Lance W. Oswald (18 February 1937 – 20 March 2019) 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 for

St Kilda Football Club The St Kilda Football Club, nicknamed the Saints, is a professional Australian rules football club based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, Victoria. The club plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), the sport's premier league. The club ...

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

Oswald originally played for South Wanderers Junior Football Club in the Wangaratta Junior Football League (WJFL), winning the Under 18 WJFL best and fairest in 1950, before making his senior football debut with

Wangaratta Wangaratta ( ) is a city in the northeast of Victoria, Australia, from Melbourne along the Hume Highway. The city had an estimated urban population of 19,318 at June 2018. Wangaratta has recorded a population growth rate of almost 1% annually ...

in the

Ovens & Murray Football League The Ovens and Murray Football Netball League (O&MFNL) is an Australian rules football and netball competition containing ten clubs based in north-eastern Victoria, the southern Riverina region of New South Wales and the Ovens and Murray are ...

(O&MFL) in 1953. After a standout 1957 season, where he won the league goal-kicking award, shared the O&MFL

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 ...

, represented the O&MFL in the Victorian country football championships, and then kicked the winning goal for Wangaratta against North Albury in the 1957 O&MFL grand final. Oswald was then recruited by

(VFL) side, St Kilda. He played as a roaming centreman for the Saints, and was considered the best in the state in that position from 1960 to 1961 when he also won two best and fairests. Oswald decided to leave St. Kilda after the

1963 VFL season The 1963 VFL season was the 67th season of the Victorian Football League (VFL), the highest level senior Australian rules football competition in Victoria. The season featured twelve clubs, ran from 20 April until 5 October, and comprised an 18- ...

and was captain / coach of

Strathmerton Strathmerton is a town in Victoria, Australia. It is located in the Shire of Moira local government area on the Murray Valley Highway and Goulburn Valley Highway, about west of Cobram. At the , Strathmerton had a population of 1072. History ...

for nine years, leading them to the 1964

Murray Football League The Murray Football Netball League is an Australian rules football and netball league affiliated with the Victorian Country Football League. The league covers a large area of northern Victoria and southern New South Wales from Shepparton in the ...

premiership and playing 210 games and finally retiring as a player at aged 37 in 1974! He was later named on the wing in St Kilda's Team of the Century and was inducted into the St Kilda Hall of Fame in 2008.

References

External links

St Kilda Hall of Fame profileOswald, Far from the madding crowd
Trevor Barker Award winners St Kilda Football Club players 1937 births 2019 deaths People from Wangaratta Australian rules footballers from Victoria (Australia) Wangaratta Football Club players {{AFL-bio-1930s-stub