1936 Stan Headon with other players at the Cottesloe Beachfront.
Headon made his league debut with Sturt in 1931, and, after initially struggling to secure a regular place in the team, began to come in his own during the 1933 season. In 1936, after playing 63 games and kicking 30 goals for the Double Blues, as well as representing South Australia once, he was cleared to Claremont where he became a key member of the side that was to dominate West Australian football in the years leading up to World War II.
During his first season with the Monts, however, Headon had great difficulty in coming to terms with the very different interpretation of the handball rule prevailing in the west. Whereas in South Australia the flick pass was still permitted, in the WANFL it was outlawed – facts which had been the bane both of South Australian interstate teams in Perth, and Western Australian teams in Adelaide, for several years.
By 1937, however, Headon, playing as a dashingly energetic half back flanker, was producing the best football of his career, earning selection in the state team for the Perth carnival, and ultimately running third in the voting for the Sandover Medal as well as winning his club’s fairest and best award. He was on the half back line in that year’s losing Grand Final against East Fremantle, as indeed he had been the previous year against East Perth. In 1938 and 1939 he was a key contributor to Claremont’s first two senior flags.
Between 1942 and 1944, senior football in the WANFL was suspended, but Headon resumed for one last season in 1945 to take his final tally of league games with the Monts to 94.
