Vale Alan East

East Perth is saddened to advise that Life Member Alan East passed away on Saturday, aged 74 years.

Alan was a pioneer of football journalism in W.A. In 1977, he launched the football newspaper, Westside Football which was published weekly until 1996.
During this period, he amassed a collection of thousands of photographs of football players, and also of people associated with the game in W.A. He was immensely proud of his photographic collection.

A year or two back he advised that he was donating his collection of photos to the W.A.F.L., but he was prepared to allow me to search his collection of photos of East Perth players, and to save them as part of our club history. I managed to scan over one thousand player photos, and three hundred photos of officials and persons who have been part of the Royals scene. This vast collection of photos is now computerised and will form part of our history thanks to the generosity of Alan East. 

As a football journalist, Alan edited and also produced a great range of football history books, including The Royals: 100 years of football tradition, a 304 page history of our club. He also produced and edited The Sandover Medal Men: a 470 page history of Sandover Medallists from 1921 to 2005.

Alan also founded the Noranda Junior Football club about thirty years ago, and was their inaugural president.

In 1976, Alan took over the responsibility of editing and producing the club’s annual report. He continued this task until 2007. From the outset, Alan insisted that the report should be produced with a special emphasis on greater detail, especially in the area of names of players, official and members who should be identified by their first names and not by initials. This form of identification had been lacking in all of records from 1906 until 1975.  

In 1995, Alan was instrumental in the club extending a helping hand to the local community when they adopted a group of enthusiastic young fans at the Cerebral Palsy Association. The Royals Mighty Kids Club was formed, and the Royals raised a special fund to help the youngsters to enjoy several activities during each year. At these functions, the smiles on the faces of the children involved was a heart-warming sight as they mixed with Royals players and donned East Perth colours.

Alan’s sad passing is a loss of a great supporter of the Royals he will be remembered at the East Perth Football Club for his opinions on the game, and outstanding journalistic contributions made in recording our 100 years of history.