Shinboner number: 231
Guernsey number: 5
Born: May 25, 1916
Died: 7 April 1976
North Melbourne games: 155 (1937-47)
Goals: 321
North Melbourne Hall of Fame inductee: 2011

Sid Dyer was one of North Melbourne’s stars during the late 1930s and for much of the 1940s. Playing predominantly as a rover during his 155 games, Dyer averaged two goals per match, including 13 bags of five goals or more.

Although he may have been slight in build (170cm and 76kg), Dyer was quick of foot, back-stepping and side-stepping his way around bigger-bodied opponents.

Dyer won the Syd Barker Memorial Trophy (later named the Syd Barker Medal) in his third season, 1939, also finishing equal sixth to Marcus Whelan in the 1939 Brownlow Medal. He would finish equal sixth in the Brownlow again in 1946, the year he topped North’s goalkicking with 55 goals, and also represented Victoria. He led the club’s goalkicking again the following year (47 goals), his last in the VFL. 

Dyer was the ultimate opportunist around goals, with an innate ability to read the ball off the hands of a pack and snap a quick goal.

After his time at Arden Street, Dyer accepted the position of captain-coach at VFA club Prahran, taking the team to second in 1951. Moving to Warracknabeal, in western Victoria, Dyer continued his playing career and was immediately named vice-captain. In one match, against Minyip in 1952, he was struck from behind with the play up the other end of the field and knocked unconscious for half an hour, in an incident that caused fighting among spectators of both clubs. Despite no report made at the time, the offender was later charged with assaulting Dyer, but was let off with a caution.

Just how good was Dyer as a footballer? According to the Sporting Globe’s chief football writer, Hec de Lacy, he was on a par with Essendon’s triple Brownlow medallist, Dick Reynolds. 

“For individual efficiency give me Dick Reynolds or Sid Dyer,” de Lacy wrote in 1939. “I refuse to separate them. When it comes to a choice between such champions it is a matter of hair splitting.” 

Dyer was inducted into North Melbourne’s Hall of Fame in 2011.