Bruce Brown

Recruited from Essex Heights, Bruce Brown was a tall utility best known as the son of legendary football journalist and Hall of Fame inductee Alf Brown. Despite a promising junior career that included a Melbourne Under-19s Best and Fairest, Brown found himself stuck between levels at the Demons; he dominated the lower grades to share the 1971 Gardiner Medal for the league’s best reserves player but managed only six senior appearances that season. One of the rare VFL footballers to play whilst wearing glasses, he crossed to Essendon in 1972 in search of greater opportunities but added just a single game to his tally. Brown eventually forged a solid VFA career with Port Melbourne and Brunswick, though his time in football was briefly interrupted in the late 1970s by vision problems that were eventually solved by the advent of contact lenses.