The first word that comes to mind when South Melbourne old-timers talk of 222-game fullback Jim Cleary is ‘Gentleman’. He was forever known as ‘Gentleman Jim’, and had a life-long reputation for fairness and sportsmanship.

It is a little odd, then, that the second reference to the 15-year fullback, who twice won the club best and fairest award and wore jumper #20 more often than any other Swans player, is invariably to the infamous 1945 VFL grand final known as ‘The Bloodbath’.

It was a match generally regarded as one of the most brutal in VFL/AFL history, with 10 players reported on 16 charges and ultimately suspended for a combined 69 matches.

South were playing their first grand final since 1936 and what would be their last until 1996. With the MCG unavailable due to ongoing war-related activities, the match was played in horrifically wet and muddy conditions at Carlton’s Princes Park.

In front of a record crowd of 62,986, which is more than double the capacity of the current-day Carlton headquarters, the Blues were clear underdogs but won by 28 points to become the first side since the introduction of the Page/McIntyre Final Four system to win the flag from fourth.

But in the aftermath the score was almost incidental. It was all about what The Truth labelled ‘the most repugnant spectacle League football has even known’.

The Herald told of how bottles were thrown onto the ground by members of the crowd.

Among the forgettable incidents, Carlton player Fred Fitzgibbon, already serving a four-match suspension for a reported king hit in the preliminary final a week earlier, jumped the fence and charged onto the ground to get involved. He was given an extra four-match penalty.

There was a bizarre incident in which South Melbourne player Ted Whitfield was reported for pulling his jumper up over his head in an effort to hide his identity from the umpires.

Also reported for attempting to strike the field umpire, Whitfield was suspended for 21 matches in total and never played again at the highest level.

And then there was Gentleman Jim. Playing his 188^th game at 31, he was reported for striking Carlton’s Ken Hands after he had taken a mark, and for attempting to strike Carlton’s Bob Chitty.

He was found not guilty of the attempting to strike charge but was suspended for eight matches on the other charge.

History says it was entirely out of character for the 183cm fullback.

And 73 years on, 25 years to the day since he passed away on 2 May 1993, perhaps we can put it down as an early example of the popular current day phenomenon of ‘sticking up for your mates’. Or ‘flying the flag’.

Certainly, there is no denying the fact that Bloodbath hostilities started after Chitty, the Carlton captain and his team’s most experienced player, had king hit South’s youngest player – 17-year-old future AFL Hall of Famer and Brownlow Medallist Ron Clegg – in the second quarter.

Chitty, himself knocked out in the fourth quarter by South’s Laurie Nash in his 99^th and final game, was not reported for the Clegg incident but was suspended for eight matches for elbowing South’s Ron Williams.

So, given that Chitty and Clegg have both since passed away and cannot testify to what really happened, poetic license suggests we can cut Gentleman Jim a little slack.

This was a different era, as profiles of Whitfield testify.

According to colourful records that recount his career, Whitfield’s match preparation was to drink six beers every Saturday morning before a game, followed by another at half-time. It was a habit he had followed since he was 16.

Whitfield, a wingman, was also in the habit of wearing his football gear under his street clothes to the ground to save time getting changed before the game.

Once, when he was particularly late, he explained to the coach he had been entertaining a lady friend and had let time slip away. He was forced to change in the back of a taxi on the way to the ground.

Whitfield enlisted in the Australian Army in 1941, gaining the rank of Gunner and serving with 115 Australian General Hospital until his discharge in 1942.

He rejoined the VFL in 1944 and became one of the competition’s dominant players and a key reason why South had finished the ’45 season on top of the home-and-away ladder.

Considered a live wire on and off the ground who appeared "to march to a different drum”, Whitfield was reported in the Bloodbath grand final for attempting to strike field umpire Frank Spokes, using abusive language and for kicking the ball away after a free kick was given against him.

When the umpire attempted to report him he pulled his jumper over his head and ran down the other end of the field to stop the umpire taking his number, later claiming he thought he had heard the final siren and was running off to swap jumpers with his opponent.

Having declined to attend the tribunal hearing because he had already bought a ticket to a Cabaret Ball held the same night, Whitfield was told by the club he was no longer required as a player and banned from Lake Oval as a spectator in addition to his 21-match suspension,

Not until the 1960’s did he become a member of the Past Players’ Association.

Cleary was a teammate of Whitfield in 49 of the fleet-footed wingman’s 54 games, but there the connection ended.

The ever-reliable fullback was one of the great South Melbourne champions. Having debuted as a 19-year-old in 1934, he was a fixture in the side right through until 1948, when he retired to go coaching in the then VFA.

He was the third South player to reach 200 games, behind Vic Belcher (1918) and Mark Tandy (1925), and when he won his second best and fairest in 1944 after doing likewise in 1942 he was the third South player to win the club’s top award twice, following Ron Hillis and Herbie Matthews.

Although there are not records to detail it, Cleary was a fixture in the top bracket of the vote count throughout his career while also finishing equal 10^th in the Brownlow Medal in 1939 and 1941.

And therein lies the anomaly that quite probably denies Cleary the higher status which many say he deserved.

Due to World War II, the Brownlow was not awarded from 1942-45 when Gentleman Jim was at his peak. His career total of 42 medal votes was the third highest for the club at the time – he retired behind only dual medal winner Matthews (117) and Jack Graham (73) –  and his total would have been much higher had circumstances been different.

Cleary played 15 years, as did Jude Bolton, who ranks second on Sydney’s all-time playing list behind 17-year megachampion Adam Goodes. Likewise, Michael O’Loughlin and Ryan O’Keefe, who rank fourth and fifth, and Jarrad McVeigh, who ranks third, is in his 15^th year.

Only once did Cleary play more than 18 games in a season – when he played 22 in 1945 – and he averaged 14.80 games per year.

Goodes, by comparison, played 20-plus game in 15 of his 17 years and averaged 21.88 games per season.

Conclusion? Put Gentleman Jim in the modern era and he may well have been more than just the best fullback of his era.

Cleary left South in 1949 to become captain-coach of Port Melbourne in the VFA. In four years he led Port to minor premierships and grand final losses in 1951 and 1952, before coaching VFA rivals Brunswick (1953-58) and Dandenong (1959-61). In total he coached 267 VFA games.

Even after retiring from coaching he remained involved in the game as a panelist on the emerging TV show 'World of Sport'.

Gentleman Jim gave back to the game enormously and he was always remembered as a popular and much-loved South man.