Col Hutchinson has been a Geelong Football Club supporter since 1958 and a member since 1961.  He has attended every home match since early in 1958, and has seen every Geelong match for Premiership points since Round 11, 1963.

In 1975, he became an honorary match-day statistician.  From 1976 until 1994 he coordinated the statistics panel and from then until the end of the 2007 season had a supportive role in the stats team.

In 1978 Col became the Geelong Football Club official historian.  At the beginning of 1984 he published, Cats’ Tales, the first attempt to detail the club’s League history.

Since the mid 1990s he has been a member of the GFC Honouring the Past Committee.

In 1994 he was honoured with GFC Life membership, and received the Reg Hickey Award, for outstanding service to Australian football in 1999.

After a career as a primary school teacher, Col became the AFL Statistician and Historian in 1992, and since November 2005 has had a contractual role as AFL Statistics and History Consultant.

He is a Life Member of the Australian Football Heritage Group, whose charter is to preserve the history of each of the AFL clubs and the code at all levels.

Come and hear Col presenting at the VAFHO Family History Expo in Hamilton at 10.15 am, Saturday 1st June 2019.

Title: Players at AFL level with links to the Hamilton region

Precis: To begin with Col will briefly outline the origins and evolution of Australian Football.

He will then highlight all relevant early VFA (pre 1897) and League (1897 – 2009) identities who are known to have been recruited from the Hamilton Region, as well as elite players known to have played or coached there after their careers in Melbourne or Geelong.

As a point of interest, George Rippon, an early proprietor of the Hamilton Spectator and prominent Western District citizen, had been a Geelong player as a young man.

Mention will be made of many of the district identities who have family members who also played.

Col is keen to involve the audience by providing an opportunity for people to reveal their family connections to relevant identities, and to discuss any interesting football memories that they may have.

Questions will be welcome.

Col will also bring some pamphlets to hand out to attendees with a list of the local football identities with basic football information and his contact details.

Submitted on behalf of Col Hutchinson : Speaker at the VAFHO Family History Expo, Hamilton, 1 June 2019.