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Other relevant books by Matt Zurbo I Love Footy (Windy Hollow Books) Echo Publishing A division of Bonnier Publishing Australia 534 Church Street, Richmond Victoria 3121 Australia www.echopublishing.com.au Copyright © Matt Zurbo, 2016 All rights reserved. Echo Publishing thank you for buying an autho- rised edition of this book. In doing so, you are supporting writers and enabling Echo Publishing to publish more books and foster new talent. Thank you for complying with copyright laws by not using any part of this book without our prior written permission, including reproducing, storing in a retrieval system, transmitting in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or distributing. First published 2016 Edited by Rob Bath Page design and typesetting by Shaun Jury Cover design by Josh Durham, Design by Committee Front cover illustration by Jamie Cooper, JCAP Australia The cover image features a 20 × 15 cm pencil and ink wash sketch of Gavin Wanganeen. The artist depicted him on the burst in the midst of a powerful electric storm on a cold winter night. It was created as part of a visual concept proposal put together for his retirement. Typeset in Sabon and Kievit Printed in Australia at Griffin Press. Only wood grown from sustainable regrowth forests is used in the manufacture of paper found in this book. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available on request. @echo_publishing @echo_publishing facebook.com/echopublishingAU This book is dedicated to . Pete Featherstone Otway Districts FNC Lilydale FC The Bats FC Robbie Flower, Tom Hafey and anyone who ever pulled on a boot. Publisher’s Note The vast majority of the content of this book comprises direct-speech quotations from taped conversations with 170 interviewees, recorded in hundreds of sessions at various locations over several years – and transcribed by 11 different people using various devices and programs. You will find visual variety in the printed record of speech as no attempt has been made to correct bad grammar or improve sentence construction, or clean up salty language. We play it as it lays. Contents Two footballers talking . 1 1 After the bloodbath 3 Billy Williams 3 2 First kick 11 Toy soldiers 18 3 Beginnings 19 The final word on beginnings . 25 4 Recruiting 26 Ten days in jail 35 5 First game 37 6 Small Towns 45 Russell ‘Hooker’ Renfrey 45 7 Training 55 8 1900s–40s 59 40s Grand Finals 65 Players on players 40s 68 Jack Dyer 69 40s – The moments 70 9 The 1950s 74 50s Grand Finals 94 50s – The moments 100 Players on players 50s 106 John Coleman 107 10 Injuries 111 11 Violence 117 Neville Bruns on Leigh Matthews 127 12 Supporters 131 Kevin Murray – Keeping in touch 138 13 The 1960s 140 One game – Denis Hughson 140 Gentleman champion – Ken Fraser 142 Vietnam – Keith Gent 150 The fringe player – Owen Madigan 154 60s Clubs 162 60s Grand Finals 183 Players on players 60s 194 Players on Norm Smith 197 60s – The moments 198 Len Smith’s notes 204 Graham Cornes on Vietnam 205 Rivalries 60s 206 Norm and Len Smith 208 14 The 1970s 209 70s Grand Finals 236 Players on players 70s 252 Graeme Richmond – Powerbroker, 60s–80s 257 Keith Greig – North Melbourne dual Brownlow winner 259 Brent Crosswell – Tiger 260 Vinnie Catoggio on Brian Douge 261 Dennis Munari on Slug Jordon 262 Vinnie Catoggio on David Parkin 263 70s – The moments 263 Percy and Gags 270 The Windy Hill brawl 271 Rivalries 70s 272 Knights versus Vander Haar 274 15 Grounds 276 16 Indigenous affairs 281 17 Interstate Footy 286 18 Religion 292 The Holy Grail 293 19 The club soldier 295 Ian Patton 295 20 The crowd favourite 308 Robbie Flower 308 21 The defender 318 Mark Yeates 318 22 The game changer 332 Silvio Foschini 332 23 The legend 339 Ron Barassi 339 24 The 1980s 351 80s Grand Finals 388 Players on players 80s 398 Doug Hawkins 402 Kevin Sheedy 403 Stewart Loewe on Warren Jones 405 Lazar Vidovic on Tony Liberatore 406 80s – The moments 407 80s Pagan’s Under 19s 413 Ken Hunter on depression 415 The Battle of Britain 416 Rivalries 80s 417 25 The 1990s 419 Essendon 90s 429 Fitzroy 90s 432 90s Grand Finals 460 Players on players 90s 472 Mick Martyn on Tony Liberatore 479 Wayne Schimmelbusch on Wayne Carey 479 Coach on coaches – Stan Alves, St Kilda 480 90s – The moments 481 Steroids 486 Rivalries 487 Western Derbies 488 26 The Hard Man 490 Andy Goodwin 490 27 Broken bones 502 Matt Febey 502 28 The rubber man 511 Gavin Wanganeen 511 29 Family 518 Michael O’Loughlin 523 30 Philosophies 524 31 Media 533 KROCK 536 32 That bit extra 538 Damian Monkhorst – Maybe not Plugger 542 33 Pay 543 34 The 2000s 546 2000s Grand Finals 576 Players on players 00s 593 2000s – The moments 597 Bali 602 Rivalries 00s 604 Showdowns 604 35 The 2010s 606 10s Grand Finals 628 Players on players 10s 632 10s – The moments 634 Peptides 638 36 Premierships 640 37 Work and family 643 Mark Ricciuto 643 38 The mature recruit 651 Dean Towers 651 39 Ablett – Senior versus Junior 658 40 The Brownlow 660 Tommy Hafey on the medal 663 41 Umpires 664 42 International football 666 43 Retiring 670 Scott Cummings – Shot bodies 673 44 The modern game 675 45 A nation’s game 678 Allen Aylett 678 46 What footy means 688 The question: 688 The answers: 688 They played footy . 692 Key 692 Acknowledgements 704 Two footballers talking . There I was, standing in Melbourne’s suburbs, on the porch of dual North premiership back pocket, Ross Henshaw, six pack in hand. Next thing I knew, I was in Adelaide, having lunch with Mark bloody Ricciuto! Getting ripping drunk with Mark Yeates; visiting Francis Bourke and Ken Fraser; hanging out at a Perth café with Shaun McManus, standing in front of the great Noel McMahen, Ken Hands and John Kennedy Senior. Eating lunch with Vinnie Catoggio, talking forever with Simon Black . All up, about 171 players. My pitch was simple, because it was true, always: I’m a bush worker from North-east Tassie who writes at times and is currently playing his thirty-third season of senior footy. I’m sick to death of reading the history of the VFL and AFL according to historians, journalists, spin doctors, ghostwriters. I want to compile a book that’s entirely, one- hundred per cent in the words of the players and coaches that were actually out there – one to four players from each generation of each club, from the 1940s to now – getting not only great personal stories but a sense of a club’s culture. And of the game: what’s changed, what’s stayed the same. A history drenched in the mud and blood of footy. The glory and the heartache. Its honesty. The stories. No notes, no agendas; just two footballers talking, often for hours. Then it was as simple as working my arse off in the bush, to pay for three years of trekking across the country to meet all these blokes; to convince the famous ones to tell me something real; to convince the not-so-famous they had every damn bloody right to be in a book alongside Roos and Sheedy and Skilton and Barassi. I’ve spent most of my nearly 600 games so far as a backman with, I guess, a backman’s mentality. A book full of Brownlow winners and 300-gamers would be boring. They’re a huge 1 CHAMPIONS ALL part of footy’s story, but only a part. I wanted a book about football. All of it. Aussie Rules at its top level. The legends, but also the rugged back-pockets, the blokes cut down by injury, careers cut short by Vietnam, the silk, the grunt, the gentlemen, the thugs, the cult figures, the supporters, the families, the grounds, their smells, the anger. The top teams, the wooden spooners. Life stories. The book is about people. Often two players would have totally different opinions of the same event, coach or fellow player. Neither would be wrong. The view of some players by their fellow players is not always what’s thrust on us by the media. The stuff many books miss, but makes history real – the unsung heroes and hilarious backroom tales – were everywhere. Listening to and trading stories as any bloke would tell them . to me that’s history. That’s footy. The main thing I had to say to each of these strangers, a few I’m lucky enough to now call mates, was: ‘I’m doing this book out of love and respect for the game’. Now it’s done I’m happy to go back to bush work, the odd farm job and to keep playing bush footy until the body finally packs up. Which hopefully will be never. VFL/AFL footy is a thing of dreams, broken dreams, adventure, pain, incredible sacrifice. Anyone who’s played even one game at that level is a champion. Matt Zurbo 2 1 After the bloodbath Billy Williams I grew up in Newport, which was a wharfie suburb back then, during the War, and before that the Depression. There was no Westgate bridge. My father steered the punt across the Yarra, floating cars to and from work, mostly in industrial Port Melbourne. He did that for forty years. We called it a ferry, even though it was pretty much a float on a cable, he had to have a sea captain’s license.