3 months ago
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He was a strapping full back who cut a dashing figure playing for Fitzroy in 1898. He was named among the best players in the team’s premiership win that year over Essendon.
But three years later, Stanley Spencer Reid died, after being shot in the stomach while fighting in the Boer War, in what is now South Africa.
Every picture tells a story: Stanley Reid’s photo in the Fitzroy-Brisbane Lions museum at Marvel Stadium.Credit: Penny Stephens
He was 28 years old, but not forgotten by Brenden Campbell.
Campbell, the club archivist for Fitzroy and its current incarnation, the Brisbane Lions, has spent 20 years tracing photos of all 1157 men who played at least one game for Fitzroy.
Just 21 images remain to be found.
The 1136 profiles found so far form a dazzling montage on a wall in the club’s museum at Marvel Stadium in Docklands.
On a mission: Brenden Campbell has spent decades tracking down player photos.Credit: Penny Stephens
They date from 1897, when Fitzroy joined the Victorian Football League, to the eve of the club’s move to Queensland in 1996.
The story of Reid, who after the 1898 premiership became a Presbyterian minister, preaching in Western Australia before enlisting to fight in the Boer war, moved Campbell the most. “It brought a tear to my eye. It’s just a sad, sad story,” he said.
He says the photos honour the players, and keep the Fitzroy flame alive.
Campbell found photos of Reid in the National Library of Australia’s Trove archive, and in Fitzroy’s 1898 team photo.
The 1898 team photo. Stanley Reid is standing at far right. The man standing second from left in the middle row with a moustache is yet to be identified.Credit: Fitzroy-Brisbane Lions Historical Society
Just one player in that team photo remains unidentified.
Another of Reid’s “most wanted” is a photo of Norman McLennan, brother of club legend Harold “Lal” McLennan.
While Lal played 135 games, Norman played seven games in 1907 and 1908, and tragically died of typhoid in 1909 in the central Queensland town of Isisford, aged 22.
Eric Watson, who played one game in 1911, is believed to have died in the UK in 1977 in the town of Mere in Wiltshire.
A woman replied to Campbell’s local Facebook post that she had lived next door to Watson in the early 1970s. Sadly, she didn’t have a photo.
The Lions’ current Victorian manager, Sam Lord, praised Campbell’s project and called on fans “to search their archives to help find the missing player images”.
“The project is a labour of love and a terrific undertaking that highlights the passion of our fans,” Lord said.
Brenden Campbell pictured in the late 1970s, aged 12 or 13, at his home in Thomastown.
Campbell, whose 1981 duffel coat he wore to games hangs in the museum, says the project is “addictive”.
Campbell says that with the help of digitisation of records, and the fresh eyes of a new researcher who recently joined him, the odds of finding the remaining 21 photos are getting better by the week. “I’m chipping away at it.”
He’s dreaming of the day he finds the last photo. “It’s going to be magical,” he says.
But he’s already on to another challenge – finding images of the 242 men who played for Fitzroy when it was in the VFA competition, from 1884 to 1896. “I’ve already got 105 of them,” Campbell says.
Contact Campbell by messaging the Fitzroy-Brisbane Lions Historical Society Facebook page.
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