A bit of a change to this week`s Saturday Soccer Star as we have gone "down under". The clue here was the team, Hawthorn. Now some of our older readers may remember that hawthorn flowered in May, but owing to climate change it is now considered to bloom in April, and has become that month`s flower. It has lovely white, or sometimes pink flowers, and its berries, or haws, provide winter food for birds, as well as give them shelter, for if they fly inside the body of the hawthorn those thorns will stop most predators going further.
You will not find many growing in gardens though because they do have a particular aroma that some humans find offensive. However like all nature it has an important function, for the pollen is spread by flies, who really like that kind of smell.
The best write up on this set appears in our original Wills Reference Booklets :
Fronts printed by letterpress, unicoloured in brown. Backs in grey-black with descriptive text, inscribed at base "W.D. & H.O. Wills`s World Renowned Cigarettes". Issued in Australia 1933.
A) small cards size 67 x 37 m/m
B) medium cards 66 x 52 m/m. Two grades of board
a) white b) cream
Our man, W. Ware was better known as Wally Ware, though he was born Walter Leslie Ware, this month, 19th the town of his birth, but his main team was Hawthorn, part of the Victorian Football League, where he played between 1930 and 1934. You can read more about him at AustralianFootball/W.Ware - where they also mention the fact that his younger brother, Norman, was also a keen footballer, some say better than Wally, and he played, and coached, at Footscray.
And that was the teaser clue we gave you, for Norman also appears in our set, in his Footscray strip, as card 78, plus, according to TheTradingCardDatabase/NormanWare on eleven other cards. However the Trading Card Database calls these cards "1933 Victorian Footballers", I know that refers to the state and not the time frame but I wonder if any readers have heard this set called that before.
Norman`s card also mentions The Brownlow Medal" - which is more correctly known as The Charles Brownlow Trophy, or even, rather disrespectfully, considering it is awarded to the "best and fairest" player, as The Charlie - and yiu can read more about that at Wikipedia/BrownlowMedal