The best story of the 1945 AFL season was the end of World War II. After six years and an estimated 70-85million casualties the world’s deadliest conflict ended on 2 September 1945. Spread across 30 countries, the death toll was about 3% of the 1940 world population.

It had been a horrendous time world-wide but at home football continued to help in a minute way to bring some sort of normality to everyday life.

The Swans had a good year, and 120 days before the armistice, a very good day. And another very good story which, although incomparable to world peace, was very good news for Swans fans.

On 5 May 1945, 74 years ago today, Ron Clegg played his first game for the club.

It was Round 3 against Richmond at Punt Road as the 17-year-old centre half back from the Melbourne Boys League began a footballing journey that ranks with the very best in red and white.

It was part of a massive year for a club. There were countless big stories., and not all of them good.

The Swans had won their first two games when new coach Bill Adams turned to the young man who would go on to win the Brownlow Medal and a spot at the heart of the defence in the Swans Team of the Century. A Swans Hall of Fame Legend in the making.

‘Bull’ Adams was a West Australian who had joined Fitzroy from South Fremantle in 1924 and captained Fitzroy before switching to the VFA, first with Northcote and later Preston.

He had replaced Joe Kelly as South Melbourne coach in 1945, and welcomed a fit Herbie Matthews back as captain after Matthews missed all but Round 1 of 1944 season through injury.

South also were buoyed by the return of champion full forward and former Test cricketer Laurie Nash, who had split with the club in acrimonious circumstances at the end of the 1937 season after 82 games and 190 goals.

During his time away Nash had four years with Camberwell in the VFA and then a handful of RAAF representative games while the VFA was in recess for three years.

But there was uncertainty about his return. He had been disqualified by the League for three years for crossing to Camberwell without a proper clearance, and it was alleged he had played two games in the Footscray District League while disqualified.

As the 34-year-old fronted the Permits Committee South argued that he should be allowed to play because, after fighting for his country in New Guinea during the war, he merely wanted to finish his career where he had started.

Nash, later named at centre half forward in the Swans Team of the Century, was granted a permit on the eve of the season. He’d kicked five goals in a practice match on teammate Jim Cleary, South club champion in 1942 and 1944, to prove he had lost none of his class.

It was an in-between time as the war moved towards a long-awaited end. Most clubs, forced out of their recognised home facilities due to war, had returned home. Not South. Lake Oval and the MCG were still operating as military bases, forcing South to share Junction Oval with St.Kilda and Melbourne to play alongside Richmond at Punt Road.

Nash played in Rounds 1 and 2, kicking seven goals as South beat St.Kilda at Junction Oval by 41 points and Collingwood at Junction Oval by 10 points.

Round 2 had seen the debut of Billy Williams, a 19-year-old rover from Spotswood who, like Clegg, would go on to be something special. He played 124 games from 1945-51, was a three-time club champion in 1946-47-50, and was named on the interchange bench in the Swans Team of the Century.

In Round 3  second-gamer Williams, player #634 on the club’s all-time player list, and debutant Clegg, player #635, played together for the first time as South beat Richmond by 20 points at Punt Road.

At Round 5 South were the only unbeaten side but when Nash missed Round 6 they lost by eight points to North Melbourne at Arden Street.

At Round 12 South sat on top of the ladder, equal with Footscray with a 10-2 record, but further unrest broke out ahead of Round 13 when captain Matthews and veteran half forward Keith Smith were suspended by the club for failing to play in their selected positions the week before. Without this pair they lost by 26 points to Collingwood.

With Matthews and Smith back in the side South won six of their last seven to finish top of the ladder at 16-4. Collingwood (15-5) were second ahead of first-time finalists North Melbourne (13-7) and Carlton (13-7).

Carlton were lucky to be there. At the start of the season, looking to make up for games lost during the war, the League had set a 20-game fixture – two games more than ever before. And Carlton needed every one of them.

The Blues were fifth at Round 18, a game plus percentage outside the four, and still fifth at Round 19, behind Footscray and North on percentage. Only when they beat Footscray at Western Oval in Round 20 did they slip into the finals.

After Carlton eliminated North in the first semi-final South, with Nash back in the side after missing Round  20, beat Collingwood in the second semi-final to qualify for their first grand final since 1936. Clegg was among the best in his finals debut.

The following week Carlton, coached by 1934 Richmond premiership captain-coach and 1996 AFL Hall of Fame inductee Perc Bentley and captained by Bob Chitty, came from 28 points down at three-quarter time to beat Collingwood in a vicious preliminary final by 10 points.

With the war finally over, the grand final was the most anticipated in years as Alan Linden and Reg Richards, regulars throughout the year, returned to the South Melbourne side.

With the MCG still unavailable, a massive crowd of 62,986 squeezed into Carlton’s Princes Park home for the flag decider. The Herald reported that the ground was so tightly packed that some fans were carried out on stretchers even before the first bounce.

South were firm favorites against a Carlton side which, having used strong-arm tactics to good effect in the preliminary final, adopted a similar approach in wet and muddy conditions on grand final day.

Carlton settled the better and led 2-4 to 0-5 at quarter time before South cut the deficit to two points at half time. But still they looked unnerved by the Blues’ roughhouse tactics.

In the second quarter 29-year-old Chitty, in his 141^st game, had king hit 17-year-old rookie Clegg to set the scene for an even more torrid second half. And so it was.

Fights erupted all over the ground after the break on a day condemned as shameful in the media.

Carlton’s Fred Fitzgibbon, unavailable for the grand final due to suspension, jumped the fence to join in, while South’s Ted Whitfield, reported on four charges, pulled his jumper over his head so the umpire could not take his number.

Carlton led by 23 points at three-quarter time and won by 28 points after Chitty, later suspended for eight weeks for an elbow on Billy Williams, was ko’d by Nash in retribution in the final term.

A headline in The Herald noted “BOTTLES THROWN BY CROWD’, while The Truth described the grand final as “the most repugnant spectacle League football has ever known”.

Percy Taylor, a much-revered writer for The Argus, wrote ‘punching, kicking and assault made the League grand final at Carlton on Saturday the worst in history’. Even police were called on at times to help break up hostilities.

South’s Jack Williams, Jim Cleary, Don Grossman, Matthews, Smith and Whitfield and Carlton’s Chitty, Fitzgibbon, Ron Savage and Ken Hands were reported on 16 charges as officials from both clubs blamed each other for the overzealousness.

The tribunal handed out a total of 61 matches in suspension.

Whitfield, a 29-year-old wingman playing his 54^th game, was charged with attempting to strike a field umpire, using abusive language to a goal umpire, kicking the ball away after a fee kick and attempting to conceal his number so he could not be reported.

He received a 21-match ban, was told he was no longer required by the club and never played again. He was also banned from Lake Oval as a spectator, although this was later rescinded and in the 1960’s he joined the Past Players’ Association.

Jack Williams, charged with abusive language to Carlton’s Rod McLean and a goal umpire, and adopting a fighting attitude towards the goal umpire when he went to report him, was rubbed out for 12 matches.

Grossman was charged with striking Carlton’s Jim Mooring after Mooring had been awarded a mark and was suspended for eight matches, and Jim Cleary, charged with striking Hands after a mark and attempting to strike Chitty, was found not guilty on the attempted striking charge but received an eight-match suspension on the striking charge.

Captain Matthews was given a reprimand for deliberately throwing the ball away, and Smith was cleared of a striking charge.

In the Carlton camp, in addition to Chitty’s eight-match suspension, Savage was put out for eight matches, Fitzgibbon received an additional four-match ban on top of the four-match ban he had received for a king hit in the preliminary final against Collingwood. Hand was not found not guilty.

It was a tough end to a tough season for South, who were beaten in the grand final by a side that would not have even qualified had the season not been extended.

Worse was to come. It would be 51 years before the Swans would play in another grand final.

Jack Graham, who had deputised as captain for the injured Matthews in 1944, was judged club champion, Nash topped the club goal-kicking with 56 and was fourth in the League behind Melbourne’s Fred Fanning (67), Hawthorn’s Alec Albiston (66) and Collingwood’s Des Fothergill (62).

Clegg had played 15 games to begin a career that would see him go on to be a champion of the game for 15 years and 231 games, equally proficient at centre half back and centre half forward, where he played in what became known as the ‘Bloodbath Grand Final’.

He made his interstate debut in his second season in 1946, still only 18, and was a regular member of the Victorian side thereafter, earning 15 ‘Big V’ jumpers in total. Often he was the club’s only representative.

He was equal fourth in the Brownlow Medal in 1948, won the game’s highest individual honour in 1949 in a tie with Hawthorn’s Colin Austen, and was club champion both years.

In 1950 it seemed like his career might be over when he accepted a lucrative offer to coach New Norfolk in Tasmania. He moved to Hobart but South refused him a clearance and he reluctantly returned home. 

His aborted transfer didn’t affect his football – he was runner-up in the Brownlow and claimed his third club championship in 1951, was equal fifth in the Brownlow in 1953 and captain in 1953-54.

As a young married man looking to do his best by his wife, Clegg was often tempted by the rich financial offerings of coaching interstate or in the country, and in 1955 he left South again. This time with the club’s blessing.

He accepted a position as coach at North Wagga but missed the big-time atmosphere of League football, and in 1956 he was back at Lake Oval. He was captain from 1957-60, including two years as captain-coach in 1958-59.

In 1958 he became the club’s fifth 200-gamer behind Vic Belcher (1918), Mark Tandy (1925), Jim Cleary (1945) and Jack Graham (1945), and in 1960, in his 228^th game, he bettered Graham’s games record of 227.

He wore the #23 jumper 231 times – a club record which 59 years later still sands. Matthew Nicks (169), Ted Johnson (12) and Lance Franklin (112) are the only other Swans to have worn #23 more than 100 times.

But sadly the finals proved a bridge too far for Clegg. And when finally he hung up the boots to  join Brunswick as captain-coach in the VFA in 1961-62 his only involvement in the finals had been as a fresh-faced 17-year-old in his first season in 1945.

Still, he’d made a massage impact, and after he died on 23 August 1990 aged 62 he was an inaugural inductee to the AFL Hall of Fame in 1996 and was named at centre half back in the Swans Team of the Century in 2003.

He was inducted to the Swans Hall of Fame in 2011 and elevated to Legend status in 2016.

A very good news story indeed!