CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Damien Gaspar

Australian rules footballer

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ5212438
Source-derived summary

Damien Gaspar (born 28 March 1975) is a former Australian rules footballer who played with Melbourne in the Australian Football League (AFL).

Melbourne selected Gaspar in the 1992 AFL draft from South Fremantle in the West Australian Football League (WAFL) with the 86th overall selection. He made his debut in 1995 and played in eight games for Melbourne in each of his first two seasons. He played the first twelve games of 1997, but then succumbed to a groin injury and only played one more AFL game in 1998 before he was delisted at the end of the 1998 season.

He returned to Western Australia, but switched WAFL clubs to play for East Fremantle, where he played 110 games over the next seven seasons. He remained at East Fremantle after retiring as a player, becoming their football manager.

His brother, Darren Gaspar, played in the AFL for Sydney and Richmond. It was suggested that Melbourne was considering recruiting Darren when he left Sydney in 1995, but they selected Craig Nettelbeck with the second selection in the 1996 Pre-season Draft, leaving Richmond to select Darren with the next selection. Another brother, Travis Gaspar, played for South Fremantle and West Coast.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Damien Gaspar” is australian rules footballer. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Damien, Gaspar and Australian, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1975, 1992, 1995, 1997—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1975-03-28. For this dossier, Damien, Gaspar and Australian is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “australian rules footballer” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5212438. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1975, 1992, 1995 and 1997.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Damien Gaspar”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Damien Gaspar primary sources, Damien Gaspar archive and Damien research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Damien Gaspar”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Damien Gaspar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.