Sport
12 June, 2026
Treasured mementoes out of cupboard.
RALPH Medcalf’s extraordinary collection of football trophies had sat in boxes in a bedroom cupboard in the family home for the past 60 or so years.
RALPH Medcalf’s extraordinary collection of football trophies had sat in boxes in a bedroom cupboard in the family home for the past 60 or so years.
What better reason to dig them out, polish them up, and have them on display than Inglewood’s 150th anniversary celebrations?
Medcalf was named an official club Legend on Saturday night, and earlier in the day his son Terry and grandson Dean arrived with boxes of priceless memorabilia.
There were the silver platter and matching bowls he was given for winning the 1956 Frank Harding Medal for the Loddon Valley league’s best and fairest player.
There was the 1951 Inglewood best and fairest award (one of six he won), the trophy for winning the league goalkicking in 1966 – and even the Blues’ 1971 reserves best and fairest trophy, which Medcalf won a few weeks shy of his 48th birthday.
Six flags, the club captaincy … the list goes on. The one thing not on his remarkable football resume is the one that may have been the highlight.
Having been to World War Two, Medcalf was in his late 20s when the Carlton Football Club came knocking.
The Blues invited him to play in a practice match, so one day Ralph got on a train for Melbourne, where a Carlton representative was due to meet him at the station.
When he got to Melbourne, there was nobody waiting for him. “So, he got back on the train and came home,” said his son Terry, who accepted the Legend award for his late father on Saturday.
Ralph Medcalf died aged 75, having contracted dengue fever twice as well as malaria fighting in New Guinea and Borneo in the war.
Tropical diseases ultimately may have shortened his life, but they weren’t able to dampen a football career that ranks among the elite of local sport.
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