Last year, Tim Giles was made a life member of the Melbourne University Football Club. Prior to being bestowed with this honour, by his own reckoning Gilesy has fulfilled a wide variety of roles at Uni Blues: player (1986-1993, including a season as captain of the Under 19’s in 1987), “occasional drunken Pavvy lout” (1994-2001), coach of the Under 19 team (2002-2004), “fat and slow forward pocket in Clubbies” (2005-2006), coach of the Reserves team (2007) and team manager of the Club 18 team (2008).
The best player that Gilesy took to the field with at Blues was Mark McCarty: “just kept getting the ball”. His most memorable moment as a player occurred during an Under 19 game in 1987 when a police car “complete with siren” arrived at the Crawford Oval to call off a game versus Old Xavs at half time because the then coach Bob Girdwood had “told the park ranger to get stuffed”. “The ground had been closed due to wet weather. We were in front too.”
As a coach, the best player that Gilesy encountered was a likely looking recruit hailing from Donald named Ross Young: “He showed up the Thursday night before the first game. I played him in the back pocket. He kicked 4 goals. Goal kicking back pockets are hard to find.” Ross followed this auspicious debut by going on to win the Senior Best & Fairest in Uni Blues’ 2004 premiership season before making a handful of senior AFL appearances in a Carlton jumper.
Gilesy recalls a memorable incident from the coaching box when he deployed his trusty runner, Graham “Haza” Hazeldine. “Haza called the Old Brighton full forward a wanker as he made to line up from inside the centre square on an arctic day at the Beach Oval. It was a tight game and from memory I may have added a few choice words of my own as the Brighton guy preened and posed. Well, the bottle blonde bombshell went nuts - ranting and raving and threatening. Teammates restrained him. Finally, still yelling insults, he went back and drilled a torpedo straight through the middle into a howling gale. It was just after half time. He then proceeded to give us all a lengthy spray after each of his 9 subsequent goals. We had been 9 points up at half time. Then we fired him up. We lost by five goals.”
Gilesy has fond memories of Spa Pavvy (“the ultimate Pavvy”) and along with his recent life membership, he lists the highlights of his time at Uni Blues as winning the Blues Revue with Justin Jamieson in the early 90’s, coaching the 2003 U19 Grand Final team (“we lost but we were stiff”) and helping the Clubbies win the 2008 flag.
Gilesy currently runs a marketing agency, Sagital Media (www.sagitalmedia.com), specialising in online marketing and running websites.
