Across the globe in late April 1945 it was all about the end of World War II. The deadliest conflict in human history, marked by more than 70 million fatalities, was drawing to a close.

The decisive Battle of Berlin had been fought and won by the Allies, and on 30 April Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party and instigator of hostilities, died. It was the beginning of the end.

As millions rejoiced and the curtain was drawn on an horrific chapter in world history an exciting new chapter in football history began.

It wasn’t even a blimp on the world radar, but history says that for South Melbourne fans it was monumental nevertheless, demonstrating that no matter what the circumstances football will always be football.

On 28 April 1945, 75 years ago today, Billy Williams made his AFL debut.

The brilliant goal-kicking rover, so good in seven seasons and 124 games in red and white that he won a spot in the Swans Team of the Century, played for South Melbourne against Collingwood at Junction Oval.

It was Round 2 of a 1945 season in which South would be minor premiers before losing the grand final to Carlton under somewhat unusual circumstances, and a week before the debut of another subsequent Team of the Century selection, Ron Clegg.

Williams, an exhilarating 168cm and 67kg package, was 138 days short of his 20^th birthday when he joined a team coached for just the second time by Bill Adams and captained by Herbie Matthews.

With Lake Oval still unavailable due to the war, South were playing home matches at St Kilda’s Junction Oval and had beaten St Kilda there in Round 1. The great Laurie Nash had kicked three goals in his comeback at 34 after an eight-year absence.

Coach Adams made two changes for Round 2, replacing Jack Dempsey and Dave Engellenner with Williams and Tom Crane, who would play his seventh and last game for the club. South beat Collingwood by 10 points as Nash kicked four.

It was the beginning of a career that began in the small inner-western Melbourne suburb of Spotswood that almost half a century later was the setting for the 1992 film of the same name which starred Anthony Hopkins, Toni Collette and Bruno Lawrence, with Russell Crowe in a minor role.

Williams reportedly wanted to play for Essendon but was residentially tied to South. Club officials refused to budge and were forever pleased they did as he put together a phenomenal albeit short career, which ended at 25.

Nine times a Victorian representative, he was club champion in 1946, ’47 and ‘50 and leading goal-kicker in 1947-51. He polled 12 votes to finish equal 10^th in a 1947 Brownlow Medal count in which teammate Ron Bywater finished equal third, and polled 10 votes to head the South count and finish equal 12^th overall in 1950.

It says much about Williams’ sheer brilliance that he was voted South Melbourne’s best player in seasons in which he played at 20, 21 and 24 in an era in which the award was won in 1945 by 228-gamer Jack Graham, who twice finished top 10 in the Brownlow, and in 1948-49 and ‘51 by the great Clegg, who won the Brownlow in 1949 and was runner-up in 1951.

No records are available of placings in the club champion vote-count of the era but football folklore suggests that, given Williams’ year by year game tally was 20-19-18-17-18-17-15 he was most probably in the mix every year.

He was the first player to play 100 games in guernsey #4, and even today ranks third in the number worn in Sydney by Tony Lockett behind only Dan Hannebery (208) and Ben Mathews (155).

Officially listed by his full name of William Williams in a lot of publications, he was also for a long time the only Swans player whose first name was pretty much the same as his surname. Until Aliir Aliir debuted in 2016.

Williams played in a grand final in his first season in which the League administration, keen to make up for matches lost during the war, had scheduled a 20-match home-and-away season.

Never before had the competition played so many home-and-away games – an obscure fact that South fans bemoaned at the time.

Why? Because at Round 18, which had been the normal qualifying season prior to the war, Carlton were fifth. The side that would break the hearts of Swans fans in the grand final was not even in the equation.

South had topped the home-and-away ladder with a 16-4 win/loss record from Collingwood, North Melbourne and Carlton, who had tipped out Footscray after the Bulldogs lost their last two games.

South beat Collingwood by 11 points in the semi-final as Carlton beat first North and then Collingwood in the preliminary final to set up a premiership decider in which South were hot favourites but went down by 28 points.

It was Williams’ 20^th game and a famous one in club history. The Bloodbath Grand Final.

Almost 61 years later he recalled the drizzly Melbourne day in which players from both sides fought wildly. Some threatened umpires, others belted spectators who had join the hostilities, and police were needed to settle things down.

"There were fights everywhere," an 80-year-old Williams recalled in an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald which highlighted an incident involving his South teammate and namesake Jake “Basher” Williams.

"They were on the field and they were in the grandstand with the public. I looked and I thought, gee, I better get out of here. And then when I looked (into the stands), I thought, it's worse out there, and thought I better stay.

"It's the toughest game I ever played in. Really, it was a brutal game, fists everywhere. There was a Carlton player out on suspension and he ran onto the ground and wanted to fight Basher Williams. The police had to escort him off the ground. It wasn't long after that that Ken Hands (Carlton) got flattened by Basher, too."

Ten players were reported and suspended for a total of 69 matches and others deserved to be. Nobody had seen anything like it.

Late in the first quarter Williams, older only than 17-year-old Clegg in the Swans side, was knocked out after an elbow from Carlton captain Bob Chitty.

As the Sydney Morning Herald reported, the incident set in motion a train of violent retribution and farcical scenes in front of the 63,000-odd fans who had crammed into Melbourne's Princes Park to watch the first major sporting spectacle since the end of the war.

What was supposed to be a game to honour a new-found peace descended into a football battle zone that shocked the footballing community to its core.

Billy Williams, who was at the MCG in 2005 when the Swans broke their 72-year premiership drought with a win over West Coast, chuckled as he recalled his proudest moment during the Bloodbath – a cheeky insult directed at Chitty, who, late in the game, was felled by a Swans player.

"When Chitty was down on the ground after Laurie Nash had hit him, I went over to him and said, 'Get up, you bludger. You are good at knocking the little fellows down. Why don't you get up and take it like a man?’”

Always brave was little Billy. Even if the Carlton captain was sprawled unconscious on the grass.