Maxwell Joseph Tetley (22 April 1909 – 9 February 1997) 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 the
West Perth Football Club
The West Perth Football Club, nicknamed the Falcons, is an Australian rules football club located in Joondalup, Western Australia. West Perth competes in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and WAFL Women's (WAFLW) and is the oldest exis ...
in the
Western Australian National Football League
The West Australian Football League (WAFL) is an Australian rules football league based in Perth, Western Australia. The league currently consists of ten teams, which play each other in a 20-round season usually lasting from March to September, ...
(WANFL). A defender, he played 210 games for the club between
the 1931 and
1941 seasons, playing in the team’s 1932, 1934, 1935 and 1941 premiership sides.
Tetley played a trial match for
East Fremantle
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
in 1930 after being recruited from amateur club North Fremantle, but when Cardinals president Alec Breckler offered Tetley employment and he was cleared immediately. Tetley wasted no time establishing himself, for he was named West Perth’s best first-year player
in 1931 and a key member of their drought-breaking premiership team
the following season, when he also won his only Breckler Medal for the club’s fairest-and-best.
In the following season, Tetley played for Western Australia in the
1933 Sydney Carnival
The 1933 Sydney Carnival was the eighth edition of the Australian National Football Carnival, an Australian rules football interstate competition. The carnival was held in Sydney over an eleven-day period between Wednesday 2 August and Saturday ...
, and was to play fourteen games for his State over the following six seasons. His reputation as a hard and strong defender grew over the years, and Tetley was a crucial factor in holding East Fremantle and
Subiaco to extremely modest scores in the
1934
Events
January–February
* January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established.
* January 15 – The 8.0 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake, Nepal–Bihar earthquake strik ...
and
1935 Grand Finals, which produced as of 2014 the Cardinals’ only back-to-back premierships.
Although the following five seasons were extremely lean for the club, Tetley maintained his reputation as a tough defender so well that he captained the State team in 1937 and 1938, besides being captain-coach of the Cardinals
in 1938 and 1939. However, Tetley’s two years in charge of West Perth were an unmitigated disaster, with the Cardinals winning a total of four matches and finishing a clear last both seasons – in the process suffering the equal-worst
losing streak
''Losing Streak'' is the second studio album by ska punk band Less Than Jake, released on November 12, 1996 on Capitol Records. The album was recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida and Mirror Image Studios in Gainesville, Florida, bo ...
in WANFL history. The club suffered severely from the retirement of
Ted Flemming and the loss of future champion
Wally Buttsworth
Wallace Francis Buttsworth (21 January 1917 – 22 May 2002) was an Australian rules footballer who played for Essendon in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
Family
Wally had 2 younger brothers Fred and Brian Buttsworth. Fred Buttsworth was ...
, along with a crippling run of injuries. Tetley continued to play
in 1940 under future politician
Ross Hutchinson
Sir Ross Hutchinson, DFC (10 September 1914 – 19 December 1999) was an Australian rules footballer, coach and politician. He played for and coached East Fremantle, West Perth and South Fremantle in the West Australian National Football Leag ...
, but like his contemporary
Tyson
Tyson is a male given name of old French origin meaning 'high-spirited', 'fire'. It is from this that a surname arose 'son of Tyson'.
Surname
*Alan Tyson (1926–2000), British musicologist
*Barbara Tyson (born 1964), Canadian actress
*Bill Tyso ...
contemplated retirement
in 1941 before staying on and helping a Cardinal team rebuilt with young players like
Stan Heal
Stanley "Pops" Heal (30 July 1920 – 15 December 2010) was an Australian rules footballer who played for Melbourne in the Victorian Football League (VFL) as well as West Perth in the West Australian National Football League (WANFL) during the ...
, Bill Kingsbury and “Spike” Pola to a surprise premiership win over East Fremantle.
With the WANFL competition restricted to players under eighteen from 1942 to 1944, Tetley was forced into retirement and, unlike Tyson and a number of other pre-war stars, did not make any comeback after the war.
Tetley died in
Mount Hawthorn
Mount is often used as part of the name of specific mountains, e.g. Mount Everest.
Mount or Mounts may also refer to:
Places
* Mount, Cornwall, a village in Warleggan parish, England
* Mount, Perranzabuloe, a hamlet in Perranzabuloe parish, C ...
, a northern suburb of Perth, in 1997, aged 87. In 2004, he was an inaugural member of the Western Australian Football Hall of Fame.
Maxwell Joseph TETLEY
– WA Football Hall of Fame.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Tetley, Max
1909 births
1997 deaths
Australian rules footballers from Fremantle
Sportsmen from Western Australia
West Perth Football Club coaches
West Perth Football Club players
West Australian Football Hall of Fame inductees