By Paul Millar
FORMER Geelong Cats favourite Wayne Closter spilled blood while serving in Vietnam.
But it was on a football field rather than a war zone.
Closter played 191 games, missing out on the 200-match milestone due to national service commitments in Vietnam.
He played in many classic games for Geelong yet a lasting memory is contesting a 1969 competition involving six teams amid stifling heat in coastal Vung Tau, South Vietnam.
The Highton resident this week remembered the series as keenly contested with a touch of brutality.
His team played in Geelong colours after the football club sent over a set of guernseys to help out the troops.
Closter was blitzing the opposition on the way to the final, kicking 12 goals in the semi-final of the 14-a-side competition.
The opposition soon realised the only way to beat the Australian Advance Ordinance team was to stop the Geelong man.
The Construction Squadron was on more of destruction than construction mission, closing one of Closter’s eyes early.
“I couldn’t open it and the hospital was 40 minutes away. The coach said, ‘You’re not going anywhere’, and I had to play on.”
He kicked six goals in the final quarter to win the game and take his tally to 11 for the day.
Closter said Geelong’s John Heaney initiated the annual tournament after a “stoush” earned him a 21-day field punishment.
The alternative was to organise a footy match, which he chose as the better option.
Closter had plenty to celebrate after the final, with his performance earning an upgrade to lance corporal.
“Two weeks later they made me corporal – it was probably through the football more than anything else.”
Closter caught up with the player who split his eye open years later when Collingwood played Geelong at Kardinia Park.
Legendary umpire Glenn James asked him how he had been keeping.
Closter later realised the umpire was the same soldier who hit him in the grand final.
“He said later, ‘Sorry about that – sorry you got up because you cost us the grand final’,” Closter recalled.
“The last time he asked me how I was doing I told him that I had a twitch in my right eye.”
The former footballer will attend Geelong’s Anzac Day parade, which he admitted avoiding for many years.
“I think I’ve mellowed a lot now,” he said.
“There was a lot of resentment, it was not a popular war, but I think people are more tolerant now.”
