R B QUINN MM STAND.
Only one legend could have his name on the grandstand-social club at Port Adelaide's spiritual home at Alberton Oval.
Robert Berrima Quinn. MM.
Military Medal for courage, leadership and devotion while under enemy fire in north Africa on the long night of August 2-3, 1941.
Lest we forget.
On Anzac Day, even this Anzac Day with no march and no football game with the minute's silence to absorb how so many gave so much to have us live in peace, there is greater reason the reflect on the sacrifices our Australian defence forces have made and continue to make for our freedom.
And while many are feeling empty with the Australian game being taken from us - temporarily by the COVID-19 pandemic - there can greater appreciation of how many Anzacs made the ultimate sacrifice to ensure the game was not lost to a would-be invader.
Bob Quinn enlisted in the AIF (Australian Army) in June 1940. A little more than a year later, in the sands around the perimeter of Tobruk as a sergeant with the 2/43 Infantry Battalion, Quinn was wounded in the face and legs by enemy fire while placing bombs to break enemy positions. This act of courage, leadership and devotion led to the honour of the Military Medal and his commission as a lieutenant a year later when Quinn and his younger brother George faced action at El Alamein in October 1942.
In 1943, Quinn was injured again - with a bullet wound to an arm - during the 2/43rd was part of the assault on Lae, Papua New Guinea.
Lest we forget.
But what should we remember today - to honour Quinn - of the Birkenhead teenager from LeFevre Peninsula School who would row across the Port River to join training sessions at Alberton Oval in the 1930s when all four sons of John Quinn, one of the last of the "Magentas", were making it to league ranks at Port Adelaide?
A humble man, who chose not to speak of his war memories, particularly while those who were with him at Tobruk lived with their painful memories, would prefer there to be a football theme. Best to speak of the game he loved than a war everyone hated, Quinn would put forward. But which of the 186 league games for Port Adelaide? There are many to chose from, particularly when he repeatedly drew the admiration of his rivals while earning a Magarey Medal before World War II - and his second on his battered return from duty.
When Quinn was chaired off Adelaide Oval at the end of the 1947 SANFL preliminary final, the victorious West Adelaide players felt more compelled to honour Quinn than celebrate their passage to a grand final (that they won with Fos Williams in their line-up). West Adelaide captain Johnny Taylor walked off the Oval saying of Quinn: "The best captain I've ever seen and the best the State has ever had."
Australian Football Hall of Fame Legend Haydn Bunton senior, after playing or coaching or umpiring in the VFL, WANFL and SANFL, picked the best three players from each league - Quinn was his best South Australian.
Fellow Magarey Medallist Jeff Pash praised Quinn for playing "the game with confident dignity".
"He had great turn of speed with the ball, but he seemed to be leading a procession rather than flying from pursuit," noted Pash, North Adelaide's 1939 Magarey Medallist.
"As a footballer, he was impeccable in all his movements and the range and accuracy of his drop-kicking was the most remarkable in my experience.
"I shall never forget the spectacle of him playing on in a match holding a broken arm to his side."
This was the 1944 semi-final with the wartime merged Port Adelaide-West Torrens team. Quinn had taken a big hit to an arm at the start of the third term and admitted to team-mate Lew Roberts, "It feels pretty bad". After having the arm strapped, let it dangle by his side in the last term and continued to set terms as a rover.
SA Football Hall of Fame journalist Lawrie Jervis regards "that incident, more than any other, illustrates what Quinn meant by 'guts' when he used to talk about the need for that quality in football".
"Those are the facts," Jervis added. "Any of Quinn's contemporaries in league and State football could give scores of instances of his courage. Quinn believed in playing the game hard and those whom he suspecting of yielding when the going was heavy, knew they were in for a roasting."
But there is one game that seems to speak of the spirit of Bob Quinn more than any other - one outside his Port Adelaide jumper. It is the 1946 State game against Victoria at Princes Park, the match always remembered for the war surgeon who saved Quinn's badly wounded leg at Tobruk turning up at Carlton to inspect his former patient.
This State match tells of Quinn's "courage, leadership and devotion" in a football context. As in Tobruk, Quinn - as SA's captain - was sent behind enemy lines with a group of men chosen by others (it was not until the early 1960s when Fos Williams won his point with the SANFL that State team leader could pick his own troops).
South Australia, wearing North Adelaide's red-and-white V jumper, had beaten Victoria convincingly on Adelaide Oval in 1945 - 17.23 (125) to 10.13 (73) - with Quinn as best on ground.
COURAGE. Surprisingly for a man of few words, Quinn was vocal on arriving in Melbourne putting the Victorians on notice: "We are here on business. We are out for scalps, and I think we can collect them. In Adelaide most people went to see interstate matches believing South Australians were (lost causes). Last year we won. Now ere are people who really think we have a chance of beating Victoria and so do I".
LEADERSHIP. At half-time, the cause appeared lost again. Victoria led 13.7 to 6.10 - and, as Roy Colmer reported at the long break, "much of the credit must go to Bob Quinn for his determined play and clever leadership".
That leadership was more noted at the end of the match when South Australia had overcome the 39-point deficit to achieve a draw (after leading by 24 points with 10 minutes to play).
Colmer was curious. What had Quinn said at half-time?
"Quite a few different versions have circulated ... but," wrote Colmer while declaring Quinn was a master football tactician, "several players offer this:
"Now look here, fellows, you're not playing the type of football you can. All you've got to do is play as well here as you do at home. What they did in the first half we can do in the next. We're going out there now, and if you follow me and do as I do, we'll beat them. Now come on out and play football."
Long-serving Port Adelaide chairman Arthur Swain was once asked why he preferred playing coaches. He offered Bob Quinn as his ultimate answer: "The idea of waiting for an official on the boundary to make a decision is ridiculous. The players should be handled on the field.
"The Port Adelaide committee was unanimous on this point - and illustrated such with Bob Quinn. In cases where a split-second decision is necessary we have no doubt that the playing coach is the right man to make it."
DEVOTION. For Port Adelaide and South Australia, Quinn was totally devoted. He rejected two significant overtures to leave Port Adelaide to move to the VFL to follow his brother Tommy, who in 1931 joined Geelong after taking up work with Ford - and became a great of Victorian football. He was obsessed with South Australia proving itself on the national stage - and took hard SA's collapse to Victoria at the 1947 Australian carnival at North Hobart where he was State captain (and the first All-Australian captain).
The 1946 State game against Victoria at Princes Park left the claim Quinn was "the best SA footballer of all time".
THE QUINN DYNASTY
JOHN Quinn was one of the last Port Adelaide players in magenta and one of the first in black-and-white bars. He roved for Port Adelaide - and South Australia - for 117 league games from 1894 to 1908 (with a stint in the WA goldfields from 1895-1899).
A premiership player in 1906, Quinn had all his four sons play league football for Port Adelaide:
JACK QUINN played as a ruckman and half-back with an 11-game record in the seniors from 1929-1934.
TOMMY QUINN had three seasons at Alberton (59 games, 1928-1930) before moving to Geelong where he played 168 VFL matches, featured in two premierships (1931 and 1937), won two best-and-fairest titles (1936 and 1937) and advanced to the Geelong Team of the Century.
BOB QUINN. As Jervis wrote, “Bob Quinn became a football legend even during his career, something which happens only to the champions.”
GEORGE URBAN QUINN was a rover and half-forward for six league games in 1940 before he joined Bob in enlisting with the AIF. He was with the 2/24 Infantry Battalion at El Alamien in 1942 when he was killed in action, aged 22.
A third generation of the Quinn family continued the dynasty at Alberton in the 1960s - and features in the Port Adelaide Football Club Archives Collection that tells of the club's 150-year story.
Click here to order your copy.
NEXT
Are we to get - as AFL chief executive Gillon McLachlan forecast for the end of April - a return date for Season 2020 in the next week? As always, stay tuned.
