Australian Football Hall of Fame 2024: WAFL star Ray Schofield inducted

There had been much talk in the media in the lead up to the game as to whether WA's undersized key defender could cope.

So the forward, keen to cash in on any psychological edge derived from that, patted Schofield on the head at the start of the game just to emphasise the difference in size. It was a message: You are in for a tough day shorty – I have got you covered.

The first time the two were in a contest Schofield replied via actions. He flattened him and while the forward was struggling to his feet Schofield patted him on the head. That too was a message: You’re the one in for a tough day. I am all you can handle and then some.

Ray “Homer” Schofield might not have been tall, but he cast a very long shadow over forwards in the WAFL and in interstate clashes over a career which spanned 16 years and 277 games for West Perth and 21 for Western Australia.

He played 18 of those games in 1943, kicking 94 goals as a forward when the WAFL was an under age competition during World War Two.

He then missed two years of football while in the RAAF – posted to Albany, Rottnest Island and Derby.

His “senior” WAFL career commenced in 1946 and he would play 259 WAFL games before his retirement at the end of the 1958 season.

When The West Australian newspaper picked its unofficial WA team of the 20th century, Schofield was named at full back.

Schofield earned the nickname Homer as a kid because he would deliver horse manure to a Chinese market gardener known as Homer in West Perth, in exchange for vegetables to help feed his family.

“Dad was very industrious – very entrepreneurial you might say in the things that he used to do,” his son Kevin Schofield said. “He used to collect cool drink bottles and take them down to the local shop and get money to buy lollies. Then he would duck around the back of the shop, grab the same bottles and take them back in again.”

“They used to go swimming at Lake Monger and they would come out covered in leeches. They would scrape the leeches off and take them down to the chemist down the road. Obviously leeches were still used medically back in the day. He used to sell the leeches for thruppence each.”

Many would say the thrift gave him a personality ideal for a mean full back but the irony was he started his WAFL career as a forward. In the under age WAFL competition of 1943 his 94 goals put him second in the league’s goal kicking award.

He made his debut late in the 1946 season as a forward and played in a losing grand final team in attack.

In 1947 legendary West Perth coach Stan “Pops” Heal shifted him to defence because of a team need and Schofield played and starred there for the rest of his career.

He won his first club best and fairest at the age of 23 in 1948 and would win four more – in 1950, 1953, 1954 and 1955.

Kevin Schofield said his dad’s teammates spoke of him as “just very hard to play on. You had to get away from him to have any input.”

‘He probably learned that from starting as a forward – he knew what needed to be done to stop a full forward.”

His most famous WAFL adversary was South Fremantle’s goalkicking champion Bernie Naylor who kicked 1034 goals in 194 games for the Bulldogs.

The first time the pair played on each other Schofield’s coach told him to “walk all over him”.

Schofield later recalled: “I did. I don’t know how Bernie walked off the oval after the match. I must have stood on his toes a million times that day.”

The Bulldogs were the glamour team of that time in the WAFL winning six premierships in eight years in 1947, 1948,1950, 1952, 1953 and 1954.

One of Schofield’s most famous efforts came in Naylor in one South didn’t win in that period – 1951. West Perth led by 17 points at three quarter time but South had the breeze at their backs and Naylor ahead of the ball.

Ray Schofield would later describe the last three minutes of the game as “like an afternoon’s kick to kick. As soon as we cleared the ball it came back”.

Fortunately for West Perth Schofield held firm on Naylor and the Cardinals, as West Perth were then known, hung on to win by three points.

Ray Schofield died at the age of 92 in 2017 but son Kevin said he didn’t speak much of his footy exploits until very late in life.

‘It wasn’t until nearly the end of his life that we talked much about footy. It was just something that he did and that he enjoyed,” he said. “He didn’t talk about his accolades or how good he was. He was just my dad essentially – a very humble man – very quietly spoken.”

Ray Schofield was also a person who liked to finish what he had stated.

He left school at 14 and got a job brewing vinegar at Cornwells in West Perth. He was still working there at the same job when he retired at 65.

He met his wife Val when they were at school and despite teasing her a lot while at school he managed to woo her when he realised her house was just over the road from where he worked in Golding Street, West Perth. They were still together when Val passed away a couple of years before Ray.

After he finished his playing career at West Perth he did a further 30 year stint at the club as one of the trainers looking after the players.

“He thoroughly enjoyed that. The players used to line up to get a rub down from dad because he really got into the muscles and gave them a hard rub down,” Kevin said.

“They just loved him. He was a team man. Loved being around the club and helping to Gee the players up each week.”

The Schofields had two children – twins Kevin and Marilyn. Kevin said Ray loved getting out and kicking a ball around with his six grandchildren.

Kevin had achilles tendon issues and so had a playing career limited to Sunday League Football at Osborne Park but remembers the coaching advice his dad gave him.

“He taught me how to kick properly and handball properly. He certainly had a few tips – Be tough and hard at the ball. Don’t take a backward step – just go through them.”

And as blokes who were teaching you how to kick go a kid could have done far worse.

“He was a tremendous kick – he would be kicking out from full back and his drop kicks would be landing in the centre of the ground,” Kevin said.

West Perth asked Schofield to be the club’s captain coach in his final year in 1958 but it wasn’t an experience he greatly enjoyed. He had 47 boils that year – a problem he never had before or after 1958. A doctor later put it down to the stress and anxiety caused by coaching.

“It wasn’t something he put his hand up to do – they approached him and he said okay I will coach. It was stressful for him being the type of person that he was. He wasn’t out there or flamboyant. Being in front of a crowd and speaking – he didn’t enjoy that,” Kevin said.

Even when Schofield was inducted into the WA Football Hall of Fame in 2004 Kevin said he didn’t say much but you could tell he was quietly very honoured.

“He just used to say it was something I did and I enjoyed it. It is a great thing that he is being recognised,” he said.