| Haydn Bunton, Jr. | |||
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| Personal information | |||
| Full name | Haydn Austin Bunton | ||
| Date of birth | 5 April 1937 | ||
| Playing career1 | |||
| Years | Club | Games (Goals) | |
| 1954–1956 1958 1959 1960 1961–1964 1965–1967 1968–1970 Total – |
North Adelaide Norwood Launceston Norwood Swan Districts Norwood Subiaco |
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| Coaching career3 | |||
| Years | Club | Games (W–L–D) | |
| 1957–1958 1959 1961–1964 1965–1967 1968–1972 1975–1982 1984–1989 1992–1994 |
Norwood Launceston Swan Districts Norwood Subiaco South Adelaide Subiaco Sturt |
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1 Playing statistics to end of 1994 season .
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Haydn Austin Bunton (born 5 April 1937 in Melbourne) was a player and coach of Australian rules football. He became the youngest ever coach in a major league of Australian rules, when he was appointed coach of Norwood Football Club in 1957.
Bunton was regarded as a tough and skilful player and was a very successful coach in both the Western Australian National Football League (WANFL) and South Australian National Football League (SANFL). (His father, Haydn Bunton, Sr., won three Brownlow Medals in the VFL and three Sandover Medals in the WANFL.)
The younger Bunton was inducted into the coaches section of the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996, as well as the Western Australian Institute of Sport Hall of Champions in 2003 and was made an inaugural member of the WA Football Hall of Fame in 2004 and the SA Football Hall of Fame in 2002.
Bunton was named an All-Australian player at the age of 19, in 1956, while at North Adelaide in the SANFL, where he played 54 games between 1954 and 1956. In 1956, he finished runner-up for the Magarey Medal (to Dave Boyd). In 1957, he was a non-playing coach of Norwood, having "stood out" as a player for the year due to a transfer dispute with North Adelaide, who would not clear him.[1] From 1958 to 1960, he played for Norwood, in spite of a serious knee injury sustained in a car accident in Tasmania in 1959.
Bunton had another strong year in 1961, when he was recruited by Swan Districts in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) as captain-coach. He captained Western Australia to a (then) rare win in the Australian championships and oversaw Swan Districts' first ever premiership, the first of three consecutive premierships for the club. The following year Bunton won the Sandover Medal for the league's "fairest and best", completing a rare father and son achievement.
From 1965 to 1967, Bunton returned to Norwood, bringing his total number of games for the club to 97.
After retiring as a player, Bunton coached Subiaco (WANFL) from 1968 to 1972; South Adelaide (SANFL) from 1975–1982; returned to Subiaco in 1984–89, including WAFL premierships in 1986 and 1988; and Sturt (SANFL) in 1992–1994.
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