Allan William Thomas "Alan" Crawford (21 January 1916 – 28 March 1988) 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 oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...
er who played with
North Melbourne
North Melbourne is an inner-city suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, north-west of Melbourne's Central Business District, located within the City of Melbourne local government area. North Melbourne recorded a population of 14,953 at the ...
in the
Victorian Football League
The Victorian Football League (VFL) is an Australian rules football league in Australia serving as one of the second-tier regional semi-professional competitions which sit underneath the fully professional Australian Football League (AFL). It ...
(VFL).
Career
Crawford, a former Carlton seconds player, had a stop-start career in the VFL, starting with a stint from 1936 to 1938. During the early war years he played for
South Adelaide
The South Adelaide Football Club is an Australian rules football club that competes in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL). Known as the ''Panthers'', their home ground is Flinders University Stadium A follower, Crawford won North Melbourne's
best and fairest
In Australian sport, the best and fairest award recognises the player(s) adjudged to have had the best performance in a game or over a season for a given sporting club or competition. The awards are sometimes dependent on not receiving a suspensi ...
award in 1944. He was playing coach of Launceston in 1946 and coached another Tasmanian club,
Penguin
Penguins (order (biology), order List of Sphenisciformes by population, Sphenisciformes , family (biology), family Spheniscidae ) are a group of Water bird, aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: on ...
, in 1947, before returning to North Melbourne in 1948, for two final seasons.