praise Quinn drew from the Melbourne-based media underlined the grand status and reputation he carried across the nation while representing South Australia 15 times.
When the nationally published Sporting Globe wrote of the greatest players in South Australian football, the conclusion - and ultimate compliment - was the note: "He would be an acquisition to any Victorian league club." St Kilda almost proved the point in 1939.
THE COACH
Sporting Globe also noted Quinn has "football brains".
As a coach, Quinn is always hailed for the way he led South Australia to a memorable draw against the Big V in 1946 at Princes Park. His speech to the South Australian team at half-time - when his team dealt with a 39-point deficit - drew attention for weeks from local football writers. Again, as Reval noted of the speech to the Port Adelaide players at half-time of the 1936 SANFL grand final it was just simple in its intent - much like current Australian sporting master Wayne Bennett has done in rugby league with his maximum effect from minimal words.
Quinn was labelled a "master tactician" from that 1946 comeback against the Big V. But his football savvy was more noted in his retirement when at Kadina where his "talks" on football filled halls and inspired many would-be champion footballers.
In 1950, Quinn wrote these notes for "young players". He warned: "During your first year you may make good instantly and you will be encircled with admirers, some telling you that you are three times as good as you really are. My advice is not to be guided by such fickle persons for should you fail a few times they will be the first ones to decry you. In other words, keep a firm hold on yourself through success and defeat.
"I want to stress the importance of taking notice of your captain and coach. Don't think you are clever if you shirk a task they set you at training for you will be cheating yourself, not the coach or captain."
THE FAMILY
Quinn's earthy understanding of the demands faced to achieve success in league football was built around the dinner table of the family home at Birkenhead.
His father Jack was a Port Adelaide premiership hero.
He was fighting for the football at home among two brothers, Jack and Tom, the latter becoming a legend at VFL club Geelong.
And every Saturday night around the dinner table, Bob Quinn and his brothers would have their games analysed and assessed by their father. "The lads must measure up to an exact standard," was the observation from the Saturday night chats over dinner. "And if they do not, they hear about it."
THE MAN
Bob Quinn's son Greg made these observations of the footballer, the war hero and the man in the lead-up to the induction to the SA Sports Hall of Fame last month:
“Dad had no reason to play again when he came home (from the war). But he did … because he loved his football club. That’s what Dad did, he played football. He came from a family of 10 kids. He scratched and scrounged for everything he could get at home. And he was pretty good at kicking and catching a football.
“But he also loved his comrades. Every first Friday of every month, Dad (as publican of the Southwark Hotel on Port Road) would knock off at midday to be with 25-30 of his mates from the Second 43rd (battalion) for their reunion.
“It is the first time anyone has asked me where he would find his greatest pride. I know he loved the people he met from both football and in service. That was Dad: he loved people. That is what made him a great publican too (in the city and at Kadina).”
On Sunday, on the 108th anniversary of Bob Quinn's birth, the Port Adelaide Football Club can salute one of its greats with pride and thanks.
