Mick Pleass

{{Infobox AFL biography

| name = Mick Pleass

| image = Mick Pleass.png

| alt =

| caption = Pleass in 1899

| fullname = George Victor Pleass

| birth_date = 12 November 1874

| birth_place = Kent Town, South Australia

| death_date = {{death date and age|1925|8|27|1874|11|12|df=yes}}

| death_place = Boulder, Western Australia

| originalteam = South Melbourne (VFA)

| height =

| weight =

| position = Follower

| statsend = 1904

| years1 = 1896

| club1 = South Melbourne (VFA)

| games_goals1 = 19 (4)

| years2 = 1897–1904

| club2 = South Melbourne (VFA)

| games_goals2 = 109 (41)

| years3 = 1904

| club3 = Essendon

| games_goals3 = 4 (0)

| games_goalstotal = 132 (45)

| careerhighlights =

}}

George Victor "Mick" Pleass (12 November 1874 – 27 August 1925) was an Australian rules footballer who played with South Melbourne and Essendon in the VFA and Victorian Football League (VFL).{{cite news |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article148293514 |title=Obituary. |newspaper=Westralian Worker |location=Perth |date=4 September 1925 |accessdate=20 May 2015 |page=14 |via=National Library of Australia}}

Football

Pleass was a follower and played his early football at South Melbourne when they were in the Victorian Football Association (VFA).

He participated in their inaugural VFL match and remained with the club until 1904 when he crossed to Essendon, after his transfer to play for Boulder in the Western Australian Goldfields was refused. During his career he represented Victoria at interstate football on three occasions.Holmesby & Main (2007).

A ruckman, Pleass briefly gave the game away in 1902 to become a field umpire but returned to South Melbourne after officiating in a couple of games.{{cite web|url=http://www.essendonfc.com.au/our-club/history/past-player-profiles/past-player-profiles---p |title=Past Player Profiles – P |publisher=essendonfc.com.au |accessdate=20 May 2015 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20150706155007/http://www.essendonfc.com.au/our-club/history/past-player-profiles/past-player-profiles---p |archivedate=6 July 2015 }}

=1899 team of "champions"=

At the end of the 1899 season, in the process of naming his own "champion player", the football correspondent for The Argus, Reginald Wilmot ("Old Boy"), selected a team of the best players of the 1899 VFL competition:

Backs: Maurie Collins (Essendon), Bill Proudfoot (Collingwood), Peter Burns (Geelong).
Halfbacks: Pat Hickey (Fitzroy), George Davidson (South Melbourne), Alf Wood (Melbourne).
Centres: Fred Leach (Collingwood), Firth McCallum (Geelong), Harry Wright (Essendon).
Wings: Charlie Pannam (Collingwood), Eddie Drohan (Fitzroy), Herb Howson (South Melbourne).
Forwards: Bill Jackson (Essendon), Eddy James (Geelong), Charlie Colgan (South Melbourne).
Ruck: Mick Pleass (South Melbourne), Frank Hailwood (Collingwood), Joe McShane (Geelong).
Rovers: Dick Condon (Collingwood), Bill McSpeerin (Fitzroy), Teddy Rankin (Geelong).

From those he considered to be the three best players — that is, Condon, Hickey, and Pleass — Wilmot selected Pat Hickey as his "champion player" of the season.[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article9030781 'Old Boy', "Football: A Review of the Season", (Monday, 18 September 1899), p. 6.]

Death

He died at the Kalgoorlie Government Hospital, in Boulder, Western Australia on 27 August 1925.[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article140232072 Veteran Player Needs Help, The Australasian, (Saturday, 20 May 1922), p. 19.][http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article93733665 Funeral Notices: Pleasss, The Kalgoorlie Miner, (Friday, 28 August 1925), p. 4.][http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article148293514 Obituary, The Westralian Worker, (Friday, 4 September 1925), p. 14.][http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58224122 Peeps at People, The (Perth) Sunday Times, (Sunday, 6 September 1925), p. 2.][http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2134185 Deaths: Pleass, The Argus, (Tuesday, 8 September 1925), p. 1.]

Notes

References

[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article197540599 'Follower', "The Footballers' Alphabet", The Leader, (Saturday, 23 July 1898), p. 17]: "P is for Pleass, unsurpassed in the ruck".
[http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article175400318 South Melbourne Team, Melbourne Punch, (Thursday, 4 June 1903), p. 16.]
Maplestone, M., Flying Higher: History of the Essendon Football Club 1872–1996, Essendon Football Club, (Melbourne), 1996. {{ISBN|0-9591740-2-8}}
{{cite book|last1=Holmesby|first1=Russell|last2=Main|first2=Jim|title=The Encyclopedia of AFL Footballers| publisher=BAS Publishing|year=2007|isbn=9781920910785}}
[https://eprints.qut.edu.au/100083/18/Mark%27s%2BBook%2BVolume%2B4%2Br.pdf Pennings, Mark (2016), Origins of Australian Football: Victoria's early History: Volume 4: Tough Times: Victorian Football loses its Way, 1891 to 1896, Brunswick, Victoria: Grumpy Monks Publishing.] {{isbn|978-0-646-93604-8}}