WA footy’s most remarkable story
It didn’t appear to be a mistake at the time. And Gerard Neesham is adamant that not only was it not a mistake, it was the making of Peter Bell.thewest.com.au
WA Footy 101: The making of Fremantle Dockers and North Melbourne champion Peter Bell
John Townsend
The West Australian
Saturday, 11 April 2020
It didn’t appear to be a mistake at the time.
And Gerard Neesham is adamant that not only was it not a mistake, it was the making of Peter Bell.
Bell was the first player signed by AFL newcomers Fremantle and an 19-year-old member of the inaugural team in 1995.
But he would play only two games that season before the Fremantle coach decided that Bell was too slow and too short for a game plan based on pace, skill and the innovative ball-control measures that had helped him steer Claremont to four premierships in the previous eight years.
“If you were talking about horses, I would put Belly in the class of an immature two-year-old who hadn’t shown any form at that point,” Neesham said.
“As Phar Lap’s trainer said, there is no point throwing good money after bad.
“I hold him in the highest regard as a person and a player but at that time, as we were going into our second year, we needed players who could have an immediate impact.
“We were chasing players with real pace who could cover the ground so we could put on defensive pressure. Peter didn’t fit that requirement at the time and so we let him go.
“It is a credit to him that he overcame that disappointment, took his opportunity and developed into an outstanding player who had such a significant impact when he returned to the club years later.”
The story of Peter Bell, the adopted Korean boy who would urge his 175cm frame through 338 senior matches for his original club South Fremantle, in two stints at Fremantle, as a key figure in North Melbourne’s golden period and for his State, is one of the most remarkable in football history.
Asked when he signed at Fremantle whether it was the biggest moment of his brief football career, Bell responded wryly: “It is probably the biggest moment of my life.”
It had been an eventful life to that point and would have numerous more memorable chapters. Bell was born in Korea but adopted by Australian missionaries Jo and Kevin Bell who returned to Kojonup where their football-obsessed son would flourish and eventually rise to a starring role on the biggest sporting stage in the country.
Bell’s achievements didn’t come easily but driven by his remorseless desire to stride that stage, they came in number.
Drafted at 18. Discarded at 19. Premiership player at 20. Fairest and best winner. Club captain. Hall of fame member at State and national level. And now an insightful and influential administrator shaping Fremantle’s future.
Peter Bell was a premiership player at just 20 years old.Credit: Iain Gillespie/WA News
“I have to pinch myself sometimes that a child adopted out of Korea made his living playing the indigenous Australian game,” Bell reflected when he was inducted to the WA Football Hall of Fame in 2013.
A strategic thinker from his earliest days in the game, Bell did not nominate for the 1993 draft and opted to play a full season for South Fremantle in the hope of being an inaugural Docker. That dream eventuated but Bell’s Fremantle days were numbered as his ambition clashed with the plans of a pragmatic coach.
Enter Denis Pagan, the North Melbourne coach who was alerted to Bell’s fate by South Fremantle stalwart Bob Maumill and soon convinced the youngster to make his way to Melbourne for a trial.
Paranoid about his prize being identified and tempted to go elsewhere, Pagan ordered Bell to introduce himself to curious observers as his “cousin Ricky from Wangaratta” until he could get him on to the North Melbourne books.
Then followed an exceptional period for North and Bell whose running power was matched by his ability to find the ball.
“It was the right place at the right time for him,” Neesham said. “He was well suited to Pagan’s strict rules and a system where they basically kicked it to Wayne Carey and he either marked it or the little blokes got to the drop of the ball.
“Belly was a good acquisition for North Melbourne and given what he learnt there, and how he matured as a player and person and leader, he was a great acquisition for Fremantle when he came back.”
Bell won two flags at North, lost another grand final and missed only two matches in five seasons.
Yet Fremantle remained an itch that needed scratching and Bell returned to WA in 2001, a season when the club won only two matches. But it wasn’t long until the Dockers played their first finals campaign, the start of a highly competitive period.
Bell captained the club for five seasons, won two Doig medals to go with his Barker Medal at the Kangaroos and fitted comfortably into the role as the elder statesman of WA football.
He spent a farewell season at South Fremantle in 2009, playing for nothing as a tribute to the club that gave him a start, but repaid the Bulldogs by using his experience to guide younger teammates to the premiership.
Bell’s career had come full circle, though it was a journey that Neesham acknowledged would have followed another path had he made a different decision in 1995.
“There is no way I would have tipped him out if I had known how good he would become,” Neesham said.
Mrs. H. quite chuffed when l told her the ding-dong Belly story before her first game.
