Ernest Edward "Bert" Smedley (1 April 1905 – 30 November 1979) was an

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an Australian rules football playing field, oval field, often a modified ...

er who played for St Kilda in the

Victorian Football League The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football competition in Australia operated by the Australian Football League (AFL) as a second-tier, regional, semi-professional competition. It includes teams from clubs based in east ...

(VFL) during the late 1920s. Smedley debuted in the

1928 VFL season The 1928 VFL season was the 32nd season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs and ran from 21 April to 29 September, comprising an 18 ...

and finished the year with exactly 50 goals, a tally which included six goal haul in just his second VFL game and a high of eight goals which he kicked in a win over North Melbourne at Arden Street. The Castlemaine recruit was involved in a controversial incident in St Kilda's round 17 encounter with Melbourne. In the dying seconds, a pass from

Horrie Mason Angus Thomas 'Horrie' Mason (30 April 1903 – 23 August 1975) was an Australian rules footballer who played with St Kilda in the Victorian Football League (VFL) during the 1920s. Originally from Tasmania where he had been a premiership p ...

had found Smedley, who played on and was running into an open goals when the bell rang. The umpire however had failed to hear it and only after Smedley had kicked the goal, which put his team one point up, did the game end. Melbourne unsuccessfully appealed the result but the win wasn't enough to put St Kilda into the finals as they missed out through percentage. During the 1929 season Smedley transferred to Prahran and then, in 1930, Smedley was appointed as Captain / Coach of the

Corowa Football Club The Corowa Football Club, nicknamed the Spiders, was an Australian rules football club based in Corowa, New South Wales, that competed in the Ovens & Murray Football League. The club merged with the Wahgunyah Football Club on several occasions ...

in the

Ovens and Murray Football League The Ovens and Murray Football Netball League (OMFNL or O&MFNL) is an Australian rules football and netball competition containing ten clubs based in north-eastern Victoria, Australia, Victoria, the southern Riverina region of New South Wales ...

, before being cleared back to Prahran in April 1931.

References

External links

*
Bert Smedley's playing statistics
from The VFA Project 1905 births Australian rules footballers from Melbourne Castlemaine Football Club players St Kilda Football Club players Prahran Football Club players 1979 deaths People from Richmond, Victoria 20th-century Australian sportsmen {{AFL-bio-1905-stub