Career: 1968-1977; 1968-1976 North Melbourne, 1977 Collingwood
Games: 128; 124 North Melbourne, 4 Collingwood
Goals: 232; 228 North Melbourne, 4 Collingwood
Brownlow Medal: 31 votes
Guernsey number: 4
Height: 187 cm
Weight: 95 kg
DOB: March 11th, 1950 (Debut 18y 89d - last game 27y 155d)
So often was he criticised for failing to realise his full football potential, that the extent of what he did in fact achieve can be so easily overlooked.
All things considered, he was one of the most talented players ever to wear the royal blue and white.
Born in Western Australia, of Serbian parents, on 11 March 1950, he came with them to Victoria, and was recruited from Myrtleford. An explosive ruck-rover, with extraordinary physical strength and an ability to tear away and put through a telling goal, he was one of those dream players who could turn the course of a game with a total concentration of his consummate skills. All this explains why he was universally known as “Slamming Sam”, and why he was a king cog in North’s 1975 premiership machine.
At the same time, this enormously endowed player often went missing when he was required for training or the carrying out of other directives. This is why he is the one absentee from the mammoth wall photo of The Immortal Twenty that adorns the Members’ Dining Room at the North Melbourne Social club - he just didn’t turn up when it was being taken, something he came to regret.
On the positive side, he accomplished much during his nine seasons at Arden Street, with a runaway margin of votes, he won the Syd Barker Trophy in only his second season with North. In that same year, he won a Victorian State guernsey for the Australian Carnival in Adelaide. He was also North’s leading goal kicker in three seasons - 1969 with 56, 1971 with 35 and 1972 with 19.
Between 1968 and 1976 he played 124 games, and kicked 228 goals, and even today is a well known and much loved figure around the club.
Profile from 'The North Story'
VFL/AFL: 8038th player to appear
North Melbourne: 605th player to appear
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