ORIGINALLY hailing from the Central Broken Hill Magpies, Frederick “Neil” Davies enjoyed a mercurial football career in six competitions.
Touted as ‘the next big thing’, Davies joined Glenelg from Broken Hill in 1951, and from there he had an immediate impact on the South Australian National Football League landscape.
In only his second senior game, playing in the centre, he comprehensively outpointed his West Torrens opponent, the legendary dual Magarey medallist Bob Hank, and was instrumental in steering the Tigers to a comfortable win.
Following just three games of SANFL league football he was selected in the state squad for the upcoming match against the VFA and played well in South Australia’s 95 points triumph.
“Neil Davies stands up to this day as an all-time great at the Bay,” Glenelg historian Peter Cornwall explained.
“A player with electrifying pace, in his third season he became Glenelg’s first All Australian and in 1957 he became the first Tiger to captain South Australia.
“His Tigers teammate and fellow South Australian Football hall of famer, Colin Richens simply described him as ‘the best’.”
Davies was noted for being an all-round talent.
Among his strengths were aggression, determination, elite speed and skill, making him, when he was at the top of his game, almost irrepressible.
In 1953, he won Glenelg’s best and fairest award and finished second to South Adelaide’s star Jim Deane in the Magarey Medal (SANFL best and fairest) count.
He was also one of South Australia’s premier performers at that year’s Adelaide national carnival, winning All Australian selection.
Davies represented South Australia in a total of 20 games, kicking 11 goals, becoming the first Bays footballer to captain the state team in both 1957 and 1958.
In 1955, he moved to Richmond in the VFL but quit the Tigers after just a couple of games over what he considered to be harsh and unfair treatment by the club.
Davies then decided to travel and see Australia.
He arrived in Darwin, where he captain-coached the St Mary’s Green Machine to a premiership and won the 1955-56 Nichols Medal as the best and fairest footballer in the competition.
The NTFL ran its competition on Saturday afternoons, and with a passion for some further exercise on Sundays, Davies decided to play with a local rugby league team.
So successful was he in this other northern football code that he attracted the attention of talent scouts from British team Warrington, who convinced him to join them briefly that winter.
But by April 1956, Davies returned to the Bay and the Glenelg Tigers, ready for another season of SANFL football.
He showed his prodigious natural ability, winning his second club best and fairest award, and topping Glenelg’s goal kicking.
The following 1957 season he was appointed captain at Glenelg, a position he held for three years, while in 1958 and 1959 he also coached the side.
As captain-coach he led Glenelg to the 1959 preliminary final after winning The Advertiser Cup night competition earlier in the season.
Davies retired from SANFL football at the end of the 1963 season, having played 144 league games across three stints.
He spent the final few seasons of his senior career with Western Districts in Queensland, during which time he also represented Queensland’s interstate team and donned a jumper with Sydney club Balmain.
In 2002, he was entered into Glenelg Football Club’s Hall of Fame and the same year was one of the inaugural inductees into the South Australian Football Hall of Fame.
One of just two All-Australians that have come out of Broken Hill, Davies shares the honour with modern maestro, Taylor “Tex” Walker.
