It was appropriate half way through the AFL’s highly successful Gather Round in Adelaide that I finished a book about a great of South Australian football. An outlaw. An under recognised footballer Jack Dyer said was the most talented he ever saw.
I first heard about Jack Broadstock when researching for my book Gravel Rash: 100 Years of Goldfields Football. My dad’s mate and Boulder City Football Club stalwart Ray Crannage told me the story of a trip to Adelaide and the audacious recruitment of an SA great to be captain coach of the Tigers in 1948.
Broadstock led Boulder to the Goldfields Football League premiership and was never to be forgotten – for his deeds on and off the football field.
In 1990 I did something it seems few others did when I conducted an interview with Broadstock at his beloved West Adelaide Football Club. He was in a somewhat confessional mood…
They’ve been good to me wherever I’ve been, but I’m not hard to get on with. I might kick up a bit, but I never take anyone with me, I get out on my own. If I wanted to have a drink I’d sneak away on my own and have a drink, the Boulder Block was my pet favourite, I used to get out there of a night. I’ve been no prude all my life, put it that way.
In The Trials of Jack Broadstock, author Michael Sexton tells of Broadstock the footballer… many said he was ahead of his time – big, highly skilled, agile and elusive like a thoroughly modern midfielder like Cripps, Martin, Bontempelli or Fyfe. He was a premiership player with Dyer at Richmond in 1943 and a star with West Adelaide and West Torrens.
Off the field things were different. Late in life Broadstock joked that he never really worked. He was an SP bookie, a gambler, a schemer, was banned from racetracks and spent time in jail. He was also known for his incredible generosity both in the community and with younger footballers.
The Trials of Jack Broadstock by Michael Sexton is a footy book like no other just as its subject was a player like no other.
The book is published by Sportswords you can buy it here The Trials of Jack Broadstock
But a many a starvin’ farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.
Well, you say that I’m an outlaw,
You say that I’m a thief.
Here’s a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.
Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie. The title of this story is the opening line from the song.
australianrules.com.au 
The legend of Jack Broadstock when he coached Boulder City Football Club 1948. He organised to back the opposition which was gladly accepted by bookies that were associated to the team he wanted to bet on Mines Rovers. He dropped four of his best players, his team’s only defeat for the year, Came to the Grandfinal a player he owed money to Jack wrote his name on the board dropping the regular wingman, the rest of the team let him know they wouldn’t run out to play, They reckoned he changed his mind at the deathknock . They won the grandfinal. Big gambler the call was from old-timers I knew.