Echuca-based Mr Colvin, 82, lost his battle with the cruel and deadly disease last week.
Mr Colvin started his football career with Rutherglen before his family moved to a farm at Mt Scobie in the late 1950s. He played the 1958 and 1959 seasons with Stanhope in the Goulburn Valley League before switching to Rochester in the halcyon days of that club and the Bendigo Football League.
It was while playing with Rochester he caught the eye of South Melbourne (now Sydney Swans) talent scouts.
At 188cm (6ft 2in) tall he played 56 games with South Melbourne, mainly in defence, from 1962 to 1965.
In one breakout season with the Swans he commanded a front page of the ‘‘pink paper’’ — the Sporting Globe — with a booming banner heading ‘Mean Colvin’ for his ability to contain the best full-forwards, including Hawthorn goal-kicking freak Peter Hudson, of that era.
When he returned to the area in 1966 he lined up with Rochester again and won its best and fairest award.
Kyabram’s Fay Shaw, an older sister of Mr Colvin, said her brother had been double vaxxed against COVID-19 and had acquired the disease from someone who was visiting other residents of an Echuca nursing home.
Mrs Shaw said Mr Colvin had other health conditions, which still left him vulnerable to the disease, and he died after being transferred to Bendigo Base Hospital.
His funeral is on Friday, November 26, with a private mass at the Moama Catholic Church at 11am before burial at the Echuca Cemetery.
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