In 1949 Jim Taylor was too young to vote, drive or drink in a public place. He was 17. But he wasn’t too young to play in the then VFL. And on Saturday 16 July, 72 years ago today, he made his debut for South Melbourne against St.Kilda at Junction Oval.

An outstanding schoolboy athlete at Caulfield Grammar who might easily have been an international high-jumper, he was the 494^th player on the club’s all-time list and at 17 years 191 days he was at the time the seventh-youngest.

Taylor was catapulted into senior football by Jack Hale, who had joined South Melbourne in 1948 as assistant-coach to Bill Adams, who had guided South to the grand final in his first season in 1945.

At Round 10 in 1948, after South suffered a heavy loss to Carlton, Hale took charge when Adams was sacked. Or as the press reported at the time, he was ‘invited to resign’.

The South committee was reportedly displeased by criticism of the team by Adams in a radio interview the previous Friday. Particularly objectionable were references to a lack of fierceness and to some players being "like bottle-fed-ables."

South went 3-6 under Hale to finish the 1948 season but at 5-7 in 1949 they were ninth on the 12-team ladder. Hale, starting to come under pressure himself, turned to Taylor, who had begun the season in the fourths or under-17s. He was the eighth of 10 South debutants that season.

It was what might have been described as a calculated gamble by Hale, a premiership rover and 123-game player at Carlton who had represented Victoria at the 1937 national carnival in Perth where he displaced the legendary Dick Reynolds from the No.1 roving spot.

Five of the club’s six debutants younger than Taylor had come and gone for a total of just 80 games. There had been 16-year-olds Ernie McDougall (4 games – 1902-03) and Harold Traynor (37 games – 1939-42) and 17-year-olds Toner Hosking (9 games – 1908 & 1910), Rod Leffanue (12 games - 1930-32) and Art Mietzcke (18 games – 1931-33).

But a 21-year-old Ron Clegg, the club’s other 17-year-old debutant was carrying the torch for those who could not vote, drive or drink before their first game.

Clegg, later to win the 1949 Brownlow Medal and become one of the club greats, played his 83^rd game in Taylor’s first before the pair were teammates for more than a decade.

Hale, later to coach Hawthorn from 1952-59, wasn’t so lucky. South went 1-6 from that point to finish 10^th and he was promptly tipped out and replaced in 1950 by Gordon Lane. But the legacy Hale left in the number #20 jumper was to prove a special one.

But it might not have been so. Taylor was also a top-level junior high jumper and sprinter at Caulfield Granmmar, winning the Under 16 and Open high jump and the 4 x 220m relay at the Associated Grammar Schools track meet in 1947

At the 1947 Associated Grammar Schools Combined Athletics Meeting, Taylor won the Under-16 and the Open high-jump, and in 1948 won the Open high jump and the Open 100 yards (in 10.7 seconds) – despite a bad ankle which kept him off the track in the lead-up.

He was said to have narrowly missed selection in the Australian team for the 1950 Empire Games (now the Commonwealth Games) in Auckland but gave up high jumping soon after partly because he was getting too heavy but more because there was no good coaching available.

So football it was. Splitting his time between centre half back and the ruck, the 191cm sandy blonde played 81 games with South from 1949-54, winning regular selection in the Victorian State team and the Swans club champion award in 1953 at 21.

At the time Taylor was the club’s third-youngest winner behind Clegg, who had won it at 20 in 1948, and Billy Williams, who did so at 21 in 1946 - 251 days younger than Taylor.

Now, 67 years later, Taylor still ranks as the fifth-youngest winner of what is now the Bob Skilton Medal. David Ackerly is the youngest winner, having been 19 years 308 days old in 1980. He was 18 days younger than Skilton when he won the award named in his honor for the first time in 1958.

In 1955 Taylor surprised South Melbourne officials when he requested a clearance to Norwood in the SANFL. It was finally granted on the third attempt, and although he only played 13 games for the Redlegs, Taylor also played four times for South Australia, including one against Victoria, and was judged Norwood’s best player in a grand final loss to Port Adelaide.

He returned to South Melbourne in 1956 to play a further 72 games – but only after a rough start.

In Round 1 of his return season, Taylor played in the ruck in a 21-point loss to Geelong at Lake Oval. He was one of the home side’s better players, taking a spectacular one-handed diving mark, but immediately afterwards he was told that his father, vice-president of the club from 1952-55, had died in the committee reserve during the match. His mother had requested that he not be told until the match was over.

South finished ninth on the home-and-away ladder but in small consolation they won the inaugural night premiership, a three-round knockout between the eight clubs who did not make the finals. All games were played at Lake Oval, the only ground equipped to host night matches, with a packed house of 32,450 turning out for a Monday night grand final as South beat Carlton by six points.

Taylor, 13 times a Victorian representative, was club champion again at 25 in 1957, when he also polled 16 votes to finish fourth in the Brownlow Medal behind St.Kilda’s Brian Gleeson (24), Richmond’s Roy Wright (20) and Carlton’s John James (19).

In 1961 he finished equal fifth in the Brownlow despite playing only 11 of 18 games. Carlton’s James won with 21 votes from 17 games, while North’s Laurie Dwyer was second with 19 votes from 18 games, Hawthorn’s Ian Law third with 17 votes from 18 games and South’s Frank Johnson was fourth with 13 votes from 16 times.

Taylor polled six times in his 11 games for 12 votes to tie with Footscray’s Ted Whitten (17 games) and Charlie Evans (18 games) and Hawthorn’s Brendan Edwards (18 games). Only James and Dwyer polled more often, and on a votes-per-game basis Taylor was a close second to James.

In Round 10 of 1961, Taylor became the 15^th player to reach 150 games for the Swans, and three games later at the end of that season he retired at 29.

He later became a highly-respected panel member on Channel Seven’s ‘World of Sport’, and was South Melbourne chairman of selectors at South Melbourne.

He died aged 68 on 18 April 2000 and was inducted into the Swans Hall of Fame in 2013.

In 60 years since his last game Taylor has slid to equal 63^rd on the club’s all-time games list, but the 17-year-old selection gamble of 1949 had certainly done his bit for young hopefuls.

Of 45 players who have debuted in red and white before their 18^th birthday Taylor’s 153 games ranks fifth in a hot field. Only Skilton (237 games), Clegg (231), Tony Morwood (229) and Bob Pratt (158) are ahead of him, with Steve Hoffman (149), Brad Seymour (133) and Brian McGowan (118) the other 100-gamers.

The last of the 17-year-old debutants in the Lake Oval era were Graham Dempster, father of 2005 premiership player Sean Dempster, David Rhys-Jones, who defected to Carlton, and the controversial Silvio Foschini, who refused to move with the club Sydney. He successfully challenged the then VFL in court on a restraint of trade basis, triggering the abolition of the zoning system.

There have been four 17-year-old Swans debutants in Sydney – Darren Gaspar (1994), Shannon Grant and Anthony Rocca (1995) and Mark Kinnear (1997). But Gaspar, Grant and Rocca, all high draft picks, quickly returned to Melbourne to play most of their career, and Kinnear played only six games.

Taylor’s 153 games also ranks third in games played for the Swans in jumper #20, behind Jim Cleary (222) and incumbent Sam Reid (159) and ahead of Luke Ablett (133) and Graham Teasdale (121).