Edward Greeves, Jr.

Who was Edward Greeves, Jr.?

Edward Goderich "Carji" Greeves, Junior was an Australian rules footballer for the Geelong Football Club in the Victorian Football League. He was the winner of the inaugural Brownlow Medal in 1924, for the fairest and best player in the VFL.

Greeves played with the Geelong Football Club from 1923–31 and wore jumper number 20.

Best known by the nickname E "Carji" Greeves, he was given the nickname as a baby by a friend of the family, the New South Wales golfer Michael Scott, most likely after he had seen A Country Girl, a popular musical play of the day, which was being performed in Sydney and Melbourne in the months after Greeves' birth in 1903 and featured a character, Carjillo, the Rajah of Bhong who was an Englishman disguised as an Indian rajah. In the 1860s, Greeves' grandmother Julie was briefly engaged to Tom Wills, the famed cricketer and pioneer of Australian rules football. Historian Col Hutchinson noted that "If Tom Wills had married Julie, we wouldn't have had Carji Greeves".

Greeves was honoured with having the Geelong Football Club's Best and Fairest award named after him, the Carji Greeves Medal. In 1996 Greeves was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.