Ron Stone. The Original Lilywhite Legend

 
The Glen Innes team shown wearing their dark brown & gold striped shirts. We get our brown and gold colours from that club, and our distinctive white from the Tamaki United club. 

Programme of the NZ v Chinese Universities match: https://natlib.govt.nz/records/23052246

It was the stuff of a boy's sporting dreams…as a young lad in 1924, and in his very first season of playing football, Ron Stone played in front of soccer 28,000 fans. Ron and his mates from St Heliers Bay School played Belmont Primary in the curtain raiser to the international fixture: New Zealand v Chinese Universities at the Auckland Domain.

From that awe-inspiring start, Stone went on to play a dozen times for Auckland and New Zealand, including 10 on the five-week tour to Australia in 1933. As founding members of Eastern Suburbs club, Ron and his older brother Gordon have a special place in our clubs rich history as ‘the originals’.

Ron was selected to represent New Zealand in 1933, making him both our club’s first-ever All White and the ‘Original Lilywhite Legend’. 1933 was a year before Eastern Suburbs AFC was formed as a result of the Glen Innes - Tamaki United merger. Ron and his older brother Gordon played for the Glen Innes club and joined Eastern Suburbs as part of that merger in 1934. Both Ron & Gordon came from a farming family in Glen Innes

Stone was capped 36 times for Eastern Suburbs in our two inaugural years (1934 – 1936), he also netted two goals during those years.