Robert James Dawson (3 January 1921 – 31 July 2023) 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 St Kilda F.C. 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).

Biography

Dawson came from Elmore and spent just one year at St Kilda, playing four games in the

1941 VFL season The 1941 VFL season was the 45th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 26 April until 27 September, and comprised an ...

.AFL Tables: Bob Dawson
/ref> The following year, he enlisted in the

Australian Army The Australian Army is the principal Army, land warfare force of Australia, a part of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal Australian Air Force. The Army is commanded by the Chief of Army (Austral ...

and served overseas during the war. He had considerable success in country football, with

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 ...

awards in three different Victorian leagues. In 1946, the same year he returned from the war, he played for Elmore in the Bendigo Football League and won the Michelsen Medal. He then coached

Tongala Tongala is a town in the Goulburn Valley region of northern Victoria, Australia. The town is in the Shire of Campaspe local government area, between Kyabram and Echuca, north of the state capital, Melbourne. At the , Tongala had a population of ...

in the Goulburn Valley Football League, where he was awarded a Morrison Medal in 1950. Dawson coached Tongala Football Club Thirds for 18 years and the Goulburn Valley Football League Thirds premiership trophy is called the Dawson Cup. He turned 100 in 2021. Dawson died on 31 July 2023, at the age of 102.

References

1921 births 2023 deaths Australian rules footballers from Victoria (state) St Kilda Football Club players Tongala Football Club players Australian Army personnel of World War II Australian Army soldiers Australian centenarians Men centenarians {{AFL-bio-1920s-stub