Monivae Memories: Paul Castley MSC, “erudite, gentler man of good humour…”,
- Tony Wright, The Age, Saturday, March 18, 2023.
Each year, a group of Monivae former students gather on St Patrick’s Day for a meal, Paul always attending, Tony Wright often there. They had a conversation which led to this part of Tony Wright’s article on the beginning of the football season…
“These thoughts occurred over the last few days while chatting with Pat Dodson, now a splendidly bewhiskered senator, who a long time ago was the captain of our country school’s First XVIII.
We yarned about a few of the names we remembered, footy stripping away the years, and I was visited by the image of a stab passed from the young Dodson, whistling like a missile and with the power to strip the wind clean out of the poor sod required to receive it. Dodson’s team, and a few that followed, were all unbeatable. Lou Richards once came down from the smoke accompanied by photographer and produced a double page spread in the old Sun News-Pictorial that refer to our school as “the football factory”.
Photo, Herald Sun
It wasn’t far wrong, for in the late 1960s it was populated by a Cranage, an early REALITY, a Grinter, the Delahuntys and, a bit later, Billy Picken, to name a few who went on to thrill millions and create footy dynasties.
On Friday this week, the ability of footy to transport memories across a lifetime was further confirmed when I accompanied a few old boys to a St Patrick’s Day lunch.
Among the gathering was the priest who long ago coached those school teams, a big bloke named Paul Castley. We called him Mad Dog, for we feared his temperament while admiring the furious tenacity of spirit that turned the First XVIII into a winning machine.
He is an erudite, gentler man of good humour in his late 80s these days, but it remains difficult not to think of him raging up and down wintry boundaries all those decades ago, Roaring commands that thrilled those of us barracking, for it was the sound of another approaching victory, which was as much ours on the sidelines as that of the players.”
