Pat Sanders: 1930 - 2015
In the 1950’s, Pat Sanders (nee Ebbels) was the first woman to work for an AFL (then VFL) club when she joined Collingwood as Gordon Carlyon’s secretary. Gordon effectively ran the administration of the club and Pat helped out with normal secretarial duties and member ticketing as well as more unusual tasks like finding board and employment for interstate recruits. She even sewed numbers on jumpers and cooked dinner for the match committee. Pat loved her job and worked at Collingwood for eight years until 1958.
The club was saddened to hear of Pat’s recent death from Motor Neuron Disease (MND) at the age of 85. Pat’s love of Collingwood never ceased – she was a Legends Member and regularly drove herself to games from her home in Olinda until the age of 83. Pat still made it to a number of matches this year and attended the MND fund raising event at the Westpac Centre on 8 June.
Being the only woman working in football in the 1950’s had its challenges. Pat recalled travelling to the Sydney Cricket Ground for an exhibition game and the being told that she could not enter the members with other club officials. The players promptly refused to enter the ground until she was allowed in! A compromise was reached for her to sit in an upstairs area so as to “not disrupt the members”. It seems the locals were not concerned as before too long there were plenty of members sitting around her, asking her to explain Aussie rules to them. She did her bit for the national competition – even before it existed.
A feature on the "Blue-eyed blonde" Pat Sanders (then Ebbels) in The Herald on 13 April 1957.
Pat left Collingwood in 1958 to raise a family and then ran the Olinda Golf Course with her husband Jim for many years. After Jim’s death in 1976, Pat added a restaurant to the golf course and ran it successfully until she retired in 2002. She was an active member of many community groups in the Dandenongs throughout her life and chaired a number of them, including the Dandenong Ranges Music Council, the Monbulk High School Council and the Olinda Probus Club.
Pat is survived by her three sons (all strong Collingwood fans), three daughters in law her sister Joan and eight grandchildren.
