Bill Dempsey: WAFL legend and Australian Football Hall of Fame member dies aged 83
WA football legend Bill Dempsey has died.
West Australian football great Bill Dempsey has died on Sunday aged 83.
An Australian Football Hall of Fame inductee and a member of the AFL’s Indigenous Team of the Century, Dempsey is considered one of the greatest players to ever play in the WAFL.
A member of the Stolen Generation, Dempsey overcame tremendous hardship to carve out a stellar career which was full of accolades, building a remarkable legacy at West Perth in 343 games from 1960 to 1976.
Bill Dempsey flies in 1965.
Dempsey came from Darwin to play for the Falcons as a teenager in 1959 alongside his good friend Jimmy Anderson, and would start life as a centre-half-forward.
He was then moved into the ruck before the arrival of the great Graham “Polly” Farmer as captain-coach in 1968, which forced Dempsey to become the resting ruckman and a back pocket.
Dempsey was an integral part of three premierships at West Perth (1969, 1971 and 1975), winning the Simpson Medal as the best on ground in the first and captaining the last, before being named in West Perth’s Team of the Century in 2000.
Dempsey holds the 1975 premiership cup aloft.
He was an inaugural inductee into the West Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2004 and the AFL Northern Territory Hall of Fame in 2010, before his 2022 induction into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
Dempsey sits only behind fellow West Perth great and former teammate Mel Whinnen for most games ever in the WAFL.
He would return most summers to Darwin to play for the Buffaloes where he also won three premierships.
Dempsey was born in a small railway town of Birdum in 1942 and spent most of his childhood at the Retta Dixon mission which was 500km away from his home and mother.
He was removed after the passing of his father — who was a returned serviceman — and his sister who contracted meningitis.
“My father, went to the war, came back, contracted meningitis and died,” he told the AFL website.
“Then my little sister died from it. The authorities grabbed me, I went to the mission when I was three years old due to the Government policy at the time.
“There were about 200 kids at Retta Dixon. We played rugby and basketball but football was our love. We never played cricket, that was a white man’s game.”
Bill Dempsey upon being inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 2022.
Dempsey went to night school while also playing football to ensure his financial future.
“When I first came to Perth I started off working as a removalist and I didn’t like it, so I went to night school,” he said.
“For five years I did that. I missed Darwin and one of the reasons I went to night school, was to stop me thinking about it.”