GEOFFREY "JACK" MORIARTY

The Fitzroy Football Club is proud to announce that our nomination of our greatest ever goal kicker for the AFL Hall of Fame has been accepted. Jack is part of the 2004 inductees and is now fully acknowledged by his peers for the great champion that he was.

Young Geoffrey Moriarty as he was christened, lived in Alphington as teenager and attended Xavier College in 1913 to 1917. He showed a glimmer of his famous footballing future by kicking 115 goals in a season with the Under 15s. Strangely there is no record of him playing in the firsts for the school. After school he went onto work for an engineering firm.

Despite the fact that his father, also named Geoffrey, had been a premiership player for Fitzroy (1899 and 1905) and our first coach in 1911 and 1912, young Jack, as he was then called, had his first senior game with the Essendon VFA team in 1921. He joined the Essendon VFL team in 1922. As he only got to play 13 senior games in 1922 (for 36 goals), and spent the 1923 season in the seconds, he decided to transfer to his Dad's old Club in 1924.

It didn't take long for him to become a legend at Fitzroy. In the opening game for 1924 at the Brunswick Street ground against Carlton, he kicked seven goals. This feat was repeated the next week against Sth.Melbourne at the Lake oval and again in the third week back at Brunswick Street against Geelong. To this day no one has equalled that record in VFL/AFL football. He went onto become Fitzroy's highest kicking full forward with 626 goals. He played 157 games for the Maroons between 1924 and 1933. He was only 175 cms (5' 9")and weighed 63kgs (9 stone 4lb) but his goal kicking feats became legendary. He topped the VFL goal kicking list in 1924 with the then record of 82 goals. Except for 1930 he lead the goalkicking at Fitzroy in all of his ten seasons there. He was the third player in the VFL/AFL to kick 500 goals after Dick Lee and Gordon Coventry of Collingwood fame from the same era. His average of 3.89 goals per game is the tenth best of all time. His record of kicking 31% of his team's goals over his ten seasons with Fitzroy is second only to the great John Colemen. He twice kicked ten or more goals with his best at 12 against Nth Melbourne in 1927. He was a Victorian State rep in every year between 1924 and 1933.

Jack played with the great Haydn Bunton in 1932 and 1933 before hanging up his boots at the end of the 1933 season. He followed his father's footsteps and joined the Fitzroy committee in 1934 to 1936. He was a famous identity in North Fitzroy for many years as he ran a motor garage in Nicholson Street. He passed away in 1980. In 2001, three days after the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, he was named at full forward in our Team of the Century.