Ariah Park-Mirrool will celebrate the premiership reunion of the 1962 South West team

The 60-year premiership reunion of the 1962 South West premiership team will be held at Ariah Park, where Northern Jets will play host to East Wagga-Kooringal.

John Hawke coached the Brown Bombers to the premiership success, where APM prevailed in a two-point thriller over Coolamon in front of a huge crowd at Narrandera Sportsground.

It capped off a memorable finals series where APM reversed a one-point second semi-final loss to Coolamon, after holding off an inaccurate Leeton team by four points in the preliminary final.

It was Hawke's second season of a four-year stint in charge of Ariah Park and he remembers helping guide a young, talented team.

"That was the second year I coached them," Hawke recalled this week.

"There was quite a few young fellas, they were only 18-19. My first year was in 61 and then in 62 we won the grand final with all these young ones, really.

"There were a couple of old heads there too, Buckets Bryce at centre-half-forward, he was one, and the rest of them, they just more and less put their head down and away they went and we pulled it off.

"You've got to put the work in, once you put the work in on the training track, away you go."

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Hawke still remembers how close the finals series was.

"When we had three finals, when you win by two points, lose by one point and win by four points, that's all it amounted to," he said.

"You don't often get three finals like that in a row."

Jimmy Dunn was only 20 when he played in the premiership at his beloved Brown Bombers.

He shared the best in finals award with Noel Walker, and kicked two goals in the grand final.

Dunn still has vivid memories of grand final day.

"The crowd was unbelievable. Narrandera Sportsground, it was absolutely packed. It was big time then," Dunn said.

"We had all the gun players, Ian Gillett and blokes like this, they were all Victorian reps. The umpires used to come up in the train and go home in the train. It was something like 20 cents a head to get in and the gate was something like 5000 pound in those days. It was unbelievable.

"The amount of people there was unbelievable. You just didn't know where you were."

The 1962 premiership was APM's third and final premiership before their eventual merger with Ardlethan to form Northern Jets.

Dunn says it was a special side.

"They wrote up the '55 side that was probably better but I went back through it and out of the 20, I think there was 10 that went on and coached other sides, out of that 62 side. 10 out of 20, that's phenomenal," he said.

"The likes of Pat Quade, he could have walked into any VFL Melbourne side he was that good, and he just played all of his football at Ariah Park. Even Bernie Bryce, he could have went coaching. He was a brilliant footballer. Everyone was just football mad in those days."

Bernie 'Buckets' Bryce played in both the 1955 and 1962 premiership teams.

He recalls the Brown Bombers' game having evolved by the time 1962 came around.

"It was a little bit different football," Bryce recalls of 1962.

"There was more handball in 62. There wasn't much handball in 55, it was more or less a mark kick type of game at that stage.

"That was when the handball was starting in the game, I think before then Narrandera had started to show a little bit of it in the South West. There hadn't been much of it in the South West up until that stage."

Bryce was one of the 'old heads' Hawke referred to in an otherwise team of youngsters. He played full-back in the 1955 success but was one of APM's key forwards in 1962.

He enjoyed both roles.

"There wasn't as much pressure on you," Bryce said of the forward line.

"They were a bit hard to handle them young fellas. They had a different idea of football to what we had. Anyway, they were pretty good, they were a good patch of young fellas. They were good footballers."

Dunn, who was the self-described 'mayor of Ariah Park' once upon a time, has travelled all the way back from Bribie Island in Queensland for the special occasion on Saturday.

He is looking forward to what he says will be the last premiership reunion of the 1962 side.

"This is the last one, there won't be any more," he said.

"There's still 10 out of the 20 still alive, which is a good effort really. I think they'll all be there.

"I'm looking forward to seeing all my old mates. It will be great. We'll be all there, laughing and joking."

Full-time

ARIAH PARK-MIRROOL (80)

2.3 5.11 7.17 10.20

COOLAMON (78)

2.2 3.4 4.10 11.12

Goals: (APM) B Walker 3, J Dunn2, J Hawke 2, A Chalmers, T Connors, B Sculley; (Coolamon) R Patterson 3, J Kew 3, I Gillett 2, A Curtis 1, T Tipping 1, R Pieper.

Best: (APM) B Sculley, J Dunn, J Hawke, T Connors, A Mackenzie, P Quade, J Quade, N Walker; (Coolamon) J Kew, B Browne, I Gillett, A Keogh, K Pleming, T Tipping.

Premiership team

B: R Peacock, B Pleming, J Quade

HB: N Walker, I Wason, A Mackenzie

C: N Breust, B Sculley, R Fairman

HF: B Bryce, E Johnstone, T Connors

F: B Lewis, B Walker, J Dunn

Foll: P Quade, A Chalmers, J Hawke

Inter: R Prentice, F Gaynor

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