Who could forget the magic of the 1970s? The Saints fielded some of the game’s greatest ever players throughout the era, but sadly, there isn't much footage from that time that has survived today. 

This year, the Saints' Past Players and Officials Association will be celebrating the 1970s with a special lunch, where a team of our best players from the decade will be announced. Unfortunately, we have found that there is a serious gap in the video archive of this decade.

We have a good coverage of the finals from 1970-1973, but hardly anything from home and away games. In fact, we have more action footage from the 1960s than the 1970s and we are pleading fans for any 1970s Saints footage, in any format, which we can digitise.

Much of the previous decade’s footage survives because TV stations transferred games to 16 millimetre film which was then flown to troops in Vietnam. Once Australia withdrew from Vietnam in 1973, that was not continued.

Since then most of the 1970s footage held in TV stations was either taped over, or discarded. Often the only surviving vision is that which was captured privately.

So, how about dusting off your old videos and helping us out! We would love to get games like our turnaround against Richmond in 1975 or the classic 1975 Round 20 game where George Young and the white-booted Phil Carman dominated the goalkicking at either end. We only have a couple of scratchy minutes of the 1976 game when a dramatic St Kilda comeback was sparked by our rover Paul Callery being knocked out.

If you can help, please email holmesby@bigpond.com.au.