Mick Pleass

Mick Pleass
Pleass in 1899
Personal information
Full name	George Victor Pleass
Date of birth	12 November 1874
Place of birth	Kent Town, South Australia
Date of death	27 August 1925(1925-08-27) (aged 50)
Place of death	Boulder, Western Australia
Original team(s)	South Melbourne (VFA)
Position(s)	Follower
Playing career^1
Years	Club	Games (Goals)
1896	South Melbourne (VFA)	19 (4)
1897–1904	South Melbourne (VFA)	109 (41)
1904	Essendon	4 (0)
Total		132 (45)
^1 Playing statistics correct to the end of 1904.
Sources: AFL Tables, AustralianFootball.com

George Victor "Mick" Pleass (12 November 1874 – 27 August 1925) was an Australian rules footballer who played with South Melbourne and Essendon in the VFA and Victorian Football League (VFL).^[1]

Football

Pleass was a follower and played his early football at South Melbourne when they were in the Victorian Football Association (VFA).

He participated in their inaugural VFL match and remained with the club until 1904 when he crossed to Essendon, after his transfer to play for Boulder in the Western Australian Goldfields was refused. During his career he represented Victoria at interstate football on three occasions.^[2]

A ruckman, Pleass briefly gave the game away in 1902 to become a field umpire but returned to South Melbourne after officiating in a couple of games.^[3]

1899 team of "champions"

At the end of the 1899 season, in the process of naming his own "champion player", the football correspondent for The Argus, Reginald Wilmot ("Old Boy"), selected a team of the best players of the 1899 VFL competition:

• Backs: Maurie Collins (Essendon), Bill Proudfoot (Collingwood), Peter Burns (Geelong).
• Halfbacks: Pat Hickey (Fitzroy), George Davidson (South Melbourne), Alf Wood (Melbourne).
• Centres: Fred Leach (Collingwood), Firth McCallum (Geelong), Harry Wright (Essendon).
• Wings: Charlie Pannam (Collingwood), Eddie Drohan (Fitzroy), Herb Howson (South Melbourne).
• Forwards: Bill Jackson (Essendon), Eddy James (Geelong), Charlie Colgan (South Melbourne).
• Ruck: Mick Pleass (South Melbourne), Frank Hailwood (Collingwood), Joe McShane (Geelong).
• Rovers: Dick Condon (Collingwood), Bill McSpeerin (Fitzroy), Teddy Rankin (Geelong).

From those he considered to be the three best players — that is, Condon, Hickey, and Pleass — Wilmot selected Pat Hickey as his "champion player" of the season.^[4]

Death

He died at the Kalgoorlie Government Hospital, in Boulder, Western Australia on 27 August 1925.^{[5][6][7][8][9]}

See also

• The Footballers' Alphabet

Notes

1. "Obituary". Westralian Worker. Perth. 4 September 1925. p. 14. Retrieved 20 May 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
2. Holmesby & Main (2007).
3. "Past Player Profiles – P". essendonfc.com.au. Archived from the original on 6 July 2015. Retrieved 20 May 2015.
4. 'Old Boy', "Football: A Review of the Season", (Monday, 18 September 1899), p. 6.
5. Veteran Player Needs Help, The Australasian, (Saturday, 20 May 1922), p. 19.
6. Funeral Notices: Pleasss, The Kalgoorlie Miner, (Friday, 28 August 1925), p. 4.
7. Obituary, The Westralian Worker, (Friday, 4 September 1925), p. 14.
8. Peeps at People, The (Perth) Sunday Times, (Sunday, 6 September 1925), p. 2.
9. Deaths: Pleass, The Argus, (Tuesday, 8 September 1925), p. 1.

References

• 'Follower', "The Footballers' Alphabet", The Leader, (Saturday, 23 July 1898), p. 17: "P is for Pleass, unsurpassed in the ruck".
• South Melbourne Team, Melbourne Punch, (Thursday, 4 June 1903), p. 16.
• Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. ISBN 0-9591740-2-8
• Holmesby, Russell; Main, Jim (2007). The Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers. BAS Publishing. ISBN 9781920910785.
• Pennings, Mark (2016), Origins of Australian Football: Victoria's early History: Volume 4: Tough Times: Victorian Football loses its Way, 1891 to 1896, Brunswick, Victoria: Grumpy Monks Publishing. ISBN 978-0-646-93604-8

External links

• Mick Pleass's playing statistics from AFL Tables
• Mick Pleass at AustralianFootball.com