The archives of country Victoria tells us that today the small town of Newstead has two pubs, a community centre, a general store, a small licensed café and bakery, a swimming pool, a hairdresser, a butcher, two small shops selling vintage odds and ends, and a monthly newspaper.

There’s also a Rural Transaction Centre, with an internet café, bank, library and day care centre, a primary school and kindergarten, a community hall and a Rotunda park for major events.

It’s a fair list of services and facilities for a town, built on the Loddon River 17km west of Castlemaine and 56km south of Bendigo, which according to the last available census in 2006 had a population of 487. And now has ‘about 800’ residents.

But one thing is very definitely missing. And not just a petrol station.

There is no statue of possibly the small town’s most famous product, Herb Howson.

Regardless of who else has come out of this tiny regional town, Howson will rank among the very best. He was a South Melbourne champion and a key pillar on which the club was built after being born in Newstead on 11 August 1872 and spending his early years there.

Howson was a member of South Melbourne’s first VFL/AFL team in 1897, was the first player to play 150 games for the club in 1906, coached the club to the 1918 premiership and was among the first group of inductees to the club’s Hall of Fame in 2009.

He died 71 years ago today, on 8 May 1948.

Remarkably, Howson’s death came 51 years to the day after he claimed an undeniable place in Swans history as a member of the first South Melbourne side to play in the then VFL.

It was Saturday 8 May 1897 when South played Melbourne at Lake Oval, so it is timely then to pay tribute today to one of the early champions of the club.

Howson, a fleet-footed wingman, had established himself as a player before the establishment of the VFL/AFL in 1897, playing 52 games for the club in the VFA from 1893-96.

He was a member of the South team that lost the 1896 grand final to Collingwood 5.10 (40) to 6.9 (45) at East Melbourne Cricket Ground in what turned out to be their last game in that competition before the formation of the break-away VFL.

On 8 May 1897, Howson and 18 mates ran onto Lake Oval to play Melbourne at 3pm in the club’s first VFL game.

In alphabetical order, and from 1-19 as they are listed on the club’s all-time playing list, were: Dave Adamson, Jack Adamson, Bill Blackwood, Allen Burns, Jack Deas, Bill Fraser, Dick Gibson, Tom Gilligan, Bert Howson, Charlie McCartney, Dinny McKay, Michael O’Gorman, Jim O’Hara, Mick Pleass, Harry Purdy, Fred Sigmont, Jack Southern, Archie Swannie, Fred Waugh and Bill Windley.

Only three members of the team beaten 3.9 (27) to 6.8 (44) by Melbourne went on to play 100 VFL games for South: Howson, captain in 1906; Windley, captain in 1900 and 1902; and Pleass. Fraser, captain in 1897-98, Dave Adamson, captain in 1899, and Purdy, topped 50 games..

Six members of the first side would also be reunited in the club’s first VFL grand final in 1899: Howson, Windley, Pleass, Fraser, Dave Adamson and O’Hara, who played alongside older brother Frank.

Also in South’s 1899 grand final team was Charlie Goding, who played for Melbourne against South in their first game. After four games for the Demons in 1897, Goding switched to South in 1899 and played 63 games in red and white.

South Melbourne went on to finish fifth in the inaugural VFL season with an 8-1-5 record as Howson continued to build of a wonderful career.

Having played every game in the first season with Fraser, Gilligan, McKay, Jim O'Hara and Pleass, Howson shared the club games record until he missed Round 3 of 1898.

He played his 43rd game on the day Pleass became the first South player to 50 games in 1890, and was six back on 94 when Pleass and Windley shared the honour of becoming the first South players to 100 games in 1903.

But by Round 12, 1904, after Pleass had transferred to Essendon mid-season, Howson pulled level at the top of the list on 113 games with Windley, a centreman/rover four years older than Howson, who had played 140 games for South in the VFA.

In Round 17, 1904, the last game of the year, Howson took the games record outright at 118, only to miss Round 1, 1905 and allow Windley to catch him.

Windley celebrated his 37^th birthday and played his 129^th game in Round 16, 1906 before retiring, leaving Howson to hold the club record at 133 at the end of the season.

Howson held the record through until the last game of 1906, when at 34 he became the first player to play 150 VFL games for South.

There were no challengers in sight, even though he managed only one game in 1907 and one in 1908, and it wasn’t until the 1914 preliminary final that Vic Belcher played his 153^rd game to break the Howson record.

Howson played his last game in Round 14, 1908 aged 35 years 349 days. At the time only Fraser (37 years 53 days in 1904) and Windley (37 years 5 days in 1905) sat above him on the club’s oldest player list, and now, 111 years on, only Arthur Hiskins (37 years 27 days in 1923), Tony Lockett (36 years 98 days in 2002) and Jack Bissett (36 years and 32 days in 1936) have gone past him.

The other eight players in club history who played beyond their 35^th birthday fell just short of the Howson mark - Rod Carter (35/286 in 1990), John Rantall (35/266 in 1979), Adam Goodes (35/254 in 2015), Barry Round (35/218 in 1985), Laurie Nash (35/150 in 1945), Harry Brereton (35/95 in 1922), Paul Roos (35/77 in 1998) and Billy Billett (35/19 in 1923).

Howson’s playing career, rich with personal honours and one losing grand final in the VFA and the VFL, was devoid of one thing. A premiership.

Finally it came 11 years later when he returned to Lake Oval as coach

It was a tough time. South had won their first flag under Charlie Ricketts, their first official coach, in 1909, and had finished third under Bill Thomas in 1910-11, second under Ricketts in 1912, third under Harvey Kelly in 1913, and had gone second, fifth, fourth under Belcher in 1914, ’15 and ‘17 after sitting out the 1916 season due to World War I.

Howson turned to another former champion as assistant-coach. Henry ‘Sonny’ Elms, 11 years older than Howson, had played 189 games with South in the VFA from 1882-95, winning four premierships in 1885, ’88, ’89 and ‘90.

The new captain under coach Howson, replacing 1914-17 captain-coach Belcher, was 138-game rover Jim Caldwell. He had joined South in 1909 after VFA premierships with Williamstown in 1907-08, but had missed the club’s 1909 premiership due to an eight-match suspension incurred in the preliminary final.

The competition, which had grown from the original eight founding clubs in 1897 to 10 with the introduction of Richmond and University in 1908, had fallen from that number in 1914 to nine without University in 1915 and only four in 1916, when all but Carlton, Collingwood, Fitzroy and Richmond took a break due to the war.

The defending premiers in Howson’s first year as coach were Fitzroy, courtesy of the most bizarre finals series in 1917. They had finished the four-team 12-match home-and-away series last with two wins and a draw, but, with all four teams in the finals, beat 10-2 minor premiers Carlton by 29 points in the grand final.

Howson’s 1918 Swans began the season with wins over Geelong, Fitzroy and Collingwood before falling to St Kilda in Round 4 in a match which gave way to one of the great football yarns of all-time.

It was ladder leaders South against bottom-placed St Kilda at Junction Oval on the King’s Birthday holiday Monday.

The South players had spent the previous two days enjoying the hospitality of a club patron at his holiday home in the Dandenongs, and as champion rover Mark Tandy revealed some years later in The South Melbourne Record, “some of the boys were wobbling at the knees when they walked from the St Kilda tram to the St Kilda oval.”.

Tandy put it a little more bluntly when he expanded, saying: “Fair dinkum, when some were dressed to go out on the field they had to be headed in the direction of the arena gate and given a shove off. That they ever saw the game out was a miracle.”

The five-point loss was South’s only loss of the 14-game season as they finished three games clear as 13-1 minor premiers, but the job was anything but done.

After second-placed Collingwood beat fourth-placed St Kilda in the first semi-final at the MCG, the second semi-final between South Melbourne and third-placed Carlton was postponed due to rain.

When finally they got underway South trailed Carlton by three points at halftime and only scraped home by five points following late goals from Jack Doherty and Tom O’Halloran, who also pulled off a brilliant defensive play in the closing seconds to deny Carlton a possible match-winner.

So it was South against Collingwood in the grand final at the MCG on 7 September 1918 as Vic Belcher, the 1913 captain and 1914-17 captain-coach, became the first person to play 200 VFL games for the club.

The Swans trailed at every change when coach Howson swung Belcher from defence into the ruck at three-quarter time, and was rewarded for his bold move when the 30-year-old strongman, who had also played in South’s inaugural premiership in 1909, steered his team to a 9.8 (62) to 7.15 (57) win and the club’s second flag.

As official AFL records show, Belcher’s dominance in the midfield lifted his teammates, and against all odds they snatched victory in the closing seconds via a Chris Laird soccer goal off the ground.

Writing in the Australasian, John Worrall, a champion footballer and Test cricketer turned journalist, described it as “the most remarkable victory ever witnessed in a grand final”. 

The 1918 South Melbourne premiership team was:

B: Jack Graham, Chip Turner, Vic Belcher (vc)
HB: Arthur Rademacher, Alan O’Donoghue, Bill Daly
C: Mark Tandy, Tammy Hynes, Artie Wood
HF: Jim Caldwell (c), Tom O’Halloran, Harold Robertson
F: Ernie Barber, Gerald Ryan, Chris Laird
R: Jack Howell, Phil Skehan, Jack Doherty.

The Howson / Caldwell leadership team returned in 1919, as Melbourne returned to the competition.

South finished the home-and-away season second on the ladder at 12-4, behind Collingwood (13-3) and ahead of Carlton and Richmond (10-6), and along the way Howson guided two big individual moments.

In Round 12 they belted St Kilda 29.15 (189) to 2.6 (18) at Junction Oval, posting what at the time was the highest score in League history and a final quarter score of 17.4 (106), which 100 years on remains the highest score for any single quarter in history.

The 171-point winning margin also remains the club’s biggest.

And in the same game Harold Robertson kicked a then club record 14 goals, which stood until Bob Pratt kicked 15 in 1934. Amazingly, Robertson was goalless in the first quarter, kicked three in the second, four in the third and seven in the last.

But the Howson coaching rein ended quickly when they were eliminated by Richmond in the first semi-final by 14 points.

It was the last game in the 155-game career of captain Caldwell, and the last game for three others who played a lot less: Harry Bulpit (6 games), Ernie Barber (21) and Phil Skehan (38).

Howson, 47 at the time, stood down as coach and was replaced by former teammate Arthur Hiskins, a 1909 premiership player who was still playing at the time but had missed the 1919 flag. Belcher was reinstated as captain.

Caldwell would later return as coach in 1929 but, after a 2-4 start highlighted by a win over third-placed Richmond in Round 6, he found himself replaced. Caldwell was ‘asked to resign’ and obliged.

Howson was among the inaugural inductees to the Swans Hall of Fame in 2009, sharing this special honour with Belcher. They were joined by Windley, coaching colleague Elms and early teammates Bill Thomas and Len Mortimer in 2011, Caldwell in 2015 and Dinny McKay in 2018.