Peter Foster’s career could easily have amounted to nothing more substantial than a dozen games at Fitzroy. But he changed clubs and became a Footscray stalwart. DAVID RHYS-JONES caught up with him.

RHYS: What are you doing these days?
FOSTER: Work wise, I am with an industrial chemical company that I started 19 years ago. When I played footy they said “here’s a rep’s job, go out and have a crack.” I’ve got used to doing it and I’m still there. Footy-wise I am coach of the St Bernards under-14s and I enjoy that. My own son is playing and we made a final this year. Stevie Wallis is at St Bernards, too, Libba is out that way with his kids. Sometimes it can be more challenging than coaching senior footy. I coached Yarrawonga and Kyneton for a couple of years. That was a challenge. Now my daughter and son are both playing sport and you can get caught up too much with senior coaching. I love watching my kids playing sport., but I may have a go at senior coaching again one day.

RHYS: You started at Colac. And you admitted that when you were a kid starting at Fitzroy you would strut around and say “I play for Fitzroy” when you went home to Colac even though you were just playing in the reserves.
FOSTER: When I go back, my mates have a go at me about that. It was a pretty good feeling being in the VFL but when you are in the reserves you haven’t made it.

RHYS: Are you embarrassed when you look back?
FOSTER: Not really. I’ve certainly been overtaken by other blokes since then who have come out of Colac like Hodge, Foley, Baker and Buchanan. I’ve slipped down the list a bit. Colac, for its population, has produced a lot. Geelong Falcons must educate them well. Colac and Coragulac amalgamated and Steven Theodore coached them to a premiership. My brother played in that. Was I jealous? Well, it would have been nice, but I was down here with Fitzroy. Coragulac as a club itself just faded away.

RHYS: At what point do you think you really did make the grade?
FIOSTER: I had three years at Fitzroy until Wallsy took me aside and told me it was time to move on. Then I had a year with Bluey Hampshire as coach at the Bulldogs and Dennis Cometti, who was coaching East Perth, asked me to come over. I was tossing it around. Then Mick Malthouse walked in as Footscray’s coach. He said “I don’t know any of you much apart from Hawkins and Beasley.” About seven games into that season he came up and said I would be in the team the next week. I never looked back. I’d had a gutful of playing at 11 o’clock in the morning with the dew on the grass. I knew there was a lot more excitement in playing senior footy.

RHYS: Were you a late developer?
FOSTER: Probably. Don McKenzie, the Footscray reserves coach, put me down at centre half back and that probably opened the door after playing forward all my life until then. At the time Fitzroy had Paul Roos and Gary Pert so they didn’t need anyone at half back. But we were coming up against Hawthorn in the next few weeks with Dermie (Brereton). I suppose I did a good job on Dermott after Malthouse told me to just give as much as I got. He said not to be intimidated. A lot of centre half forwards could be like Dermott. Once they got on top of you they chewed you up and spat you out. I used to watch Wayne Carey and you could see it unfold – he’s got this bloke and this guy doesn’t know what to do. Buddy Franklin is one who can do it now. There will come a day when he absolutely rips a game apart.

RHYS: You played only 10 games in three years at Fitzroy. That’s an amazing stat when you think that you won a best and fairest and played in the state side at your second club.
FOSTER: I didn’t train as hard as possible, I think that coming from the country it takes a while to get to understand what you really need to do, whereas Roosy and other guys were coming out of the under-19 system. We had never used weights. They had the grounding in weights and skills. Once I started playing senior footy I used to do extra work on the Sunday and during the week. Blokes like Tony McGuiness and Brian Royal were great examples. Choco had a great work ethic and got the best out of himself. I played state footy with him twice and he taught me to go for it. He really showed me.

RHYS: There is one version of your move to the Bulldogs that says you were thrown in as a sweetener to a deal to transfer Chris Hansen from Fitzroy to Footscray. Was that true and were there any other clubs interested in you?
FOSTER: It wasn’t a sweetener. Leon Wiegard was president of Fitzroy and he and Wallsy remind me they did the best thing for me by sacking me. Leon said it cost $50,000 or $60,000 for Chris Hansen and $10,000 for me. It was more just a case that I was available. I went over and kicked 10 goals for Footscray in a practice match against some side where anyone could have kicked 10 and they thought I could play. Funnily enough, Chris Hansen lasted one year and I lasted 11! There were three or four clubs interested in me. Hawthorn asked but I thought it would be hard to break in there. I was a bit disheartened at the time

RHYS: I remember him because he broke my leg in my fourth game He was a big man and went to baulk and I put my leg out and he ran through and snapped my leg. It didn’t all take off at Footscray because they played you in the reserves at full forward. Was the coach Bluey Hampshire reluctant to give new blokes a go?
FOSTER: Bluey stuck with blokes who had been there a long time and I admired that. Bluey was just a good bloke. He would drink his half a dozen stubbies on the trip home to Geelong. The worst thing about that year was when Dennis Cometti rang me and used the name of Shane O’Sullivan in saying he could talk to me. Shane denied it, but it fired me up. Within weeks Bluey resigned as coach. Mick Malthouse took over and he was like you see him now – steely and tough. He was the same with the media back then as well.

RHYS: Mick gave you your break.
FOSTER: We were flogged in the seniors and I was playing with the seconds and we had a function that night and Mick tapped me on the shoulder and said I would be in the seniors the next week. Because I had seven days I could get my head around it and I probably thought this would be my last chance. Most clubs had pretty good centre half forwards then and I started getting a few scalps. I never believed I was a regular senior player for a long, long time and I never took it for granted. Mick would make sure of that. He’d always put me in the reserves training group at the start of each year. He’d say I wasn’t training well, but I think he was just trying to gee me up. He’d come up and say “Are you talking to me?” That’s why he’s such a good coach.

RHYS: How did you see him as coach?
FOSTER: He’d played under Jeans and Hafey, so you could see the success written all over him. When I played state footy Graeme Richmond was involved and he was the same. They wouldn’t accept anything less than winning.

RHYS: Western Oval was one of those ground we hated going to.
FOSTER: We always had an advantage. When the wind was up that was an advantage as a centre half back. The poor old centre half forward had to lead up into it and if your judgment was out it was very hard to play. I played a lot of footy at centre half forward there, too. The ball would blow over your head. There were games when I didn’t swap ends – I’d be centre half forward for half the game. I was a good pinch-hitter at centre half forward for periods of seven or eight weeks in a row. Sometimes I’d run hot and I remember taking 16 marks one day against Chris Mew. Mick was very big on using psychologists like Rudi Webster. Mick sent the whole team there once but it wasn’t much good with blokes like Dougie Hawkins! But I got a lot out of it and so did Simon Beasley. He’d talk about how things could go wrong but you had to get past it.

RHYS: Do you think your life would have been different if you had just drifted away as a player with a dozen or so AFL games under your belt?
FOSTER: I often think if I had gone over to Perth how long I would have lasted – maybe one or two years. I probably would have gone back to country footy – I enjoyed it. Barry Gill gave me an opportunity in the Hampden league as a junior and that gave me confidence, even though I probably didn’t deserve the game. If I’d gone to WA you blokes wouldn’t be here talking to me today. I’m grateful for what’s happened. I still go to the footy and people come up and say g’day. They say we need you back because we haven’t got any tall blokes in the backline. I don’t think they need me back at 48! I’d struggle to get down the race.

RHYS: How much did your attitude change over the years?
FOSTER: Once I started to get a regular game all of a sudden I was in the Victorian squad. I won the best and fairest and ran second twice. Terry Wallace beat me by a vote one year. I was reported that year and missed three games. Darren Goldspink reported me once in Perth and I saw him recently and he said it was his first game. His wife is a mad keen Bulldog supporter and I said that surely she could have talked him into getting me off. He just smiled and said he thought I needed a bit of a holiday! But I had a lot of great moments. I met one of the blokes in this international series and told him I had played in New York. I played Gaelic footy and we played a practice match in New York on the way. We went to Ireland after that and then to London. To stand there and listen to the national anthem playing was great. I never got the chance to play in a premiership like you. Bob Hawke was there and the national anthem was playing at Croke Park. I didn’t think (the hybrid game) is important to our game but after that game it was just like what the Test cricketers must feel after every win.

RHYS: You became a cornerstone of Footscray and it was written of you “He is the leader, the protector, the teacher, the clubman whose generosity of spirit and reassuring earthiness are part of the fabric of the west”. That’s a wrap! How did you see your role develop?
FOSTER: Can you photocopy that? Who wrote it?

RHYS: Apparently it was Penny Crisp.
FOSTER: Those were the days when they used to write good articles. Not something about drugs and everything like that. I went out and lived in the western suburbs at Tottenham. When you live in the area people see a lot more of you. You’d go to a shop and a bloke would say, you can have some extra fruit. Then I got to be mates with Dougie Hawkins and they would see us watching Williamstown on a Sunday. The club really grows on you and you start to love the club. It takes a while to fall in love with a footy club - it’s the people around it. Some like Eddie Walsh have been there forever. I see ladies who have worked there for umpteen years. People like Kevin Meddings and John Schultz who are interviewing people for a book on the club. Schultzie is a beautiful man of footy.

RHYS: We talked to him a few weeks ago. Although I saw a bit too much of him on Monday nights at the tribunal!
FOSTER: He was the perfect bloke for that.

RHYS: In 1992 you broke a leg after running into Paul Dear, then had problems with infection. It meant you missed the finals when Terry Wheeler wasn’t prepared to risk you. Was that the most frustrating time of your career
FOSTER: It was. The surgeon, David Young, put a plate in my leg and I was back in six weeks. It just couldn’t handle the pressure. I came straight back into the seniors because the side was out of form. I came off at half time and the pain was too intense. They took the plate out and I missed another six weeks. I was training my bum off but I wasn’t match fit. I played a final in the reserves and I thought I had done enough but I think Wheels had made his mind up. That’s fair enough but it was a bit like Scottie West now – they gave him every chance before he got to a certain point. He’s taken the pressure off by saying he wouldn’t keep going for the year. At 32 years of age, missing 10 or 12 weeks it is very hard. When you get older you can’t afford to miss any lengthy period of footy. Things catch up very quickly. You try and train harder but your body is not 26 any more. I did that the next year and my achilles went. That was it.

DAVID RHYS-JONES