Raymond Thomas Gabelich (3 July 1933 – 18 July 2000) was an Australian rules footballer who played with Collingwood in the Victorian Football League (VFL).
Family
The son of John (1902–1988) and Elizabeth Nina "Bessie" Gabelich, née Rerecich (1910–2006), Raymond Thomas Gabelich was born in Perth on 3 July 1933.
He married Glenda Beverley Huxtable on 5 September 1960; they had three children: Lisa, Raymond and Matthew.
Amateur football
Prevented by East Perth from playing for West Perth on supposed residential grounds, Gabelich was unable to play first-grade football in Perth.
Mount Hawthorn (MJFA) Frustrated, he continued to play top-level, under-20s, amateur football for the Mt Hawthorn Amateur Football Club in Perth's Metropolitan Junior Football Association competition. He was the team's captain in 1953, and he was selected in a West Australian representative team to play in Melbourne. He lodged numerous unsuccessful appeals against his prohibition from playing for West Perth.
Parkside (VAFA) Gabelich, then aged 18, first came to Collingwood’s attention when he was one of the best players afield for the Mt. Hawthorn team that beat South Fremantle Ex-Scholars team (each were premiers in their respective amateur competitions that year) on 20 October 1951, in the curtain raiser for the match in which the visiting Collingwood team lost 22.9 (141) to South Fremantle 15.12 (102).
He came to Collingwood from Western Australia as a centre half-forward in 1954 too late to be listed; and, so, he continued to play football with Parkside Amateurs, a team that was coached by ex-Preston (VFA) rover Les Ross, in the Victorian Amateur Football Association, for the remainder of the 1954: a season in which Parkside were C-Grade premiers, unbeaten throughout the entire season. Gabelich played at centre half-back in the Grand Final where Parkside 15.19 (109) defeated Old Xaverians 8.12 (60).
The team also won the VAFA Lightning Premiership conducted on the Queen's Birthday weekend as a prelude to the Interstate match between the Victorian and South Australian Amateur representative teams.
The only loss the team experienced in 1954 — in fact, the team had won 29 matches consecutively over two (1953/1954) seasons — was when it was defeated, 10.6 (66) to 4.11 (35), by the 1954 Canberra Australian National Football League premiers, Queanbeyan-Acton, in a post–Grand Final match in Canberra on 19 September 1954. Gabelich, at centre half-back, was one of Parkside's best players.
He also played for a Collingwood team, against South Fremantle, in July 1954.
Injury
When working as a fitter and turner in Melbourne, he lost the top of his middle finger in an industrial accident in 1955 before he had played his first game for Collingwood.
Debut for Collingwood
Granted a permit to play with Collingwood in March 1955, Gabelich made his debut for Collingwood in the 30 April 1955 (round three) match against St Kilda — one commentator's view of his performance: "Gabelich: Nice mark and kick. Promising, except for ground play" — he replaced an injured Murray Weideman at centre half-forward in the selected team; he scored 1.4 (10) (playing against Neil Roberts). Gabelich also played (in the ruck) for Collingwood in its end-of-season match against Perth Football Club, who had won the 1955 West Australian Football League premiership team on the previous Saturday, in Perth, on 15 October 1955. He was described as "a superb athlete … deceptively quick and athletic for a man of his massive dimensions",
Gabelich only played seven games in 1957. In the third quarter of the (round 6) match against North Melbourne on 25 May 1957, Gabelich was kicked in the lower leg and sustained a broken fibula. Rejecting the offer of a stretcher, Gabelich "walked unaided more than half the length of the ground" to the dressing room, where "[having been] asked in the dressing room how he knew the leg was broken Gabelich shocked the club doctor by inviting him to listen to the bones grate".
Gabelich's first post-injury appearance was for Collingwood's Second XVIII, playing against North Melbourne on 17 August 1957, where "until his condition gave out, [he] did well and was not troubled by his leg". He was selected in the First XVIII for the important (round 18) last match of the season against St Kilda on 24 August 1957, and was one of Collingwood's best players in a losing team.