(Click pictures to enlarge)
Len Hayes is the only coastal player ever given a testimonial match, on October 1st 1955.
Many say he was the most reliable footballer ever to pull on a pair of boots in the coastal competition.
The quiet unassuming redhead was born at Latrobe in 1925 and brought up on a farm at Sisters Creek, where he began his football.
In 1938 he was selected in the State schoolboys team for the carnival in Hobart and in the same season began a two year stint with country club Myalla in the Table Cape Football Association.
In 1940 he joined Darwin Football Association Yeoman helping the club win a premiership and winning the association Best and Fairest.
He signed with the first APPM team formed in 1941 and starred at centre half back and centre half forward.
He joined the AIF for three years and played in the 12/50th Infantry battalion team captained by NTFA champion Alf Tiffin.
He was sought by VFL clubs when he came out of the army in 1944 at the age of 21, but decided to stay on the coast and joined NWFU cub Wynyard from 1945 to 1950.
In 1951 he switched to Cooee as assistant coach and captain under Harry Whitehead, before becoming captain/coach halfway through 1953 and the following season before returning to the rank and file in 1955.
Hayes played in every combined match with the NWFU from 1945 to 1955 and was in the State teams that went to Brisbane in 1950 and played the VFL in Hobart in 1951.
He won the NWFU western division Best and Fairest in 1946 and 1947 and the NWFU Best and Fairest in 1948 and 1949.
Len Hayes also won Wynyard's Best and Fairest in 1949 and 1950 and Cooee's in 1954 and 1956.
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Len Hayes - A Tasmanian Football Legend
