Joe Shelley

A product of the elite Geelong and Melbourne Grammar schools, Joe Shelley was a gifted all-round sportsman who earned a coveted "Double Blue" in cricket and football while studying medicine at Ormond College. He played four seasons for University, managing to hit the scoreboard regularly for the Students during the club's final, difficult years in the VFL before they disbanded in 1914. His football career was effectively ended by the outbreak of the Great War, where he enlisted in the Australian Army Medical Corps and later moved to Jerusalem to practice medicine. Shelley is perhaps best remembered by historians for a tragic event after his playing days; while visiting Victoria in 1925, he was the sole survivor of a horrific level-crossing collision at Bayswater that claimed the lives of four others, including tea tycoon James Griffiths.