George Doig - Reputation and Awards

Reputation and Awards

A 1948 history of the East Fremantle Football Club, The Jubilee Book of the East Fremantle Football Club, written by Dolph Heinrichs, a former East Fremantle player, called Doig the "Bradman of W.A. football", in response to his goal-kicking feats. After a tour of Sydney by East Fremantle in 1938, a Sydney newspaper had called him the "Bradman of Australian rules football", further embellishing his reputation. However, several other footballers were also referred to by this term, notably Ken Farmer, another full-forward, and Haydn Bunton, a rover.

Doig was made a life member of the East Fremantle Football Club at a club reunion held at the Fremantle Town Hall in February 1949. Jerry Dolan, who had previously coached Doig, called him "an ornament to the game and an example in every respect", emphasising his position as a role model to "present-day players who had found the going hard". During the early 1950s, a number of upcoming footballers were compared to Doig, or said to be the "next George Doig". In 1955, Bernie Naylor was called "the greatest centre-forward since George Doig".

Doig was inducted into the Western Australian Institute of Sport's Hall of Champions in September 1988. As part of millennium celebrations, both the newspaper The West Australian and the Australian rules football website Full Points Footy named Doig in their Western Australian "Teams of the Century". He was also named in East Fremantle's Team of the Century, named in 1997 as part of the club's centenary celebrations, and was an initial inductee into the Fremantle Football Hall of Legends, inaugurated in 1995 by the Fremantle Football Club. In 2003, the Fremantle Football Club named its best and fairest award, the Doig Medal, in recognition of the contribution George Doig and the Doig family had made to football in Fremantle. Doig presented the award until his death, when his son, Don, took over. After his death, a number of people acknowledged his contribution to football in Western Australia, including Rick Hart, the president of the Fremantle Football Club, and Alan Carpenter, the Premier of Western Australia at the time. The eulogy at his funeral was given by Cameron Schwab, at the time the CEO of the Fremantle Football Club. A cul-de-sac in a small housing development in Bicton, close to where Doig and his immediate family had lived, was named Doig Court a short time before his death.