Ian Peter Thomson (born 6 September 1949) is a former

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 with

South Melbourne South Melbourne is an inner suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, south of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Port Phillip local government area. South Melbourne recorded a population of 11,548 at the 2021 ...

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). He also played for

East Perth East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that eas ...

and

East Fremantle East is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the fact that eas ...

in the

West Australian Football League The West Australian Football League (WAFL "waffle" or "W-A-F-L") is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting f ...

(WAFL). Thomson, a key position player, started his career at East Perth in 1967. He represented

Western Australia Western Australia (WA) is the westernmost state of Australia. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east, and South Australia to the south-east. Western Aust ...

in an interstate match against Victoria at

Subiaco Oval Subiaco Oval (; nicknamed Subi) was a sports stadium in Perth, Western Australia, located in the suburb of Subiaco, Western Australia, Subiaco. It was opened in 1908 and closed in 2017 after the completion of the new Perth Stadium in Burswood, ...

on 17 July 1971. Before the beginning of the 1973 VFL season, Thomson was in talks to join Fitzroy, but was signed by South Melbourne. He played 20 games in his first year, as a

centre half-back In the sport of Australian rules football, the half-back line refers to the positions of the 3 players on the field that occupy the centre half-back and left and right half-back flank positions. Centre half-back The role of the centre half-bac ...

. In 1974 he appeared in all 22 rounds and took a club high 120 marks. Used up forward for much of the year, Thomson also kicked 24 goals. He broke an ankle bone in a 1975 pre-season practice match, which kept him out of the side until round five, then towards the end of the season suffered a knee injury, which restricted him to 13 games that season. The next year he played 19 games and had a six-goal haul against St Kilda at Moorabbin Oval. In 1977 and 1978, Thomson was back at East Perth. He was only playing suburban football early in the 1979 season when he got recruited by East Fremantle, where he was used as a forward. It was at

full-forward Full-forward is a position in Australian rules football and Gaelic football with a key focus on kicking goals. The Coleman Medal is awarded to the player, often a full-forward, who has kicked the most goals in an Australian Football League seaso ...

that he kicked four goals for East Fremantle in their 1979 WANFL Grand Final win over South Fremantle. With prolific goal scoring teammate Kevin Taylor at South Melbourne, Thomson topped East Fremantle's goal-kicking in 1981.

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* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Thomson, Ian 1949 births Australian rules footballers from Western Australia Sydney Swans players East Perth Football Club players East Fremantle Football Club players Living people 20th-century Australian sportsmen