Promising junior At the age of 12, Coleman was already playing in a local under-18 Australian rules football team. Two years later, in 1943, Coleman's mother took the children to live at
Hastings on the
Mornington Peninsula as her husband remained in the city to look after his business. Coleman then divided his time between Melbourne, where he was a student at
University High School, and Hastings, playing on Saturdays for the local football team which competed in the
Mornington Peninsula League. first invited Coleman to train at the club in 1946, but they considered him too young to be able to play senior football. In the following two seasons, Coleman completed pre-season training with Essendon and played in practice matches. However, both times he was sent back to Hastings, where he kicked 296 goals in 37 games over two years, including 23 in one game against Sorrento in August 1948.
Instant sensation The
1949 season was a make-or-break time for the budding forward. He again trained with Essendon, but he was frustrated by many of the senior players who ignored his leads. Coleman's potential was noted by a number of other clubs, and
Richmond made an attempt to sign him. However, Essendon finally selected him for the opening-round match against Hawthorn. From his
first match, when he not only kicked a to-this-day unbeaten record of 12 goals on debut but also
a goal with his first kick, Coleman was the star player in the game, which was experiencing a boom in the immediate post-war years. His 12 goals in the first home-and-away match of a season also equalled the Essendon record set by
Ted Freyer against
Melbourne on
27 April 1935 Standing 185 cm tall, with a pale complexion and slight build, the 20-year-old Coleman did not appear at all imposing. He looked listless as he stood in the goal square, often a metre behind the full-back, with his long-sleeved guernsey (number 10) rolled up to his elbows. Then, with explosive speed, Coleman would slip the guard of his opponent and sprint into open space on the lead or leap onto a pack of players to take a
spectacular mark. This innate ability to make position and his prodigious leap immediately caught the public imagination. He needed only a few opportunities to significantly influence the outcome of a game. Later, one of his teammates, ruckman
Geoff Leek, recalled one of his 1949 marks: He usually converted from most of his set shots by way of a long, flat punt kick. Notwithstanding this, however, he was also an excellent
drop kick.
Ted Rippon, Coleman's former business associate and vice-president of the football club, recalled that Coleman had kicked 14 goals in a match in Perth against a Western Australian side, and six of those goals had been drop-kicked against the wind. over North Melbourne's full-back,
Vic Lawrence, on Saturday, 30 May 1953, with Essendon's
Stan Booth waiting for "the crumbs". Coleman capped his brilliant debut year in storybook fashion: he booted his one hundredth goal in the dying moments of a record
Grand Final win over Carlton. As of 2023, he remains the only player to kick one hundred goals in his first year.
Second premiership The next year,
1950, was Coleman's most prolific season, kicking 120 goals despite missing one match with the flu, and he was a major factor in Essendon's premiership win over
North Melbourne. Coleman's feat of kicking more than 100 goals in consecutive seasons had only been matched by
Collingwood's
Gordon Coventry,
South Melbourne's
Bob Pratt, and Collingwood's
Ron Todd, all of whom achieved the feat much later in their careers when they were older, stronger, and more experienced. North Melbourne
back pocket Pat Kelly said he would never forget playing against Essendon in Round 17 [of 1950].
Alf Brown of
The Herald wrote: Late in the 1950 second semi-final, Essendon was trailing North Melbourne by three points with just 30 seconds remaining. In driving rain, North's
Jock McCorkell unexpectedly punched a ball that was already rolling out over the boundary line back into play just before it crossed the line. Coleman pounced on the ball, and passed it to
Ron McEwin in the goal square. McEwin kicked the goal, and Essendon won by three points, 11.14 (80) to 11.11 (77). Essendon had lost only one match during the season to that point. In an unexpectedly one-sided
grand final (many had thought that North Melbourne could win the rematch), with a rain-lashed third quarter, North Melbourne "went the knuckle", rather than playing football, and specifically targeted Essendon players
Dick Reynolds,
Ron McEwin,
Bill Snell,
Bert Harper,
Ted Leehane and, of course, Coleman. Essendon eventually won 13.14 (92) to North Melbourne's 7.12 (54) in front of a crowd of 87,601. Opposition coaches and full-backs stopped at nothing to curb Coleman's influence. In a one-on-one duel, close-checking, spoiling defenders fared best, but few could outrun him, and certainly no one could match him in the air. Often pitted against two, or even three opponents, Coleman's equilibrium could be upset by needling, jostling and physical contact, which often happened behind the play. Coleman's occasionally fiery temper ensured that he never backed away from a confrontation.
Controversial suspension . Despite specific instructions having been given to the umpires in relation to the protection of forwards from "interference" from opposing backmen, and in the absence of any sort of protection at all from the field umpires, these problems with Coleman's response to the ever-increasing level of provocation, abuse, headlocks, hair-tugging, and thuggery came to a head quite sensationally when Coleman was reported in the last minutes of the second quarter of Essendon's last match of the
1951 home-and-away season against
Carlton at
Princes Park. He was reported for striking Carlton's journeyman back-pocket ruckman
Harry Caspar; Caspar was also reported for striking Coleman. Today, it is well established that Caspar had been niggling Coleman since the very start of the match, which included making persistent and heavy contact with a nasty boil on Coleman's neck; that Caspar had punched Coleman twice whilst play was at the other end of the ground, immediately before Coleman retaliated; and that, apart from his reaction to Caspar's thuggery, Coleman had not been proactive in any way. The match to that time had been a somewhat brutal encounter, and the crowd was highly agitated. During the match, bottles were thrown at Coleman, and as he came off the ground at half-time and walked up the players race, a Carlton fan spat at him through gaps in the
cyclone wired barriers that separated the spectators from the players. Coleman snapped, and smashed the fan in the face, badly hurting his hand. He went into the Essendon rooms, shouting with rage at the total absence of any protection from the match officials, took off his jumper, and spoke of not returning to the field. He was finally persuaded to take the field for the second half, and once on the field, he was so "full of fire" that, according to the recollection of ruckman
Geoff Leek, at the time resting in the forward pocket, he took two of the most amazing marks that Leek had ever seen: At the
tribunal, Caspar's case was heard first. Caspar was suspended for four weeks. Coleman's defence was simple: he had simply retaliated to two unprovoked punches from Caspar (for which Caspar had been suspended). The VFL at that time made no allowance for provocation; the players' advocate
Dan Minogue was thought to have made a good case for Coleman by arguing that any man, if he were a man at all, would hit back after being hit. Both the boundary umpire, Herb Kent, and goal umpire Allen gave evidence that Coleman had retaliated only after he had been punched twice by Caspar. Given that those who retaliated were thought to have been given more lenient penalties than those who instigated, and given that – because Carlton were not in the finals – Caspar's penalty represented the first four home-and-home games in
1952, and given that Essendon were, indeed, playing in the 1951 finals, it was generally thought by those present at the tribunal that, if Coleman was to receive any penalty at all, he would be given no more than two weeks. The chairman announced a penalty of four weeks. Many years later, the tribunal's chairman,
Tom Hammond, agreed that whilst the tribunal had been technically correct in its penalty, given that "there was no precedent" for regarding retaliation as a lesser offence, he now believed that the tribunal had been wrong and that it easily could have created such a precedent. Eventually, the Bombers went on, without Coleman—and with
Dick Reynolds coming out of retirement as 20th man—to lose the grand final by eleven points, and Essendon supporters to this day blame Coleman's suspension for Essendon's failure to win its third successive premiership.
A goalless afternoon On Saturday, 28 June 1952,
in round ten of the 1952 season, at a very muddy (and narrow)
Brunswick Street Oval, Coleman played opposite the champion
Fitzroy fullback
Vic Chanter. In a tough, rugged match, Fitzroy 13.12 (90) defeated Essendon 5.8 (38). Coleman, who would finish the 1952 season with 103 goals, did not score a goal in the match; this was the first (and only) time that Coleman was held goalless in his entire 98-game career. He had less than half a dozen kicks for the entire match—despite being moved to centre half-forward for a while during the second quarter—and was only able to score two behinds, one of which was effected with the last scoring kick of the match.
Career-ending injury After six successive years in the finals, Essendon dropped down the ladder as an era ended. Coleman continued to be the best forward in the game, winning the
VFL goalkicking by scoring 103 goals in
1952 and 97 in
1953. In the seventh game of the
1954 season, he kicked his best-ever tally of 14 goals against
Fitzroy. But at
Windy Hill a week later, Coleman fell heavily and dislocated his knee in what proved to be his last game. His attempts to return drew many headlines over the next two years, but, despite surgery, he was forced to concede defeat in the lead-up to the
1956 season. There were revelations in early 1958 that Coleman's knee was sufficiently repaired to play on and his true reasons for not playing were unrelated to his knee. Coleman kicked 537 goals in just 98 appearances, at an average of 5.48 goals per game. At the time of his retirement, it was the highest goals-per-game average by any player, exceeding the next-best total of
Bob Pratt (4.31 goals per game) by more than a goal. Coleman's feats were even more impressive by virtue of the fact that he achieved them at a time when the rules of the game were less favourable to full-forwards: between 1925 and 1939, a free kick was always awarded against the last team to play the ball before it went out of bounds, which resulted in teams of the era adopting a direct game plan which favoured strong full-forwards, thus it was an era which produced many of the league's heaviest goalscorers, including Pratt,
Gordon Coventry,
Bill Mohr and
Ron Todd. However, Coleman played after the boundary throw-in had been re-introduced, resulting in more play along the wings and less prominence from full-forwards. As of 2023, Coleman's VFL/AFL record average has been surpassed by only
Peter Hudson (5.64 goals per game). == After football ==