Queensland football Hall of Famer and dual Grogan Medallist Brendan McMullen died today (5 December 2017) following a short illness. He was 54.
McMullen was a brilliant goal-kicking rover with Coorparoo in the QAFL in the 1980’s, when the domestic competition was the highest level of the game in Queensland.
In 1984, when Coorparoo won the QAFL premiership, he was the first person in the game’s history to win the J,.A, Grogan Medal as the competition’s best player and the Joe Grant Medal as the best player in the grand final in the same year.
He also won the ’86 Coorparoo best & fairest in a side which included future AFL champion and recent Queensland Sport Hall of Fame Legend Jason Dunstall.
In 1986, when Coorparoo again won the QAFL flag, McMullen shared the Grogan Medal with Kedron’s Greg Packham to join the elite of the game’s elite in the Sunshine State as a dual winner.
Among the best players in Queensland when the Brisbane Bears joined the then VFL competition in 1987, McMullen was a member of the first Bears training squad and played in the club’s first official pre-season match against the Sydney Swans at the SCG.
An inaugural inductee to the Queensland Hall of Fame in 2008, he played 11 times for Queensland, including the successful 1985 Escort Shield campaign, and kicked 184 goals in 112 QAFL games for Coorparoo before an early retirement.
A gifted all-round sportsman who spent much of the past 30 years overseas, living and working in Fiji and Papua New Guinea, McMullen also was a Queensland schoolboys cricketer who played first-grade at Easts, and a gifted schoolboys rugby union fullback at Brisbane Grammar School who after his QAFL career represented Suva in rugby.
By Peter Blucher
