Phil Matson

Phil Matson
Phil Matson circa 1923
Personal information
Full name	Phillip Henry Matson
Date of birth	(1884-10-22)22 October 1884
Place of birth	Port Adelaide, South Australia
Date of death	13 June 1928(1928-06-13) (aged 43)
Place of death	Perth, Western Australia
Height	179 cm (5 ft 10 in)
Position(s)	Utility
Playing career¹
Years	Club	Games (Goals)
1903	West Perth	1
1904–05	South Bunbury	?
1906–08	Boulder City	?
1909–10	Sturt	24
1911	North Fremantle	13
1912–17	Subiaco	80
1918–23	East Perth	35
Representative team honours
Years	Team	Games (Goals)
1908, 1911, 1914	Western Australia	10
1909–10	South Australia	4
Total		14
Coaching career³
Years	Club	Games (W–L–D)
1913–14	Subiaco
1918–24, 1926–28	East Perth
1923, 1926–27	Western Australia
1925	Castlemaine
¹ Playing statistics correct to the end of 1923. ² State and international statistics correct as of 1914. ³ Coaching statistics correct as of 1928.
Career highlights
Player 1x South Bunbury premiership player (1904) 2x Boulder City premiership player (1907, 1908) 3x Subiaco premiership player (1912, 1913, 1915) 5x East Perth premiership player (1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923) Coach 1x Subiaco premiership coach (1913) 7x East Perth premiership coach (1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1926, 1927) 1x Castlemaine premiership coach (1925) Honours Subiaco Team of the Century East Perth Team of the Century Australian Football Hall of Fame WAFL Hall of Fame
Source: AustralianFootball.com

Player

Coach

Honours

Philip Henry Matson (22 October 1884 at Port Adelaide – 13 June 1928 at Perth) was a highly successful player and coach of Australian rules football in the early 20th century, chiefly in Western Australia.

The son of George Matson and his wife Emma (née Duffield), Matson was educated at state school in Adelaide before moving to Western Australia as a youth. There, he worked as a navvies' water-boy and began swimming competitively in 1902 and playing Australian football. During his swimming career, he held Western Australian freestyle titles from 100 yards (91 m) to a mile (1.6 km) using the now-obsolete trudgen stroke. He won the 220-yard breaststroke at the Australasian championships in the three years between 1905 and 1907, and eventually set a world record time for the event of three minutes and fourteen seconds. However, playing professional football at the same time precluded him from considering the Olympic Games, so he turned professional for a £20 stake in 1909. Matson married his cousin Gertrude Ethel Jean Pope in 1907 at Boulder, Western Australia, but they later separated.

Matson supported himself playing football during an era when the game was supposedly an amateur sport. He was a "gun for hire", and moved clubs frequently, playing outside the main leagues if the price was right. Thus, he played for South Bunbury in 1904–05, Boulder City in 1906–08, Sturt (in Adelaide) in 1909–10, North Fremantle in 1911, Subiaco in 1912–17 and East Perth in 1918–23. A fast, vigorous and versatile utility with an ability to take the big mark (despite being only 179 cm), he played at half-back and half-forward and took turns in the ruck. He played for both South Australia (1909–10) and Western Australia (1908, 1911, 1914) and captained the Sandgropers at the 1914 interstate carnival.

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