McCOLL, Jim

Jim McColl was a full-back and centre half-back who came from Geelong College to the Under 19s in 1951. He had been in the Associated Public Schools team in 1950. He then left to play with University Blacks in 1952 and then Dookie College in 1953.

He returned to Essendon in 1954 and played two games and was also third in the Gardiner Medal for Best and Fairest in the League Seconds.

He fell awkwardly in a pack at training in April 1955 and seriously damaged his ankle.

McColl left again in 1956 and spent a season at City United in the Goulburn Valley before returning to play one more game in 1957. He won Essendon Seconds Best and Fairest award in that year.

He once said his greatest football achievement was being on the same field as John Coleman.

He was cleared to Katamatite as captain-coach in 1958 and he returned to City United as captain in 1959. He then became captain-coach of Strathmerton from 1960 to 1962 and played there in 1963. He played in one of the Murray Football League's most memorable games when, in 1960, they beat St Kilda in a practice match. It was one of the rare times that a country team had beaten a VFL team.

McColl was a renowned agricultural scientist and received a number of awards in the fields of agricultural policy and water management. He became a Fellow with Australian Institute of Agriculture Scientists and Technologists in 1989 and was elected a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society in 2010.

He was awarded the Eureka Prize for land and water research jointly with Professor Mike Young, University of Adelaide, in 2005. Finally, in 2013, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia "for distinguished service to primary industry through policy and strategy advisory roles in the agricultural, fisheries and natural resource sector, and to conservation and the environment".