Graham Moss

Club

Representative

Graham Moss (born 14 May 1950) is a former Australian rules footballer and coach, who was highly successful in both the West Australian Football League (WAFL) and the Victorian Football League (VFL). He was a Brownlow Medal-winning ruckman and played 343 senior games in the WAFL and VFL.

Moss debuted for Claremont Football Club in the WAFL in 1969. In 1970, he made his debut for the Western Australian state team.

Essendon attempted to lure him to Melbourne several times, and finally succeeded before the 1973 season. Moss played 89 games for Essendon, winning the club best and fairest three times, in 1974–76. He also represented Victoria 5 times. In 1976, he captained Essendon and won the Brownlow, but also suffered a serious knee injury. Moss has the second-highest average of Brownlow Medal votes (0.95 per game) of any player ever polled for the award.

He was appointed captain-coach by Claremont in 1977, and commented that his return from Essendon to Claremont was made easy by the fact the VFL and WANFL were of a similar standard at the time. That same year he won the Simpson Medal, while playing for Western Australia against Victoria. Moss led Claremont to a premiership, their first in 17 years, in 1981, and apart from the first two and last two years his tenure with the Tigers was their first period of consistent success since the days of Johnny Leonard’s coaching. Moss ceased playing in 1983 but returned for a few matches in 1985, and retired as coach at the end of the 1986 season to be replaced by Gerard Neesham.