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Bagful of goals could cause concussion: The revealing highs & lows about Austin Robertson Junior OAM OX 1927 by Jock O'Keefe OX 1959
Wednesday, 25 October 2023
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The Family Tree of the Robertson clan has a massive bias towards football and athletics. Both Austin Robertson Senior, and Junior were exceptional sportsmen. In this article we'll concentrate on Austin Junior once he graduated from Xavier in 1927. He signed with Subiaco in the WAFL and went on to play 269 games over twelve seasons in the 60's/70's. Nicknamed Ocker, he became known as the 'greatest ever AFL player'. He topped the goal kicking stats eight times with an average of 4.83 goals per game with his deadly accurate drop punts sailing through the big sticks. In all, Ocker kicked 1,211 during his AFL career including the 1973 premiership.... He played one season with South Melbourne, again at Full Forward. In 2015 he was inducted into the Australian Hall of Fame. After his exceptional footy times he teamed with Mike Willesee and John 'Strop' Cornell to pitch the concept of World Series Cricket to Channel 9 boss Kerry Packer which led to a roller coaster ride around the world. Ocker took to managing affairs for Shane Warne amongst a gallery of other sportsmen, he even managed bad boy, tennis player Bernard Tomic... for a short period. In a bombshell interview with ABC Radio, Ocker admitted he suffered headaches, loss of memory, irritability which he put down to being whacked 10 times, or more on the back of the head each game. He was seriously concussed five times. 'When a player gets ironed out, the crowd roars. 'It's gladiatorial Rome' he said. Ocker made a dramatic pledge in the same ABC interview that he would donate his brain post mortem to science to study Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Austin Roberson passed, aged 80. |