LE BRUN, Norm

A bricklayer by trade, Norm Le Brun was a utility player who had ability but couldn't keep a regular senior spot, rarely spending more than two years at any one club. He has the unusual record of playing senior football with four different League clubs and in the Seconds with a fifth. He played more games for Essendon than any of his other League clubs.

He started with Richmond Seconds and then had three games with South Melbourne in 1929 before being cleared to Sandhurst in the Bendigo Football League. While there he won the inaugural Fred Wood Medal as best and fairest in that League.

He played 23 games with Essendon in 1931 and 1932 before joining Collingwood where he played 19 games in 1933 and 1934. He then played four games with Carlton in 1935, playing under ex-Essendon player, Frank Maher.

In 1936 he was appointed captain-coach of Griffith in the Leeton District Football Association in the Riverina. A year later he moved to South Warrnambool and in 1938 he was captain-coach of Wangaratta in the Ovens and Murray League and led them to the premiership that year.

In his last move, he was back in the Riverina in 1940 as captain-coach of the Ganmain Football Club and coached them to the premiership.

He enlisted in the Army in 1942 and was killed in action on 15th November, 1944, shot by a sniper hidden among the base of a tree root in Aitape, near Lae, in New Guinea while fighting with the 2/10 Commando Squadron during World War II.

The country was too steep and the jungle too thick for the patrol to bring his body back so he was buried close to where he fell. Later, his body was moved to Aitape before he was eventually laid to rest in the Lae War Cemetery. He was the first Australian killed in the area and six months after he died, the Australians named a steep hill on the Danmap River after him.

He was 36 years old.