Mr Goldspink played league for Tumbarumba and won three premierships with the club in 1960, 1961 and 1962.

He was recruited to Canterbury Bankstown in 1964 but injury forced him out the following season.

He returned to the Riverina, where he went on to play and coach in Wagga and Griffi th.

His younger brother Kevin was selected to play for Australia.

“I put most of my life into football, into playing, refereeing, coaching and administration.

I’m glad to have moved away and to have had the opportunity to appreciate the life and childhood I had after travelling around Australia and in Europe,” he said.

Mr Goldspink said Tumbarumba had proven the ideal place to raise his children upon his return.

“I love the area. It is unique. The Murray is only 35 minutes away and close by are Mt Selwyn and Kosciuszko,” he said.

“There are dams and trout streams.

I’m an amateur fi sherman but I love to throw the line in.” Mr Goldspink, formerly a councillor with Tumbarumba Shire, still serves as chairman of the town’s MPS or hospital, and the friends of the hospital group and on the local tourism committee.

Perhaps his best-known campaign was the bid for acknowledgment of the fi rst fatal civil airline crash, southeast of Tumbarumba in March 1931.

Mr Goldspink headed a committee that fulfi lled plans for a permanent commemoration of the Southern Cloud crash on the Bald Hill plateau on Tooma Road.

“That crash changed the course of aviation in Australia because the plane had no communications and could not be warned about the weather,” he said.

“It is a place that still creates a lot of interest and the descendants still return there every year.”