Coughlan remembers ‘Spud’ games

By Rohan Aldous

Jun 26, 2023

Memories of Spud: Former Waaia, Kyabram and St Kilda footballer Glen Coghlan shared the memories of his interactions with Danny Frawley with the *Free Press* last week. He arrived at St Kilda in the same year that Frawley played the last of his 240 games. Photo: *Cairns Post*

FRAWLEY MEMORIES A HIGHLIGHT

Memories of Danny “Spud’’ Frawley are among the few things that bring a smile to the face of Glen Coghlan when he recalls his four-year AFL career at St Kilda Football Club.

Coghlan didn’t make a senior appearance in the last year of his 29 game-seven goal AFL career, saying a knee injury he suffered mid-way through the 1997 season and the six operations that followed left him with a bitter taste from his experience with the Saints.

“They promised they would fix it, but that never happened. There were a few other things that went wrong and I haven’t been back since,’’ he said from his long time home in tropical North Queensland at Cairns.

Coghlan had been recruited to the Saints after playing in two premierships at his original club, Waaia, as a 15 and 16-year-old (in 1991-92, during a period when the club won six premierships in seven years).

He played as an understudy of sorts to Danny Irwin in the 1991 season when the man mountain goalkicker kicked 215 goals for the season. Irwin left the next season and Coghlan kicked 90-odd goals while spending time at both Nathalia and Waaia.

He spent the 1993 season at Kyabram in the Goulburn Valley league and ended up at Collingwood, where he was a supplementary list player, in the Magpies reserves in 1994.

“I’d been playing in defence at Collingwood. I ended up there are having a good finals series with Kyabram in 1993, although we didn’t win it,” he said.

Coghlan ended up on the Collingwood list through Magpie legend Mick McGuane’s connections at Tatura and Euroa.

"He came up and watched the finals series I played in and I got a phone call in late November from Collingwood.

“They were going to draft me at the end of 1994, but never did.

“I spent the whole pre-season there and played the last couple of practice games in the seniors under Leigh Matthews.

“We had a triangular series against Carlton and Essendon that I did all right in and I spoke to four clubs after that,” Coghlan said

As it turns out he was eventually taken in the February pre-season draft and ended up alongside Saints legend Frawley at St Kilda.

In his time at the Saints they won a pre-season cup in 1996, after finishing 14th in 1995. They finished 10th in 1996, before finishing on top of the ladder at the end of the 1997 home-and-away season — in a Robert Harvey Brownlow Medal year.

Coghlan played nine games before being injured in round 11, including a career high 20 disposal-seven mark game against Collingwood. He left the club at the end of the 1998 season.

Coghlan remembered being at Frawley’s last game in 1995, but admitted to being on a different page to Saints coach Stan Alves.

“We didn’t seen eye-to-eye and things didn’t end too well. I’ve never been back to St Kilda, maybe one day I will, but I was left with a bad taste through all the injury problems,” he said.

Coghlan, who lost his father Brian late last year, still gets back to visit his mother Marg at Nathalia and has two sisters living at Nathalia and Shepparton.

He coached Yarrawonga for two years after leaving St Kilda, well before the Brendan Fevola and Steve Johnson eras.

He now works in excavation, having finished his playing days as coach of Trinity Beach, where he played until he was 35.

He coached North Cairns for one year in his last connection to football.

Former Saint: Glen Coghlan was at St Kilda in its grand final year of 1997, but a knee injury saw him miss the last half of the season. He arrived at the Saints in the final year of Danny Frawley’s career, who was again honoured with the third staging of Spud’s Game at Marvel Stadium on Friday night.

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Danny Frawley’s legacy to football is much more than the larger than life persona he shared both on and off the field during and post his 240 game St Kilda playing career.

His death in September, 2019 — at just 56 years of age — shocked the football community and started an awareness of repeated head injuries that is still to reach its height.

Frawley’s death was ruled as suicide by the coroner and an examination of his brain nearly a year later found he was suffering from stage two chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

The neurodegenerative disease had been caused by repeated head injuries.

A former teammate of Frawley — albeit for a very brief time — was former Kyabram footballer Glen Coghlan.

Now living in North Queensland, Coghlan was recruited to the Saints in the last of Frawley’s 12 seasons at Moorabbin.

He arrived at the Saints in 1995 as a forward, but with Frawley’s retirement his 194cm frame was used in defence during the 1996-97 seasons.

Coghlan played alongside Frawley on half a dozen occasions during that 1995 season, experiencing first hand the love players and supporters had for the renowned prankster and champion full-back.

“When I first got to St Kilda I remember him and Loewey (champion centre half-forward Stewart Loewe) coming up to introduce themselves at Waverley (VFL Park, the home ground of the Saints in that era),” Cogthlan said.

“I played up forward in my first game and Spud down back.

“But at different times throughout that year I played a few games down back with him”, he said, explaining his career at the Saints was cut short by knee problems which still worry him today.

Frawley played the funny man alongside a former full-forward nemesis of his, Hawthorn champion Jason Dunstall, on Fox Footy’s The Bounce for many years.

He became even more widely loved than in his playing days as the many “physical challenges’’ the pair embarked on were a weekend highlight for many football fans of the high rating comedy football show.

Frawley was in the minds and hearts of every person in Friday night’s crowd for the third annual Spud’s Game; Time to Talk — between St Kilda and Brisbane — at Marvel Stadium.

The first of the emotional tribute games was played in 2021, in partnership with Movement to promote mental health.

Prior to the match, the game was delayed by two minutes with Frawley's close friends Lyon, Loewe and Tony Lockett paying tribute to Frawley in the middle of the ground and asking for those that were watching to check with their mates with both teams surrounding them and his family watching on.

For Glenn Coghlan memories of Frawley are among the most beloved of his four years at St Kilda, which reaped 29 games and seven goals (all in his first season before he spent the last two years in defence).

Coghlan made his debut with the Saints in round three of the 1995 season, but didn’t play alongside Frawley until round six.

The Saints played Fitzroy that day, at Waverley Park, beaten by 11 points after they led by nine points at the final change.

He had debuted three weeks earlier, having arrived at St Kilda after being selected in the 1995 pre-season draft.

Coghlan only had two disposals on debut, playing mostly deep forward, while Frawley collected 17 disposals.

Two weeks later — Coghlan was dropped to the reserves for round seven — they played in a winning team together, albeit at either end of the ground, when Coghlan played the first of his two three-goal games for the Saints.

Coghlan had 16 disposals, equally Frawley’s output at the defensive end, the Saints beating Carlton by 56 points as Stewart Loewe kicked five goals.

Frawley didn’t play in round 15 when Coghlan kicked another bag of three against a team that included Garry Ablett Snr — 6.2 from nine kicks — and the Saints lost by just eight points.

Two weeks later Coghlan played his senior last game for the season and missed the emotional farewell to Frawley, who retired at season’s end when the Saints had a resounding 54 point win against Footscray at Western Oval.

Frawley was carried from the ground as Peter Everitt kicked six goals and had 23 disposals in a best on ground display. Loewe and Saints opportunist Craig O’Brien kicked nine between them.

He was the centre of attention again on Friday night, this time looking down on his Saints and the legacy that is now Spud’s Game — in memory of his tragic death.

By Rohan Aldous

Contributor