Keith Slater, one of the greatest all-round sportsmen produced in WA and highly influential figure off the field, has died after a long illness. He was 89.
Few athletes have matched his ability to perform so highly in two – or three – sports.
Slater played Test cricket for Australia and won three league premierships with Swan Districts. He also played high-level baseball on the rare occasions that he got a weekend off.
Slater’s football prowess was greater than his cricket ability – he quelled Polly Farmer to win the Simpson Medal in the 1961 grand final – but he was a regular for the State in both sports.
His one Test in 1958-59 marked the first appearance by a West Australian in the Ashes. He claimed only two wickets but his victims – Peter May and Ted Dexter – were victims of the first order.
But he could never escape chucking allegations and returned to Sheffield Shield ranks where he played 61 matches, scoring one century amid 2027 runs and claiming 112 wickets.
Slater’s football career was even more outstanding.
A Midland local who played 166 matches for Swans before he added 52 as captain-coach of Subiaco, he flourished when Haydn Bunton became coach in 1961.
Swans immediately won a hat-trick of flags with Slater’s effort in the 1961 grand final, when Swans beat East Perth for the first time in five meetings that year, based on a superb tactical assessment.
“Polly always looked around before he jumped to see where his rival was, so I decided to wait until he glanced back and then ran past him,” Slater recalled years later.
As soon as we countered him in the middle and took his handball out of their play it stopped their game.”
That season marked WA’s greatest interstate feat by winning the national carnival in Brisbane where Slater had a significant impact with three of the best of his 21 state games.
His all-round game and articulate nature made him a natural for the media where Slater spent several decades as a regular voice and face of WA football and cricket commentary.
A stalwart at Midland-Guildford where he was a guiding force and the face of the annual Lilac Hill festival match, Slater also went into business with his great football and cricket mater Kevin Gartrell with their Slater-Gartrell sports business becoming one of the most prominent in the state.
IMAGE: WA Cricket