Ian Stewart (Australian rules footballer)

Ian Harlow Stewart (born 30 July 1943) is a former Australian rules footballer who represented St Kilda and Richmond in the Victorian Football League (VFL) during the 1960s and 1970s. He later coached South Melbourne and Carlton and was an administrator at St Kilda.

Stewart is one of only four men to win the Brownlow Medal three times. He was one of the first inductees into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996 and was elevated to Legend status the following year. He will always be remembered as one of the truly great exponents of Australian football, a player with the rare blend of skill, concentration and courage who formed partnerships with two of the greatest forwards the game has produced, Darrel Baldock and Royce Hart. Coincidentally, all three men hailed from Tasmania during a period when the country's smallest state contributed some unforgettable talent to the national game.

Stewart was born Ian Cervi in the mining town of Queenstown in western Tasmania. He was the son of Italian migrant Aldo Liberale Cervi, who had come with his father to work in the mines, and Queenstown local Anita Stewart, whom Cervi married. When they split three years later, Stewart moved out with his mother and adopted her maiden surname to protect her identity. Stewart would not see his father again until a family reunion in Melbourne in 1972, just months before his father's death.

As a teenager growing up in Hobart, Stewart turned out for the Macalburn club and spent spare time watching Tasmanian Football League club North Hobart training and playing. The North Hobart players knew him well and were bemused when he joined North's archrival, Hobart. Stewart started there in 1962 as an eighteen-year-old. After just four senior games, Stewart impressed sufficiently to earn selection for the state team to play against Victoria. This was a great opportunity to display his talents: playing in the centre, he was matched against Alastair Lord, who went on to win the Brownlow medal that year. At the end of the season, Stewart paid his own way to Melbourne in an attempt to break into the Victorian Football League (VFL). Stewart was keen to play for St Kilda. The Saints had been vigorously recruiting players from all over the country in an attempt to win their first ever premiership. They had a number of Tasmanian players in their ranks and the previous year had recruited the Apple Isle's star player, Darrel Baldock. Like virtually every young footballer in Tasmania at the time, Stewart idolised Baldock and wanted to play alongside him. Several other VFL clubs were impressed by Stewart's performance against Victoria and wanted to sign him, while St Kilda believed he needed another year in Tasmania to develop. However, he leveraged the interest of the other clubs and St Kilda won the services of the determined teenager.