This article appeared in SEN Inside Football's July Issue. Subscribe today!
Western Australian football talent flourished in the VFL’s west in 1985.
Footscray could call on back pocket Brad Hardie, ruckman Andrew Purser, full forward Simon Beasley, tall utility Jim Sewell, flanker Ian Williams and rover Tony Buhagiar.
And there was a seventh Sandgroper at the Scrays, a speedy wingman who answered to “Shorty”.
Allen Daniels is remembered as much for his off-field antics as for his wing play, which helped lift the Bulldogs to the preliminary final, there to be beaten by Hawthorn in a classic match at Waverley Park.
Mention Daniels to Footscray players and officials from the time and you’ll most likely get a chuckle and some stories prefaced with “you probably can’t use this in print…”
One concerned him approaching an opposition coach at quarter time and ribbing him about his marital problems. A Footscray teammate was apparently involved. We can’t use it in print.
Daniels was a card.
Brothers Shane and Gary O’Sullivan were both involved at Footscray in 1985, Shane as general manager and Gary as development officer, and both used the word “cheeky” to describe Daniels, who stood a not-so-short 181cm.
“Shorty Daniels? Gee, where do you start?” Shane O’Sullivan said.
“Bit of a different sort of character, Shorty. He was a good clubperson, I thought, in my time there, and certainly helped us get better and to make that 1985 finals series.
“He was lippy, no doubt about it. Lippy, cheeky, that sort of thing. Real character around the club.”
But the O’Sullivans also remarked upon his football ability.
A right-footer with attacking instincts, Daniels could run, was a long kick—he often surprised backlines with ground-gobbling torpedo punts to the top of the square—and was fond of a goal.
At Footscray, he was part of a fabulous centre line: Steve Wallis in the middle, and Doug Hawkins and Daniels on the wings, with Michael McLean taking a turn on it, too.
“Very good player, Shorty Daniels,” Hawkins told Inside Football. “I speak very highly of his football ability. Highly skilled on both sides.”
Beasley noted: “He was a serious player, Allen. He was a very good contributor for us. Good man, too. Great personality.”
Just as Daniels was elusive on the ground, he’s hard to catch off it.
Keen to speak to “Shorty” about his short but successful and colourful time in league football, Inside Football spent weeks trying to track him down. Contact was made with his former clubs, teammates and writers.
Four phone numbers didn’t pan out. “Believe he’s still in Bunbury but someone said he might be (in) rural Victoria,” was one message. Another suggested he was working part-time as a librarian after finishing up as a teacher. Hawkins said he’d been told Daniels married a nurse and was living in Collie, WA. He cannot recall seeing him in 30 years. In 2015 Footscray had a reunion of 1985 players and Daniels was a no-show.
The last time he was in the news was in December, 2013. The West Australian reported that Daniels, a PE teacher, had been removed from a high school for what a WA Education Department spokesman described as “inappropriate comments and confrontational behaviour”.
Shane O’Sullivan last saw him in 2009, when Carlton played Fremantle in a practice match at Bunbury.
“He had less hair than he had but he was his same cheeky, chirpy self,” he said.
Daniels had played in Claremont’s 1981 premiership under Graham Moss and in WAFL representative teams before joining the Bulldogs at the age of 25 in 1985.
Wearing No.11, he made his VFL debut at Princes Park against Carlton, had 21 possessions and was named in the best as the Dogs beat the Blues by five goals. Beasley had a day out, kicking nine goals (the launching pad to a century he reached in the semi final against North Melbourne).
Hardie and Michael Ford were also on debut against the Blues.
Ford won’t forget running through the banner and “being hit by a massive wall of sound”.
“‘Shorty’ turned around as we were running across centre half forward and he said to me, ‘This is why we’re here, this is why we play!’” Ford said. “
And I’ve looked at him and I thought, ‘He’s dead right.’ He had a really good knack for being able to point out those sort of things. Ripper bloke.”
The following week against North Melbourne, Daniels had 26 touches and kicked three goals. He set his standards early as a Bulldog and he maintained them: in 13 matches he had at least 20 disposals.
Shane O’Sullivan remembered the Round 9 match against Hawthorn at Princes Park as much for Daniels’s horseplay as his good play.
The players were out watching the reserve grade game when someone asked him if he was “ready to go”.
Daniels replied that he’d had a big night, didn’t get much sleep and was feeling unwell. So, no, he wasn’t ready to go.
A board member overheard the conversation and marched over to O’Sullivan. “Did you know Allen Daniels was out on the drink last night?” he asked.
“Look, I just think he’s having a lend of everyone, he’s a practical joker,” O’Sullivan replied. He had seen it before. “He was always up to some sort of mischief, Shorty,” O’Sullivan recalled. “He wasn’t a hard person to control or anything but sometimes he said or did something at the wrong time.”
But he did little wrong on the field. In the semi final against North Melbourne, Hawkins remembered how Daniels “smothered a ball off the boot and picked it up and kicked a big drop punt through”.
“He had good skills on both sides of the body, but couldn’t mark over his head,” Hawkins wrote in his book My Story, Both Sides of the Fence. “I think he lacked confidence in his own marking ability.”
But in that semi against the Roos he took 10 grabs, booted two goals and gathered 19 kicks and two handballs.
He was quiet in the engrossing preliminary final a week later against Hawthorn. But it’s fair to say he came to life on the end-of-season trip made famous by “Captain” Robert Groenewegen commandeering the PA system and declaring the US-bound plane was about to go down.
Hawkins wrote in his book that Daniels and Buhagiar took wheelchairs from a plane that had touched down in Fiji and raced each other on a ramp.
There was also a reference to Daniels threatening to “bend over” a steward if he didn’t get a beer with his breakfast.
Hawkins told Inside Football that Daniels “thought he was Sugar Ray Leonard when he’d had a few beers”.
“He was a bit wild on the drink, but he wasn’t alone there,” he said.
Ford said: “Yeah, he was well known for his ability to play as hard off the field as he played on the field.”
But Footscray had already seen Daniels’ best. Where he played all 24 senior games in 1985, he managed only eight in 1986, bothered by groin problems. Hawkins seemed to think he also found trouble with coach Mick Malthouse, remarking “I don’t know what happened with him and Malthouse…”
Daniels was linked with a move to the start-up Brisbane Bears, where O’Sullivan had gone as general manager.
Nothing eventuated and so he returned to the WAFL, first to Claremont, then Perth, finishing up at the end of 1988.
Ford said he was disappointed to see Daniels leave the Bulldogs.
“I can remember thinking, ‘Gee, he’s gone early, he’s gone really early’,” he said.
“I felt there was still plenty in him. He just needed to settle and get himself right. He just needed to be a bit more patient. I think that was part of the mystique with Shorty, that he was a bit impatient.”