Career
A brilliant ruckman, he was awarded the Sandover Medal as the fairest and best player in the league three times while playing with the Perth Football Club. Merv McIntosh played 217 games for Perth (severely curtailed by the World World War II years), plus 20 state games for Western Australia in the period 1939 to 1955. He was named in the 1953 All-Australian Team.
His Simpson Medal winning performance in his last game, propelling Perth to a two-point victory in the 1955 grand final (Perth"s first for 48 years), is legendary.
At half-time, East Fremantle had a 34-point lead, but in the third quarter McIntosh led his side to get within two points at the last change. McIntosh"s strategy was to stay in the dead pocket and repeatedly knock the ball out-of-bounds.
He is depicted in a Western Australian state guernsey in Jamie Cooper"s painting The Game That Made Australia, commissioned by the American Federation of Labor-Congress in 2008 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the sport. McIntosh enlisted with the Australian Army in 1941 and was discharged in 1946.
