Photographer Tony Cannatelli’s 50-year mission to capture Port Melbourne Football Club

Tony Cannatelli was a boy of seven when his parents and their six children landed at Station Pier in 1962.

Travelling through the Suez Canal, the journey from Italy took 31 days.

They arrived on Melbourne Cup Day, rented a two-bedroom house in Bay St, Port Melbourne, and ran a bakery and delicatessen.

The smell of the salamis, hams and cheeses from the shop caused a few of the locals to give it a wide berth on the footpath.

Young Tony went to St Joseph’s Primary School.

He spoke little English.

His mother filled his lunch box with pizza, the sight of which caused another boy in his class to become ill.

Tony went home and said he no longer wanted pizza for lunch. He would prefer a sandwich with something called Vegemite on it or a thing called a pie.

A while later he noticed a few boys kicking State Savings Bank footballs.

He watched and waited until one of them walked up and said, “Here, here’s the ball, kick it’’.

The boy’s name was Bill Swan.

Tony did as he was invited and the ball went over the fence. He was called a “wog’’ and a “dago’’.

Bill retrieved the ball and gave him another go, telling him to kick it in a direction well away from the fence. And he said, “Follow me’’.

Tony followed him for years. Almost six decades on they are still friends.

Tony Cannatelli has never forgotten how Bill Swan looked out for the kid from Italy whose parents had the deli on Bay St.

The boys from St Joseph’s kicked a football whenever they could – before school, at lunchtime and after school – and the school played proper matches on Friday afternoons.

Tony couldn’t wait to join the team. When he was in Grade 5, he did.

And that year, and again in Grade 6, he played in premiership teams with Bill Swan and another boy named Greg Dermott.

Port Melbourne Football Club – the Borough – played in the VFA.

Bill Swan and Greg Dermott went on to become big stars for Port, Bill a running player, Dermott a rugged defender.

Tony Cannatelli first became aware of the football club when one day he heard the shrill of a whistle, the cheers of a crowd and the wail of a siren.

He walked towards the ground and, since it was after half time, went through the open gate.

He was amazed at what he saw – the North Port Oval, the colours of Port Melbourne, the fervour of the supporters. He snuck into the rooms after the match and saw the players singing the song. And he was hooked.

His support strengthened when the legendary Port Melbourne administrator Norm Goss dropped in to St Joseph’s and gave the students a season ticket for 1965.

Tony himself wore the Port jumper as an Under 15 player. He made it to the Thirds. They had earlier been captained by his brother Vince, who was so strong and well built that he was given the nickname of ‘Bull’.

Norm Goss had taken a shine to Tony – he would always toss him two bob after a game and tell him to go and buy a pie – and asked him to train with the senior squad.

Tony said he surely wasn’t good enough.

“I’ll decide that; you just come to training,’’ Goss replied.

Before he could start, the family shifted to Noble Park. He was without a car and had started working in a bank.

Tony Cannatelli joined Noble Park in the Federal league and played football until he was almost 30.

But he considered himself a Port boy. He had a strong attachment to the Borough, especially since some of the boys he had played with at school and in the Under 15s – Swan, Dermott, Bernie Evans, Glyn Evans and Paul Wharton – went on to play for the red and blue.

In 1974 he began to buy rolls of film and take photographs of games.

Before picking up a camera he used to process images of football in his mind, blinking his eyes and using them like a lens. When someone took a big mark he would blink and store away the image.

There was a lot of action for him to photograph. Port appeared in the 1974, ’76 and ’77 grand finals.

He shot the 1980-81-82 premierships won by Gary Brice’s brilliant teams.

And he was there when Port ended a long premiership drought by going through the 2011 season undefeated under the coaching of Gary Ayres.

By then he had a digital camera, making his task so much easier. He didn’t have to buy a roll of 36 film; he could take a thousand photos and choose the best of them. Take your pics and then take your pick.

Tony Cannatelli started photographing Port Melbourne games with a little Instamatic. A while later he splashed out on an Olympus OM-1 with a telephoto lens, a macro lens and a zoom lens, the works.

Back then he would have his photos processed by Kodak. Sometimes they would come back with players’ heads chopped off. It wasn’t that he was a bad photographer; it was the Kodak cutting machines doing the lopping.

Tony Cannatelli took thousands and thousands of images of Port Melbourne football.

He wishes he had them all catalogued; many of his early photos are in plastic boxes with negatives, magazines and books.

It’s only since going digital that he has created some sort of order for his collection.

His favourite pic? Probably Stephen Allender being presented with the JJ Liston Trophy as best and fairest player in the VFA in 1980.

Why? Because Tony used it on the front cover of the book he wrote about the Borough, VFA, The Port Melbourne Way, released in 1989. He dedicated it to Norm Goss.

He loved old ‘Normie’ and how respected he was at the club and in the community.

He could silence a room quickly. There would be noisy, excited chatter after a game if Port had won, and Goss would stand up, ask for the floor and every mouth would close.

Cannatelli published another book, on VFA trivia, in 1995. He chose for the cover a photograph of Goss playing in the 1941 grand final at the MCG, competing against Bob Pratt.

From his first job in the bank at Noble Park, Tony Cannatelli went on to work in a number of jobs, in a finance company, operating menswear shops at High Point City, Knox City and Dandenong, and selling real estate.

He married and had two children, establishing the family home at Westmeadows.

But there were always Port Melbourne games to watch and to photograph.

The men he grew up with and started fixing his camera on in the 1970s are aged in their 60s.

Cannatelli feels old enough to be the grandfather of the players he shoots now. He wonders if they know who he is and how far back he goes with the club. He wonders if they know about Norm Goss.

Last Friday week Port Melbourne played its first night game at North Port Oval.

There were also premiership reunions in the new social club.

Bill Swan was there and so was Greg Dermott.

Tony Cannatelli felt at home, happy to see so many familiar faces.

He shook a lot of hands and shared a lot of laughs and memories.

And he took a lot of photographs.