Kingsway Olympic secured their first major trophy in the most dramatic of style on this day 46 years ago. Heading into the final round of the 1978 season, Olympic trailed league leaders Spearwood Dalmatinac on points and goal difference. Given no chance of making up that ground, they decided to buck the odds and toppled Spearwood 5-2 – four of those goals coming from Len Dundo – to be presented with the Marlboro Shield as First Division champions.
It proved to be the catalyst for the most successful period in Olympic’s history as, in little over two years, they twice topped Division One, claimed victory on Grand Final day three times and hoisted the Night Series once. “It was a fantastic period to be playing football and Olympic were a terrific club to play for,” commented Derek Watt, a key figure in midfield throughout Olympic’s glory days.
“Many of the players still catch up quite regularly – we’re a band of brothers. When we see each other now we given each other a cuddle, we love talking about what that team achieved. When we to go the club we’re treated like royalty. A lot of the people watching Olympic play now were kids when we were at our peak and they grew up watching us. I’m proud to have been part of that era and the place in history we have as Olympic’s first Premiership side.”
Formed in 1953, Olympic were yet to win a major trophy when John Ward was appointed coach ahead of the 1977 season. In fact, Olympic’s best top flight placing was fourth while their only other notable achievements were a couple of unsuccessful Night Series finals and one D’Orsogna Cup final. So when Ward steered to club to fifth in the league and a Cup semi-final appearance at the first attempt, there was good reason for optimism.
“Olympic had been struggling with relegation for the three or four years before John was appointed,” explained Derek, who joined Olympic the same year as Ward. “In John’s first season we finished mid-table and you could see that things were changing. Out went older players like Bobby Varlow and Vince Radcliffe and in their place came youngsters such as Steve Tombides, Mark Schrandt, Paul Tombides and Arthur Sharp.”
“Training was different too, it was like John had a jigsaw puzzle to solve and we were the pieces. At every training session he has us playing two-touch football. Little triangles, rectangles, one-touch, two-touch, we just played. It took us a while to work it all out but then it clicked and we started playing brilliant football with everyone supporting each other. It was John that instilled that in us.”
Ward didn’t tinker too much with the formula in 1978, his only major recruit being Chris Proctor from Kwinana United. An opening round home loss to Spearwood suggested the local media may have over-estimated when they rated Olympic a “strong possibility of making the top four”. However, they moved on by winning eleven and drawing five of their remaining 17 home and way games thanks to a cohesive playing group.
“Willie McNally was a great goalkeeper but at training when we played two-touch games, you’d want him on your team because he was that competitive, he was a winner,” said Derek. “Steve Tombides came in at the start of 1978, he was only 18, and straight away he was organising the back four. He was like Franz Beckenbauer, he could read the game and pass the ball. Steve was talking to the two full-backs, Keith Blunt and Mark Schrandt, and he had Duncan Hill in front of him.”
“In midfield were myself, Stephen Sceats and Chris Proctor. Three very different players, I like space, Sceatsy’s workrate was second to none and Chris could run and shoot. There were some good midfields at that time and we were as good as any of them. Bill Murray and Len Dundo were up-front, a great combination, with young Paul Tombides or Arthur Sharp switching in and out on the left hand side… we had a balanced side that was playing good football.”
“Around the halfway point of the season we were top of the league but then we had a run where we drew with East Fremantle Tricolore, Ascot and Perth Azzurri. With four games to go it was Spearwood on top, Floreat Athena second and Olympic third. We beat Athena 1-0 and the week after that Dallies beat Athena 2-0 and Athena were then out of the race. So it came down the Dallies and Olympic in the last game of the season.”
Spearwood went into the season finale as red-hot favourites. Top of the table with a two-point buffer and a slightly better goal difference that Olympic, a draw would be enough to send the trophy to Dalmatinac Park the first time. And given Spearwood were riding high after eleven successive wins, it all seemed a foregone conclusion. “Nobody gave us a chance,” recalled Derek. “So we went down to Dallies and beat them 5-2.”
One of the biggest crowds of the season was on hand to see Dundo open his account with an opportunistic close-range finish midway through the first half. Four minutes later Vinko Popovich equalised only for Chris Proctor to restore Olympic’s advantage with a stunning drive from outside the 18-yard box. And in the shadows of half-time Dundo was again the right place at the right time to put away his second of the afternoon.
The game took another twist early in the second half when Stephen Snell’s diving header found the back of the net. Olympic, however, were having none of it and with Sceats bossing the midfield the Green Machine re-asserted themselves. The result was eventually put beyond doubt by Dundo, who netted twice in the closing ten minutes to give Olympic their greatest hour.
“Len was brilliant that day and those four goals gave him the Golden Boot,” Derek recalls. “Dallies’ Frank Smerilli was three goals in front before the game started and Len scored four to overtake him. When we scored the fifth goal there were still eight Olympic players off the park celebrating when they kicked off, someone shouted ‘Don’t let them score as Frank is one goal behind Lenny’ so we all charged back onto the park for the last few minutes.”
“We into the Dallies clubhouse after the game and they were devastated. Our team coach got back to Olympic about 9 o’clock that night and you could not get in the doors. It was jam-packed, people had come from everywhere to be part of it. The crowds we had been getting all season were magnificent. Every man and his dog would come to watch us play and they were all there that night celebrating us winning the league.”
Two weeks later Spearwood exacted revenge with a 3-2 Top Four Cup semi-final defeat of Olympic. The Preliminary Final pitted the Green Machine against Athena, with Murray and Dundo the scorers in a 2-1 win. “So we got to play Dallies again, this time in the Grand Final,” said Derek, whose late strike from distance earnt Olympic a 1-0 victory. “I played every game that year but scored only the one goal – and it was in the final!”
The accolades flowed post-season for Olympic. Dundo’s 15 regular season finishes earnt him the Golden Boot award for the third year in a row, and the sixth overall having won it three times at the start of the decade with Inglewood Kiev. Ward was not surprisingly honoured as Coach of the Year while team captain Sceats was voted the ‘Village Gate’ Player of the Year, an award sponsored by the menswear fashion house.
“At the start of 1979 Olympic represented Western Australia in the Phillips Cup,” Derek added. “We played South Australian champions Cumberland United and beat them 4-1. It was different conditions, it was a muddy park and they were man-mountains but the football we played was absolutely brilliant. In the next round we went back to Adelaide but we weren’t up for it, we were all on different flights and lost 3-1 to Eastern Districts Azzurri.”
While honoured to have played in a national knock-out competition, Derek says the Phillips Cup fixtures had a detrimental effect on Olympic’s league campaign. “It was a distraction,” he asserts. “We travelled to Adelaide and back twice and both times we dropped points on our return. We went through a bit of a bad patch after that as we picked up a lot of knocks and injuries from bad tackles in Adelaide.”
“Chris Proctor got carried off with bad injury over there and when he came back to playing he carried the injury for a while.” A knee ligament tear had put Steve Tombides on the sidelines, the defensive mainstay missing the better part of four months of football. And in early May summer recruit Nick MacCallum was forced out for the reminder of the season having succumbed to an ankle ligament problem.
After a period of adjustment, Olympic got back down to business and a seven-game winning streak – in which they amassed 21 goals without conceding – put them only two points behind leaders Spearwood, who travelled to Kingsway Reserve on the final day of competition. But unlike twelve months earlier, there would be no fairytale finish this time with the visitors holding out for a 2-2 draw to be crowned league champions.
It was a confident Olympic side that booked their place in the Top Four Cup final by edging Spearwood 1-0. The two sides met again a few weeks later in a bruising Grand Final at Perry Lakes Stadium. No one was surprised when Dundo slotted his team into the lead only for a long-range Stephen Snell strike to level proceedings late in the second half. “Bill Murray came off the bench to score the winner for us in extra-time,” recalls Derek.
Olympic added a new piece of silverware to the cabinet in 1980 by going undefeated in the Night Series. The Green Machine were in phenomenal form throughout the pre-season tournament which concluded with Neil Blunt and Neil Garvey scoring in a 2-0 final defeat of Gosnells City. Paul Tombides’ stunning long-range strike in the previous week’s semi-final defeat of Azzurri was voted the goal of the tournament.
That form was carried over into the league which Olympic opened with a seven-game unbeaten run. “1980 was an even younger side with the likes of Ian Sinclair and Steve Callaghan Turner coming in,” Derek commented. “It was good to have these young guys in there as it gave us older players a bit of a boost. They kept us fit and we taught them how to play as a team, there was mutual respect.”
“We scored a lot of goals at home that season. We thrashed Tricolore 8-0, a few weeks later we knocked over Azzurri 6-1 and we played West Perth Macedonia and Stirling Cracovia back-to-back and put ten goals past them combined. We were on fire.” When the final whistle sounded on the season it was Olympic that sat top of the table, level on points with Spearwood but with a vastly superior goal difference. Amazingly, they had used just 15 players across 18 games.
“We beat Dallies in the semi-final of the Top Four Cup, wiped the floor with them 4-0, and then Azzurri knocked them out,” Derek said of the end of season play-offs. In blustery conditions at Dorrien Gardens, Dundo played the starring role by bagging a hat-trick in a 3-1 victory over Azzurri. At the post-season awards Dundo collected a record seventh Golden Boot while Ward was named Coach of the Year for a third successive time.
Another Division One championship gave Olympic a second chance at the Philips Cup. “We put a reasonable performance up against Adelaide City but lost 3-0 in front of a big crowd,” Derek reflected on a game played at Hindmarsh Stadium. “We weren’t the same Olympic though. By the time of that game John Ward had moved to Queensland to be the Director of Coaching and Azzurri had lured Willie McNally and the Tombides boys away to play for them.”
“Mike Leigh came in as coach for 1981 and brought in a different system. We finished third but the bubble had burst. Lenny took over as coach the following year and we finished mid-table. By then we had lost too many players from those golden years.” Derek continued playing for Olympic until work commitments took him to the Pilbara. These days, if you hear a broad Glaswegian accent on game day at Kingsway Reserve, it’s likely to be Derek.
