Fifty years after he first played for Geelong, Mick Turner’s immense contribution to football drew to a close last month when Lorne won the Colac and District premiership. In a nice parting touch, he watched the grand final with Charlie Curnow, one of the 134 men and women he helped get drafted over an incredible 25-year stint running the Geelong Falcons.
He turns 70 in December, a milestone that seemed distant when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer last February and given as little as six months to live. He’s not afraid of dying, only of losing the quality of what’s been a very full life.
Mick Turner, the Geelong Falcons legend, has an eye for picking AFL talent.Credit: Jason South
“I can get emotional about some things, [talking about] my dad or the Falcons kids,” he says. “But in my own regard I’m very realistic and pretty resilient.”
Staring down your mortality can prompt introspection, which in Turner’s case is typically candid. In his playing days he was “fiery”, “not politically savvy”, “a lad”. After retiring, in media gigs with the Geelong Advertiser and K-Rock radio, “I was too brutally honest.”
His self-awareness is disarming. “Yeah, I know who I am.”
In youthful daydreams he danced to different beats. Turner was a gifted childhood athlete but never a “footy head”. He was in a couple of bands and would have taken playing drums for David Bowie, or surfing alongside his idol Wayne Lynch, over Kardinia Park and the MCG in a heartbeat. “The only reason I went to football is I was good at it.”
Mick Turner, the Geelong Falcons legend discovered more than 100 champion AFL players.Credit: Jason South
Father Leo, who occupies the opposite wing to Mick in Geelong’s team of the century, coached Warrnambool after retiring and his son spent three forgettable years boarding at Monivae College in Hamilton. Puberty arrived late; he was small, bullied and couldn’t get a game in the school footy team.
Back in Warrnambool he did Year 12 twice (“I got distracted by surfing and stuff – there were girls at the school”), and when Geelong sent him home to grow some more after the 1973 pre-season, he worked at Leo’s auto business and was runner-up in the Hampden league’s Maskell Medal aged 18.
His memory is vivid – of weighing just 64 kilograms when the Cats recruited him the next season; being miffed when they left him in the reserves for the first three games; walking to the ground with his mum from his grandparents’ house in nearby Sharp St to play his first senior game in round four against St Kilda.
The Cats lost, but named the debutant their best player. Up in the social rooms with his parents, Turner was hoisted onto a table and introduced to a crowd that would love him for 14 seasons and 245 games.
An early ankle injury frustrated him; he recalls his dad taking a phone call from Bob Davis: “We’re having trouble with Michael, his attitude’s shithouse.” And the subsequent father-son chat about the choice he faced – of being a big fish in a small pond, or working hard to be a big fish in football’s biggest pond.
“So we knuckled down.”
Two late-career stints as Geelong captain showcased organisational strengths, regularly having teammates around for dinner and going through video that he recorded and edited off TV when VCRs were king. In a sliding-doors moment he might have been made coach when Malcolm Blight was appointed in 1989. “I had the briefcase, did the presentation.”
Instead, Turner had a season in charge of Werribee then went back to teaching.
Mike Turner (Geelong) breaks away from Tom Alvin (Carlton) at VFL Park in 1987.
A quarter-of-a-century ride began when former Cats’ CEO Ken Gannon, by then head of AFL Victoria, phoned and said, “Against my better judgment you’re going to be appointed talent manager of the Geelong Falcons.” Initially the only full-timer, he surrounded himself with good people and let them shine.
Retracing his journey awakens endless stories, like the bloke who turned up keen to be involved and Turner pointing him to some water bottles that needed filling. At length he discovered Dean Pearce was an army veteran who’d been inside war rooms in the Middle East. He became the Falcons’ footy manager.
“I remember Bruce McAvaney saying one day, ‘Geez Mick, you get more publicity than Patty Dangerfield!’” he says of the attention the Falcons garnered. Brian Taylor’s “Geelong Falcons Footy Academy” became cliche. Regular BT mentions during telecasts of how many alumni were playing invariably came via Turner firing off text messages from his couch.
Each year he’d stand in front of 100 starry-eyed kids at their Highton headquarters and tell them, “The only person who can get you drafted is you – we can only help.” That so many did is a source of pride, but so too are those who simply became the best players they could be. When Colac played St Mary’s in the Geelong league grand final a couple of years ago, he counted 30 who had been Falcons.
When he watches AFL it’s with blinkers. “If I put Carlton v Hawthorn on it’s to watch Sam Walsh and James Worpel.” If Walsh succeeds Patrick Cripps, Turner’s Falcons will have produced nine AFL captains, plus Norm Smith and Brownlow medallists and 21 individual premierships.
He’s relished the intimate connection of being involved at Lorne, where he and Karen settled and son Che played in the 2016 flag. With others, he was instrumental in landing Ed Curnow as playing-coach this season, fresh from Carlton’s midfield, and has mentored him in the background.
He was on the Lorne committee when the cancer diagnosis came. His telling of a grim tale is laden with dark humour, from calling out to Karen when he had a pee in the backyard “and it was the colour of Coca-Cola. She looked at me and said, ‘You’re yellow.’”
The jaundice started when his gall bladder wouldn’t drain through the tumour at the top of his pancreas, causing a build-up of bilirubins in his body that had Turner itching himself raw. He had surgery – the “Whipple procedure”, a complex, nine-hour operation to remove the tumour, gall bladder, small intestine, bile duct “and some other organs you obviously don’t need”.
Before going under he asked his surgeon how the theatre team get through a such a long operation. “He said they go for about five hours then stop and have a cup of tea and a sandwich, while I’m lying there with all my organs next to me on silver trays.”
He woke up with tubes protruding from everywhere, but with a chance to keep living.
The next chapter in the Turners’ drama was cruel in the extreme. Mick and Karen have been together almost 42 years, having met at a Geelong Amateurs nightclub when he pointed to the bohemian across the room with blonde hair down to her backside and said, “That’s the sort of girl I’d like to marry.”
Their first date story is another epic, Turner picking her up in Barwon Heads in a V8 panel van with blockout curtains, booming stereo, racing bucket seats and steering wheel. Her father and uncle stood stunned in the driveway as they roared away. Before they’d even reached the party Karen shook her head and said, “I don’t know why I’m going out with you, you’ve got a shocking reputation.”
As he recuperated in the Box Hill Epworth last year, Karen had a horrific accident in which she was dragged between a car and garage wall. Eight ribs were fractured, her pelvis was crushed, a lung collapsed. “Early days it was touch and go. She’s pretty tough, Karen.”
His six months of chemotherapy were gruelling, knocking him from 80kg down to 63. A blood test marker that should have read 38 skyrocketed to 850; treatment brought it down to 25.
He and Karen travelled overseas this winter, and when it’s not too cold or raining (“chemo makes your body cold”) he still surfs. “Best in water at Cathedral [Rock] a while back.”
To see former No.1 draft pick Paddy McCartin warmly embrace him on a visit to the local footy is to know the regard he’s held in. “It’s nice to be greeted that way, I guess you’ve helped them.”
Charlie McCartin in action for Lorne in the Colac and District league.Credit: Colac Herald
Other than travelling he was at every Lorne game this season and Thursday night training, but will pare back footy commitments now to spend time with his grandkids. Fittingly, his last contribution to AFL recruiting could be a story to just about top them all.
Charlie McCartin, middle brother of Paddy and Tom and another former Falcon, came back to the game this year at 25 to have a kick with mates at Lorne. He made such an impression that Turner was soon on the phone to Swans recruiter Kinnear Beatson. The Swans flew him to Sydney to train and play two VFL games.
By finals time at Colac, St Kilda’s Stephen Silvagni and Graeme Allan were in the grandstand. Geelong have shown interest, too. “I know it’s a big call coming from Lorne, but I reckon he can get drafted,” Turner says.
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