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THE voting for the J. J. Liston Trophy, the award for the VFA’s best and fairest player, reflected Fred Cook’s impact at Yarraville in 1970.

The Eagles had a poor season, winning only one game, finishing on the bottom of the ladder and being relegated to Division 2. Yet Cook won the Liston. Well, he didn’t win — he streaked it in, polling forty-one votes to defeat the runner-up, Williamstown’s former Footscray player Kevin Jackman, by fourteen in the count at VFA House. He was overlooked for votes in only four games.

Cook celebrated his victory at the Yarraville clubrooms, where teammates were photographed hoisting the sideburned and suited star on their shoulders. Footscray great Charlie Sutton, driving home from his Yarraville hotel, dropped in to offer congratulations.

Cook had paid for the shindig using money won in player awards tallied by the local paper. ‘That was the done thing. Any coin you picked up you put towards a piss-up for the players.’

Cook turned up late, not wanting to leave home until he found out he’d won. His father phoned to confirm his victory.

He had entered the count as one of the favourites after a season in which he averaged almost twenty-seven kicks and fourteen marks a match. He was credited with forty-one kicks against Dandenong and he had between twenty-seven and thirty-seven in nine other games.

His performance against Dandy had football scribe Wal Bright praising him to the skies. Cook ‘practically took Dandenong on single-handed only to see his team well beaten by 63 points,’ Bright wrote in an article headlined ‘Cook gets 41 kicks — but Eagles downed’.

‘Cook had the phenomenal tally of 41 kicks and 20 marks,’ Bright wrote. ‘He spent the four quarters at the wind-assisted end of the ground. He was the loose man when Dandenong had the breeze, then spent the other two terms in the forward zone.’

Bright also watched a 35-kick effort against Port Melbourne. Cook took on his future teammates Vic ‘Stretch’ Aanensen and Brendan Behan, and brought in eighteen marks.

John Heriot, a fine backman for South Melbourne over 153 games and full back of its team of the century, coached Yarraville in 1970. Now seventy-four and a lifelong resident of Spotswood, Heriot says Cook was the stand-out player of the season, and the Liston could have gone to no-one else. ‘Freddie wasn’t the strongest kick, but he was the best mark of a football you’d ever see. Wouldn’t find a bloke with a better pair of hands,’ he says, echoing the words of Gary Dempsey and many others.

‘I played him on the ball,’ Heriot says. ‘I always agreed with the theory that if you’ve got a good player you stick him on the ball, not in a position, and let him run around. That’s what I did with Freddie, gave him his head to win the ball as much as he possibly could. And he really dominated some games. It’s just a pity we didn’t have too many other good players around him.’

Alan Bongetti, who played at Yarraville from 1967 to 1971, remembers being taken aback at the news that Cook would be joining the club from Footscray. Bongetti immediately thought the Eagles had themselves an outstanding player — and Cook exceeded his expectations.

‘Beautiful footballer,’ he says. ‘As far as marking the football, just tremendous. Every time the ball went near him he’d just mark it. It was a joy to play with someone who had that ability, really.’

Cook quips that every time he kicked the ball at Yarraville he knew it was coming back ‘quick smart’. The club had some good players, he says, but not the depth to live with even mid-range teams. ‘Honestly, we weren’t that bad. But it was a strong comp back then. Prahran won the flag that year. They had the great Kevin Rose coaching them. There weren’t any easy kicks in first division.’

As for that 41-kick performance against Dandenong, he says he had a row with Bernadette the night before the match and skulked off to drown his sorrows. One drink became many, and by Sunday morning he was feeling rough. He phoned Heriot and said it might be best if he sat that game out. Heriot said that was fine, but he should turn up to support his teammates.

When Cook arrived, the coach told him, ‘Strip — we’ve rearranged the side and we need you to ruck all day.’

When he became ill during the match, Cook told the Yarraville trainer he’d eaten a corned beef and chutney sandwich that didn’t agree with him.

‘Forty-one kicks after I hadn’t been to bed. Everyone’s entitled to a bad day now and then,’ Cook says with a laugh.

Apart from the J. J. Liston Trophy, he also won Yarraville’s best and fairest and, in a media award, a $2000 boat, which he put to use at Melton Reservoir and Pykes Creek.

Soon he was testing other waters. Cook had fulfilled his obligations with Yarraville, but for a time said he would be staying with the Eagles.

‘The club helped me when I was down, so I will be sticking by it,’ he told The Footscray Advertiser. ‘I’m very happy at Yarraville — they’re a terrific club.’ He even said he hoped to coach the Eagles one day.

But Cook had no desire to play in Division 2. During the season there had been talk that another VFL club, noting Cook’s undimmed brilliance in the VFA, would target him in 1971.

In crossing from Footscray to Yarraville, Cook broke the VFL’s clearance laws and automatically picked up a twelve-month ban. He would have to stand out of football for a year to earn the right of appeal against his disqualification.

Still, he considered trying to salve old wounds and return to Footscray, at one point even working under professional running coach Cliff Pryde. He also lifted weights four times a week at the Sunshine Sports Club.

Then came an approach from Port Melbourne. Its legendary administrator Norm Goss had seen Cook dominate for Yarraville, and decided the club could do with him.

In fact, Port had tried to filch him when he was in dispute with Footscray in 1969. Bulldog John Jillard told Borough officials that Cook was a fine player, but not always vigilant in picking up his opponent. Goss and fellow official Charlie ‘Dooley’ Chrimes waited for Cook outside his house, finally giving up at 2am. They left a note expressing their interest and urging him to make contact. They heard nothing back.

But by 1970 things had changed. Yarraville played at Port in the last match of the season, and Goss and Chrimes spoke to Cook after the game.

‘I don’t want to play in Second Division,’ Chrimes remembers Cook telling him when they whisked him to the committee room.

‘You won’t have to. You’ll play here,’ Chrimes replied.

Heriot can remember the night Port Melbourne officials visited Yarraville and declared their intention to sign the J. J. Liston Trophy champion.

‘They said they could pay him a lot of money. And we didn’t have the bagfull of money they had. Simple as that. I said to them, “He’s all yours, because we can’t afford that.” And off he went. And what a career he had there.’

Cook says the Port offer wasn’t over the top — ‘they gave me a couple of thousand and said they’d pay me $90 a game’ — and his switch of clubs was more about staying in the top division.

Carrying a transfer fee of $1500, Borough committeeman Ray Downard went to a butcher’s shop in Yarraville to complete the deal. Eagles secretary Bill Curwood was reluctant to release his club’s best player, but he signed the clearance form on a butcher’s block.

Chrimes, eighty-one, says $1500 was a lot of money at the time, but it was one of the best investments Port ever made. ‘When you think of what he achieved, he was worth every cent, I tell you right now,’ he says. ‘To me, he was a great clubman and an extraordinary player. He hardly gave us a bad game.’

Cook disliked Port Melbourne almost as much as he did Collingwood. But he had great respect for it and was keen to play in a successful side. ‘I held them in awe. Everyone was shit-frightened of playing against them because they were so tough. Don’t worry, they had some tough men in that side.’

Heriot was like many football followers in the 1970s: he took pleasure in watching Cook pile up the goals for Port Melbourne. He doubts the Borough would have won so many flags without him.

As Cook crossed the river, beginning an association with Port that would bring him more than a decade of unceasing success, hard times hovered over Yarraville.

The 1970 season was its last in the VFA’s first division, although it did make grand finals in 1977 (under the coaching of former Bulldog David Thorpe) and in 1980 (when coached by future North Melbourne premiership mentor Denis Pagan).

Prominent Melbourne youth worker Les Twentyman steered the Eagles in 1981, and the short-fused John Sharp was in charge in 1982. But dogged by debt and a lack of sponsors, Yarraville dropped out of the VFA shortly before the 1984 season. Its identity was revived when Kingsville changed its name to Yarraville in 1996 and there was a merger with Seddon in 2007.

The Yarraville Seddon website has a history section. And in a photograph representing the period of 1961 to 1976, there is Fred Cook, arms extended high as he follows through on a kick, a glorious image of the club’s last J. J. Liston Trophy winner.