Peter Davidson, player #68 on the all-time Brisbane Football Club playing list, died yesterday in his WA home town of Collie, 210km south of Perth. He was 60 and had fought a six-year battle against cancer.

A blonde wingman, he won the Claremont best & fairest in the WAFL in 1985 and represented WA against Victoria in 1986 before being a member of the very first West Coast Eagles side in 1987.

But after playing Round 1 and Round 3 in the club’s inaugural season he was plagued by soft tissue injuries and retired at the end of the 1989 season.

Only 27, he was quickly lured out of retirement by the Bears and played seven games in jumper #40 under Norm Dare in 1990, kicking two goals in his Brisbane debut in Round 6.

One of the truly “good blokes” in football, he averaged 23 possessions through the last six games of the year, highlighted by 25 possessions and a goal in his only Bears win over Geelong at Carrara in Round 19 and a career-best 28 possessions the following week against Sydney.

He returned to WA for family reasons at the end of the season, later playing in a WAFL premiership with East Fremantle in 1992, but only after a memorable Bears send-off in Round 22 1990 against what was then Footscray at their Whitten Oval headquarters in Melbourne.

It was like a WA tribute game as Davidson played alongside fellow Sandgropers Brad Hardie, Mike Richardson, John Gastev, Alex Ishchenko and 100^th-gamer Rod Lester-Smith.

It was Richardson’s last AFL game, and the last game for Rodney Eade, Phillip Walsh, Mark Withers, Darren Carlson and Chris O’Sullivan. It was Mark Roberts’ last game for Brisbane and Dare’s last game as Brisbane coach.

Davidson, the first player to wear the Eagles’ #11 jumper, subsequently worn by 200-gamers Ashley McIntosh and Matt Priddis and now by Tim Kelly, was scheduled to join other foundation West Coast players as guests of the club in Perth last Sunday.

In palliative care as the end neared, he was unable to attend. Instead a group of ex-Eagles teammates travelled to Collie to see him on Saturday.