Reuben Cooper is 72. He is player #966 on the Swans all-time playing list and played two games with South Melbourne in 1969 at 17. And he holds a very special place in club history.
Cooper, a 175cm utility player, was the first player from the Northern Territory to play in the AFL, and is the Swans’ oldest living Indigenous player.
If you had a little time Cooper would be a great chat. Except that it’d take a lot more than a little time because his story extends far beyond the seven kicks and two handballs credited to him in his #43 jumper in losses to Richmond at the MCG and Carlton at Lake Oval in Round 15-16.
And beyond the sidebar stories that he debuted on the same weekend as North Melbourne champion David Dench and subsequent Swans pair Neville Fields and Robert Dean, a week after Collingwood’s Ronnie Wearmouth and a week before Hawthorn great Leigh Matthews.
His is a story, too, that is overwhelmingly more important than the fact that, born on 18 August 1951, he shares a birthday with funnyman Steve Martin (1945), romance author Danielle Steel (1947), basketball great Magic Johnson and actress Halle Berry (1966), plus Swans players Terry Brain Snr (1907), Max Blumfield (1922), Alf Callick Jnr (1925) and Craig Holden (1957).
The Cooper story would be fascinating and endless, especially if it extended to his father and great grandfather, who are football royalty in the NT. And if he was allowed to embellish things a little he’d tell how he was the man who replaced the irreplaceable Herbie Matthews in the South Melbourne side to make his debut.
South Melbourne, 10th on the ladder at time, were coming off a 26-point loss to fourth-paced Geelong at Lake Oval in Round 14, 1969.
Coach Norm Smith made three changes for the Round 15 against Richmond at the MCG, including Wayne Walsh to play against his former side with a young Keith Baskin and Cooper.
Going out of the side were Matthews and teenagers Rod Mohr and Robert Doyle, who were the 19th and 20th men against the Cats and did not record a statistic. Mohr had played his seventh and last game, while Doyle, a five-gamer at the time, would go on to play 77 games.
What a great story. A boy from Darwin replacing a five-time club champion, Brownlow Medallist, eight-year captain, Team of the Century member and AFL Hall of Famer. And it would be … if it was true.
But Cooper didn’t replace that Herbie Matthews. He replaced Herb Matthews, a 102-gamer with Melbourne and South Melbourne who was the son of the mega champion, and grandson of Herb Matthews Snr, who played 85 games with South Melbourne, Melbourne and Richmond from 1914-24. He’d played his last game in Round 14.
Reuben's affiliation with football began with his grandfather, Reuben Cooper Snr, who went to school at St Peter's College in Adelaide. When he returned home to Darwin, he had with him a football. And so the story grew.
The locals did not know what a football was but as legend says, it created a curiosity that sparked an interest. Over a bottle of Pilsener at a local pub one gentleman reportedly said, “I wonder if we can get a game in Darwin?” before another said “Yes, too right we could” and a third suggested “it’s too hot”.
At a subsequent meeting of interested parties at the same hotel a motion to play a game was passed on a vote of attendees. A game was played the following Saturday – “starting at 4pm” as the minutes of the meeting said.
It was the first recorded match of Australian Football in Darwin and was played on Saturday, February 12, 1916 at Darwin Town Oval. A second match was played the following Saturday as a Red Cross fundraiser, and the following month the NT Football Association was formed and a formal competition began.
Reuben Cooper Snr, who also excelled in swimming, athletics, boxing and cricket and was later awarded a ‘Pioneer of Sport Award’ by the NT Government, was among the most high-profile sportsmen in Darwin at the time and was the first Indigenous player to play in the Darwin competition.
Football flowed through generations of the Cooper family.
Ron Cooper, Reuben’s father, had played with the Buffaloes, and Reuben did likewise before moving to Melbourne in 1968 in the hope of playing with South Melbourne.
His path to the ‘big time’ was blocked initially by NT transfer rules and in 1968 he played suburban football before joining South in 1969.
Cooper started in the Reserves and in 14 weeks saw 15 players debut for the club. In Round 1 it was Graham Brandt (13 games) and Arthur Budd (7) plus Melbourne 16-gamer Rob Dowing (4) and Walsh, who had played six games at Richmond in 1968 and after 63 games with South from 1969-72 would return to the Tigers in 1972 to stretch his career to 151 games, including a grand final loss in 1972 and flags in 1973-74.
John Coghlan (2 games) followed in Round 3 ahead of Doyle, Graham Page (1) and ex-Melbourne four-gamer Sid Catlin (15) in Round 4, Rob Svorinich (8) in Round 6, Hoffman and Ken Luscombe (7 games in Round 7), and Ron Wetzel (18 games) in Round 9.
McLeish debuted in Round 12 ahead of Richardson (7 games) in Round 13 and, finally, Cooper in Round 15 before John Hartree (1) in Round 20 – all in a year in which the competition welcomed future champions such as Barry Round, Bernie Quinlan, Bruce Doull, and Peter Knights.
South finished ninth on the 12-team ladder with a 7-13 record as the two teams Cooper had played against met in the grand final, when Richmond beat Carlton by 25 points.
Cooper returned home to Darwin, building a formidable career with the Darwin Buffaloes, where he was best afield in the 1970-71 grand final win. He later coached opposition club Nightcliff in the 1986-87 season.
Our First Nations Players
As we prepare to celebrate Marn Grook at the SCG on Friday night against Carlton, we pay tribute to all of our First Nations players.
The Sydney Swans have had 19 male Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander players run out in red and white, along with two First Nations women in AFLW. They include:
- Elkin Reilly, 51 Swans games, 1962-66
- Reuben Cooper, 2 Swans games, 1969
- Kevin Taylor, 14 Swans games, 1981
- Jamie Lawson, 61 Swans games, 1991-94
- Brian Stanislaus, 1 Swans game, 1991
- Alan Thorpe, 3 Swans games, 1993
- Matthew AhMat, 2 Swans games, 1994
- Derek Kickett, 63 Swans games, 1994-96
- Michael O’Loughlin, 303 Swans games, 1995-2009
- Troy Cook, 43 Swans games, 1997-99
- Robbie AhMat, 42 Swans games, 1998-2001
- Adam Goodes, 372 Swans games, 1999-2015
- Fred Campbell, 5 Swans games, 1999
- Lewis Jetta, 127 Swans games, 2010-2015
- Byron Sumner, 1 Swans game, 2011
- Tony Armstrong, 14 Swans games, 2012-2013
- Lance Franklin, 172 Swans games, 2014-2023
- James Bell, 28 Swans games 2018-2022
- Elijah Taylor, 4 Swans games, 2020
- Aliesha Newman, 19 Swans games, 2022-2023
- Jaide Anthony, 4 Swans games 2022-2023
