George Moloney


George Michael "Specka" Moloney was a highly regarded Australian rules footballer in both the West Australian National Football League and the Victorian Football League.
Moloney had a formidable reputation as a centre, a goalsneak and a key forward. After four years at Claremont in the 1920s, Moloney drew strong attention as a goalsneak for Western Australia at the 1930 Adelaide Carnival. The following year, he moved to Victoria and joined the Geelong Football Club, where he played for five years, generally at full forward; he won a premiership with the club in 1931, and kicked 109 goals in 1932.
In 1936, Moloney returned to Claremont in the WANFL, he won the Sandover Medal in 1936 as the league's fairest and best player playing primarily as a centre. In 1938, he led Claremont to its first-ever premiership, and repeated the feat in the next two seasons.
All told, he played a total of 190 WAFL games, some of them alongside brothers Robert and Syd.
Arguably the greatest name in the history of the Claremont Football Club, and certainly one of the most uniquely versatile champions ever to have adorned the game, George "Specka" Moloney rounded off his association with the Tigers by coaching them, sadly without success, from 1948 to 1951.
In 1996, Moloney was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame and in 2004 he was inducted into the West Australian Football Hall of Fame where he has legend status.