Game: Best AFL Writing

Dennis Cometti is one of the best known and most respected sportscasters in Australia, covering everything from Test cricket with the great Alan McGilvray to Commonwealth Games and the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics. He played football for Footscray in the 1970s before injury forced him to hang up his boots. No longer able to play, Dennis turned his focus and passion for AFL to commentating where he has earned the reputation of being the most distinctive, eloquent and beloved football commentators the game has ever known.

The Age’s Jon Pierik has been a football fan since he was old enough to see over the boundary fence and a sports journalist for major metropolitan newspapers for more than a decade. He understands what makes the game great—and why it inspires fine journalism. Pierik combines these two ingredients to deliver a must read for AFL fans.

THE

GAME

A COLLECTION OF THE BEST

AFL STORIES

EDITED BY

DENNIS COMETTI

WITH JON PIERIK

First published in 2012

Copyright in the collection © Dennis Cometti and Jon Pierik 2012

Copyright in individual articles© retained by authors

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Every effort has been made to contact the copyright holders of material reproduced in this book. In cases where these efforts were unsuccessful, the copyright holders are asked to contact the publisher directly.

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CONTENTS

Introduction Dennis Cometti

COACHES

499 games coached, one enjoyed: David Parkin Linda Pearce

The Malcolm Blight sacking Rohan Connolly

Thomas, an outsider within Greg Baum

Introducing Mark Williams, premiership coach Caroline Wilson

The Rohan Connolly interview: Rodney Eade Rohan Connolly

No more miracles, simply the day that had to come: Kevin Sheedy Greg Baum

Blue-collar blueblood: Brett Ratten Rohan Connolly

Matthews, a man of his time, departs at a time of his choosing Greg Baum

Faith healer: Alastair Clarkson Rohan Connolly

New Richmond coach Damien Hardwick early in his tenure at Tigerland: What have I got myself in for? Rohan Connolly

Coach changed the game—and won a few, too: Paul Roos Jake Niall

Thompson exits after a decade to remember at Kardinia Park Martin Blake

Pumped and proud: Chris Scott Rohan Connolly

Buckley and the search for footy utopia Jake Niall

Mick Malthouse Konrad Marshall

THAT ONE DAY

A dynasty? History says the devil’s in the detail: 2000 Grand Final, Essendon v Melbourne Greg Baum

Lions devour the meek Pies: 2003 Grand Final, Brisbane v Collingwood Caroline Wilson

Wheel turns for hungry Port: 2004 Grand Final, Port Adelaide v Brisbane Rohan Connolly

Now, as Zen, Sydney reminded of its unshakeable, unbreakable belief in each other: 2005 Grand Final, Sydney v West Coast Jake Niall

New rivals show why they’re hard to split: 2006 Grand Final, Sydney v West Coast Rohan Connolly

A victory for the ages: 2007 Grand Final, Geelong v Port Adelaide Greg Baum

Fairytale finish for skilful Johnson: 2007 Grand Final, Geelong v Port Adelaide Martin Blake

How the Cats saved football: 2008 Grand Final, Geelong v Hawthorn Jake Niall

Faces tell of a missed opportunity: 2009 Grand Final, St Kilda v Geelong Martin Blake

It’s still neck and neck after 44 years: 2010 Grand Final, Collingwood v St Kilda Caroline Wilson

Stoic Pies win the game, lose it, win it back, but still no spoils: 2010 Grand Final, Collingwood v St Kilda Greg Baum

In glorious living colour, a black and white fairytale finally comes true: 2010 Grand Final, Collingwood v St Kilda Greg Baum

Heroes and legends: Cats grab a place in history: 2011 Grand Final, Geelong v Collingwood Caroline Wilson

DEEPER GAME

Scott West climbs the shrine to forget, not to remember Caroline Wilson

AFL coach reveals 11-year secret: My battle with brain tumour Emma Quayle

Grieving Lyon tells of a year marred by loss Rohan Connolly

All about my father Jake Niall

Shane’s pain Caroline Wilson

Damage control Samantha Lane

Heath wave Michael Gleeson

Facing up to life’s real tests Michael Gleeson

A Dog’s new life Emma Quayle

The Pact: St Kilda v Geelong Martin Blake

Out of Africa, into the team Peter Hanlon

I’m proud of her: Dad’s tribute to baby Luella Michael Cowley

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

He’s footy royalty but. . .a blueblood? Greg Baum

Bucks stops Michael Gleeson

Richo: A Tiger who earned his stripes Martin Flanagan

A sorry tale that has torn a team apart Caroline Wilson

Dark side of the Mooney Samantha Lane

Buddy: An audience with Lance Franklin Samantha Lane

Let the light shine Martin Blake

Ablett the younger makes his own mark Greg Baum

In the twilight, sun sets on Essendon era Greg Baum

The contender Peter Hanlon

McLeod’s silver lining Martin Flanagan

Captain Fantastic: The legend of Roo Emma Quayle

Brisbane to sack Fevola Caroline Wilson

High and dry Linda Pearce and Peter Hanlon

The Eagle who crash-landed Peter Wilmoth

One test ends, a new, bigger one begins Jake Niall

Calling time on a big, bad, bustling career Martin Blake

I loved the nature of our friendship . . . Garry Lyon

MARN GROOK

Mum made me do it: How Adam Goodes became a star Michael Cowley

Worlds apart Peter Hanlon

Blood brothers Chloe Saltau

David Selwyn Burralung Merringwuy Galarrwuy Wyal Wirrpanda—and don’t you forget it Michael Gleeson

AFL club prefers white parents Michael Gleeson

The changing landscape Martin Flanagan

THE SUITS

Football bosses step into limelight Jake Niall

Final siren for Elliott as Blues eject the old guard Caroline Wilson

AFL plans two new clubs in four years Caroline Wilson

From headstrong to harmonious, football boss has reinvented himself and won respect Caroline Wilson

Bagging Eddie is not all black and white Martin Flanagan

OUTSIDE THE (CENTRE) SQUARE

Inside the kennel: The Connolly report Rohan Connolly

Agent for change: Danny Southern Samantha Lane

Inside a horror week for Carlton Caroline Wilson

A street named desire Emma Quayle

Jack Dyer: A final roar for a fallen tiger Martin Blake

When the siren blew, it was amateur hour Martin Blake

Out of bounds? Dan Silkstone

In times of treble Linda Pearce

Bat outta Bartel Peter Hanlon

INTRODUCTION

Dennis Cometti

I’M NOT THE NEWSPAPER READER I once was. Things have changed! These days newspapers are fighting for their very existence. But unlike dinosaurs, V8s and Mark Neeld, they have the tools to fight back. This book celebrates that battle and takes us to the frontline. It’s all about fine writers telling good stories. But these aren’t just any stories, they’re AFL stories.

While AFL is an institution, I need to go on record by pointing out that AFL writing is no Roman ruin. It’s younger than Alex Turner. If you’re wondering who the hell Alex Turner is, read on. That blank look will help me make a point further down the line.

By its nature writing about footy can’t always be epic; the need to fill space and meet deadlines, of necessity, means thin gruel can often take the place of rich bouillabaisse. Seems to me, outstanding writing relies on two things—time and topic.

The articles you’re about to read on the following pages show just what can be done when both find their way to the right keyboard. Each article will draw you in. Much like an afternoon watching Gary Ablett (the father and the son) running amok or Lance Franklin notching a lazy 13 (13 that left James Brayshaw exploring the vagaries of DIY acupuncture) you’ll come away knowing it was time well spent.

I was lucky growing up in Perth. It was the home of Australian Football Hall of Fame journalist Geoff Christian, a man who had a way with words, and people. Geoff was a product of his time. His match reports were just that, succinct analytical reports. But by contrast, given time and a major topic Geoff Christian wrote with a graceful charm I shall always remember. He was Oscar Madison of The Odd Couple long before The Odd Couple were odd. A cigarette, a typewriter and a big heart!

Footy sells papers and fills papers in the southern states of Australia, but what I intend here is to roam a little further afield than just footy. Because while footy writing is sports writing, sports writing has been around since before the Colosseum!

I guess the first time I sat up and took notice of a sports writer was reading a best-of collection by Englishman Neville Cardus in the mid-seventies. At the time, cricket was high on my priorities list. I was broadcasting Test cricket on the ABC and Cardus had a style of writing I’d never encountered before. His was a very personal account. He became part of any story. His innermost thoughts were pivotal to every article he wrote.

Cardus (later Sir Neville) worked for numerous newspapers including Sir Keith Murdoch’s Melbourne Herald and Sydney Morning Herald; but it was at his local, the Manchester Guardian, that he first won acclaim as England’s foremost cricket correspondent. Within a few summers he had been elevated to the standing of a Princeton mathematician!

But perhaps the most unique thing about Cardus was his passion for writing classical musical critiques. He quit more than one paper, including the Melbourne Herald, because he felt that his music columns were underappreciated. Often his columns ran just pages apart, music and sport, with a language common to both.

The elements are cricket’s presiding geniuses.

There ought to be some other means of reckoning quality in the best and loveliest of games; the scoreboard is an ass.

We remember not the scores and the results in after years; it is the men who remain in our minds.

In no other game does the law of averages get to work so potently, so mysteriously.

My experience of football journalism had been limited to matter-of-fact stuff. Big Bob Johnson might have been in the goal-square and I was happy to leave it at that. Whether he should be in the goal-square, just why he was in the goal-square and the relationship of both to the cosmos was something I hadn’t thought much about. Cardus seemed to think it was important; more to the point, if he thought it was important he intended for me to think so too. I liked that.

I guess I also liked the fact he was a music man like me. Neville Cardus was a guy who refused to be pigeonholed. Okay, our tastes didn’t exactly dovetail but on paper, at least, classical and classic rock aren’t so dissimilar! What I liked also was his ability to challenge his reader. At times in his autobiography he was like a batsman dancing down the pitch to get on the front foot:

Such reproductions may not interest the reader; but after all, this is my autobiography, not his; he is under no obligation to read further in it; he was under none to begin. A modest or inhibited autobiography is written without entertainment to the writer and read with distrust by the reader.

That’s about as amusing as Cardus got. Then again, I’m sure the prospect of making his readers smile rarely crossed his mind. Almost always it was heady, heavy stuff and when it came to cricket his was the stuff.

Which reminds me, this is my foreword. So just before you immerse yourself in AFL footy I’d like to share with you some of my favourite sports writers. Too bad then if you don’t feel inclined to join me! Over the years I have collected many memorable and hard to find articles, mostly from what I like to call my American period. In fact, as recently as the past week some of those articles have become even harder to find. Experience is teaching me the more things I store in one place (like a foreword) the easier they are to find.

In the early eighties I fell in love with American sport, particularly football and basketball. At the same time I came to know the writing of Hunter S Thompson. Thompson was Sir Neville Cardus on acid. Alongside this new breed it’s fair to say the man from Manchester all but put the staid into stadium.

Thompson claimed to be the sports writer for Rolling Stone magazine (again that mix of sport and music) and for the most part the magazine played along. It was also the time of his masterpiece, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Two hundred and four pages of drug-fuelled laugh-out-loud political incorrectness! I still try to read it annually.

Without putting too fine a point on it I think he rewrote writing. He pioneered a new style (pop culture) of journalism. Thompson worked hard at being offensive, humorous, abrasive and informative. He wanted to be the story and he constantly sought new ways to visit old themes and make them his own.

I think of him often when I hear and read the cliches of sport in general, and the AFL in particular. Perhaps in February 2005, on the day he shot himself, Hunter inadvertently tuned in to an NAB Cup game on cable. Can you imagine? Judd has shown great vision, he’s put his hand up and is leading from the front. Okay, so Judd has never set foot in the NAB Cup but you’re missing the point, the player is immaterial. Is it any wonder my man pulled the trigger back in ’05? The whole thing sounds like a job description for Hitler’s chauffeur. Thompson wanted no part in somebody else’s cliches. His trick was to write about the familiar but somehow be unique.

In Fear and Loathing the writer and his attorney set out from Los Angeles en route to Las Vegas ostensibly to cover the richest off-the-road race for motorcycles and dune buggies in the history of organized sport—a fantastic spectacle in honor of some fatback grossero named Del Webb, who owns the luxurious Mint Hotel on the Vegas strip . . . at least that’s what the press release says. But the sporting connection soon gets lost!

My read on Hunter S Thompson is that his love of sport was more a love of gambling and that his true passion was for the game of politics. Besides Rolling Stone, he wrote regular columns for the San Francisco Examiner and ESPN magazine. At times, particularly in his latter days, the distance between his best and lesser work was substantial, but at his best he remained a force.

Just one question: pardon me for asking, but what are you if you openly admit you admire and aspire to the work of a narcissist? I asked Carlton defender Nick Duigan, a man with a Masters in psychology. He was nothing if not evasive. He said the answer was tricky but thought it could be found in a Freudian paper dealing with the difficulty of diagnosing senility in extremely stupid people. I must say I found Nick’s laugh unsettling.

Almost as unsettling as Hunter S in full rant covering the presidential campaign trail:

One of the things you have to deal with in this business is being whipped on by brainless freaks and special-interest pleaders. It never ends. On some nights they gnaw on your doorknob, and on others they plot rotten lawsuits and fondle themselves like chimpanzees in rooms lit by 25-watt bulbs.

These things happen. Not everybody lives like the Cleavers. Some people are bent like Joe Theisman’s leg, but few of them work for the Redskins, and nobody takes them to hospital when their bones erupt through their flesh.

(Generation of Swine, 1988)

And:

Kill the body and the head will die. This line appears in my notebook for some reason. Perhaps some connection to Joe Frazier! Is he still alive, still able to talk? I watched the fight in Seattle—horribly twisted about four seats down the aisle from the Governor. A very painful experience in every way, a proper end to the sixties.

Bob Dylan clipping coupons in Greenwich Village, both Kennedys murdered by mutants, Owlsey folding napkins on Terminal Island, and finally Cassius/Ali belted incredibly off his pedestal by a human hamburger, a man on the verge of death.

Joe Frazier, like Richard Nixon, had finally prevailed for reasons that people like me refused to understand—at least out loud.

(Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, 1998)

What a remarkable stew that out-of-control mind could throw together. From Leave it to Beaver (the All-American Cleaver family) to Joe Theisman (the famous Redskin quarterback and his infamous broken leg) to Frazier, Ali, JFK and RFK, Dylan, Owlsey (NFI) and Nixon!

No doubting he was a human briar patch, but he knew how to connect. It was pop culture pure and simple. Politics with a sporting bent in a music magazine. Perfect! Mind-changing substances aside, I still find the mix compelling. If Hunter S Thompson didn’t inspire a generation of writers he certainly provided them with much food for thought.

In this book you will find many familiar footy themes. They are separated from the pack almost always by the flair and the personality of the writer. What I hope to do in the remainder of my foreword is highlight some of those themes for both commonality and tasty writing.

THE PUTDOWN

I met American PJ O’Rourke while he was on assignment for the Atlantic Monthly in Perth during the America’s Cup. Politically he was the polar opposite of Thompson but he wrote with an edge only slightly less cutting. At our one meeting (albeit brief) he seemed a really good bloke, but weeks later I had difficulty explaining this outburst. In fact I took it personally:

Fremantle is Dayton-on-the Sea. In fact Western Australia is Ohio with one side of its hat brim turned up. As soon as I got on solid ground, I went over to the famed Royal Perth Yacht Club. It looked like a cinder-block drive-through bottle store. (Cinder-block drive-through bottle stores are the main architectural features of the greater Perth–Fremantle metropolitan area.)

Then I visited the Fremantle docks where the twelve-metres are parked. Welcome to Hoboken, circa 1950. I expected Marlon Brando to saunter out at any moment and have the climactic fistfight in On the Waterfront.

God knows how the America’s Cup race wound up out here. Somebody told me it had to do with Australia cheating in 1983 and putting tail fins on their boat bottom, but that sounds unlikely. I think the International Sailing-boat Racing Politburo, or whatever it’s called, got Fremantle confused with Port-de-France and thought they were going to Martinique. Australia was like Australia Nite at the Michigan State Phi Delt house.

(Holidays in Hell, 2000)

THE SNEER

Steve Rushin (not to be confused with the Russian judge) is a writer at Sports Illustrated. One assumes his job description would include the phrase sports nut. Apparently, though, in the small print it must suggest to keep one sport free to be your whipping boy. I presume soccer was taken!

The Stanley Cup isn’t merely the most fetching trophy in North America, it is also the hardest earned. The action in OT, by which time most players are toothless, drained and darned like socks, is an end-to-end, whistle-free, whiplash-inducing blur: of slap shots ringing off the post, of heads being speedbagged in the corners, of Toronto keeper Curtis Joseph wandering so far from his crease that he sometimes becomes confused and briefly defends his opponent’s goal.

On and on and on it goes, until somebody finally lights up the lamp, the goal judge’s siren turning as if atop an ambulance. Then when the series ends, the two teams line up to exchange handshakes and pleasantries.

(Sorry about the teeth. Better get that nose looked at. Your head will grow back, etc.)

Why, America, have you not embraced this?

(The Caddy Was a Reindeer, 2004)

THE OUTRAGE

Tony Kornheiser was a long-time writer at the Washington Post. About a decade ago he joined ESPN, first as co-host of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption then as a colour commentator on the network’s Monday Night Football.

I haven’t been watching the Sydney Olympics that much. It’s too anti-climactic. By the time we see the events, the medal winners are eligible for social security.

NBC’s announcers say, Stay tuned and we’ll see if the US beat Kuwait in baseball. We’ll see? By the time they run tape, it’s been so long since the actual game we could have invaded Kuwait! Um, pardon, the US PROTECTS Kuwait, it doesn’t invade it.

Whatever. My point is that the Olympics may be reality based, but they’re not reality. It’s like Survivor—but with a bigger torch and lower ratings. If you want to know the truth, I think the Olympics are already over. All the athletes have been flown to Hawaii and sworn to secrecy, and NBC will string out the results over the next three years, or until George Clooney comes back to ER.

(I’m Back For More Cash, 2003)

THE INSIGHT

For many years Frank Deford was chief writer for Sports Illustrated. He also dabbled in network television. Deford had the innate ability to write almost as conversation.

I have a horse named after me. I don’t mean anything obtuse like Flasher Frank or Frankie’s Delight, but just plain Frank Deford, exactly as my name reads above and in the IRS and FBI files.

At last count Frank Deford had made 12 starts and finished somewhat less than first in all of them. In chronological order the Racing Form tells us that Frank Deford has: been no factor, weakened, shown early speed, been far back, weakened, been outrun, run gamely, rallied (these last two constituted something of a hot streak), fell back, been no factor, performed evenly and been outrun.

But this magnificently pithy catalogue of futility from the pen of some unknown turf poet does not do Frank Deford’s efforts full justice. Take my favourite, the performed evenly. Performed evenly was the time Frank Deford got beat by 17 lengths. But everything is relative. If a guy met Job along about Chapter 11 of his travails and said, How’s tricks Pal? Job could have answered that he’d Performed Evenly quite accurately.

And there are several things you ought to know before letting anybody name a horse after you. First, you are required to write to the Jockey Club to give your approval. I don’t think the reverse is necessary. For example, if you want to call your daughter Clyde Van Dusen (Google him), I don’t believe you have to obtain the Jockey Club’s permission.

(torn out of a Sports Illustrated circa mid-to-late seventies)

THE SLEDGE

Rick Reilly made his name writing on golf in Sports Illustrated. He was the first American after a string of Brits to wear the tag of the doyen. Reilly now writes for ESPN magazine where clearly he has been given a roving commission. Here are two fascinating examples of his work.

Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame talk was the Exxon Valdez of speeches. It was, by turns, rude, vindictive, and flammable. And that was just when he was trying to be funny. It was tactless, egotistical and unbecoming. When it was done, nobody wanted to be like Mike.

And yet we couldn’t stop watching. Because this was an inside look into the mindset of an icon who’d never let anybody inside before. From what I saw, I’d never want to go back. Here is a man who’s won just about everything there is to win—six NBA titles, five MVPs, and two Olympic gold medals. And yet he sounded like a guy screwed out of every trophy ever minted. He’s the world’s first sore winner!

In the entire 23-minute cringe-a-thon, there were only six thank yous . . .

He was like that Japanese World War II soldier they found hiding in a cave in Guam 27 years after the Japanese had surrendered. The only difference is, Jordan won! What good is victory if you never realize the battle is over?

This is how Jordan really is, I just never thought he’d let the world see it . . .

But there he was, in Springfield without a filter or a PR guy to cut him off.

(http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick=4477759)

And Reilly at the 1986 Masters watching a legend, 46-year-old Jack Nicklaus, defy the odds:

Just in the Nicklaus of time, too. Who else but Jack could save us from the woeful, doleful bowl full of American Express (do-you-know-me?) golf winners of late?

And who else could play John Wayne, riding to rescue the Yanks from golf’s rampaging foreign legion: the dashingly handsome Seve Ballesteros of Spain; the stone-faced Bernhard Langer of West Germany; Australia’s Norman, he of the colossal swing and larger-still reputation, more unfulfilled now than ever; and Zimbabwean-South African-Floridian Nick Price, who on Saturday broke the course record that had gone unsurpassed for 46 years, then on Sunday recoiled in the giant shadow of what he had done.

Here had come Nicklaus, an American legend still under warranty, armed with a putter the size of a Hoover attachment, denting the back of Augusta’s holes with 25-foot putts at an age when most guys are afraid to take the putter back.

Here had come Nicklaus, sending such a deluge of decibels into the Georgia air that lakes rippled and azaleas blushed; starting such a ruckus that grown men climbed trees, children rode on shoulders, concession-stand operators abandoned their posts, all just to tear off a swatch of history.

Was that Jack in the checked pants and yellow shirt? Hmmmm. Yellow goes nice with green, doesn’t it Jack? You devil.

Maybe that was it. Maybe Nicklaus had drawn up a contract with Lucifer for one last major, for that slippery 20th that had eluded him since 1980, for a sixth green blazer. In exchange, Nicklaus would do pro-ams in Hades for the rest of his days.

(Life of Reilly, 2003)

Like most things, good sports writing is subjective, but I hope you liked something about my collection of larger than life characters and events.

One person I’ve saved until last, Alex Turner (remember him, back at the beginning?), to help explain the radically changing face of broadcasting and writing. Turner is lead singer for British rock group the Arctic Monkeys. He underscores the fragmented, diverse nature of today’s market place. The internet and social media have sent society in a million different directions.

The Arctic Monkeys remain one of the hottest bands on the planet yet only the devout really know them. It’s a bit like being the best centre half-forward in Kazakhstan! A far cry from the Beatles, we knew each of the four by name. Even my mum knew the Beatles by name. The drummer was mum’s favourite. She liked Ringo, but how many people have a favourite Arctic Monkey?

There are hardly any more in-jokes or stories—only people who aren’t in on the joke or the story. It’s a tough gig these days as broadcasters and writers try to keep pace and touch as many of the bases on the way through as they can.

The good thing about this book is it’s not trying to be all things to all people. It’s footy, which all but guarantees it’s in footballing hands. That’s reassuring.

COACHES

They are the men in the hot seat, whose fates are ultimately determined by wins and losses. Since 2000, we have bidden farewell to some of the coaching greats—Parkin, Matthews, Malthouse, Sheedy and Blight—before welcoming Sheedy back into the fold with the AFL’s newest club, Greater Western Sydney. A new breed has also emerged, led by premiership trio Paul Roos, Chris Scott and Alastair Clarkson, and Collingwood great Nathan Buckley. In his early days in charge, before he would go on and lead the Cats to an unexpected premiership, Scott would say of coaching: There’s so many ups and downs—and I even felt this as a player—a lot of it’s not very pleasurable. Like being nervous before a big game. It’s not a nice feeling, but at least you feel alive.

Parkin and Matthews would step aside voluntarily, so, too, Roos. The Swans’ premiership mentor would be handed a major compliment by columnist Jake Niall when he decided to hand power to assistant John Longmire: Coaches don’t set out to change the game. They want to win games. By achieving the latter Roos also did the former. However, the ruthless nature of the sport doesn’t always allow coaches to bow out on their own terms. Just ask Blight. Malthouse would also find it difficult to come to terms with his tenure at Collingwood being over. In 2009, he had agreed to a handover to Buckley after the 2011 season, but as the clock ticked the reality of such a move hit him. All of a sudden that [coaching] stopped, and it stopped very abruptly. And it was just finished. There were no leftovers, he told Konrad Marshall as he began his new life as a media analyst heading into the 2012 season.

Rodney Eade and Grant Thomas would also be prominent characters through the decade. The pressures coaches face are enormous—witness Mark Williams’ exuberant celebrations after Port Adelaide’s breakthrough flag in 2004. I am the son of a premiership coach and I know that the primary emotion is relief more than anything, Williams would say later. As Parkin commented, there can only be one day a senior coach really enjoys.

499 GAMES COACHED, ONE ENJOYED:

DAVID PARKIN

Linda Pearce

DAVID PARKIN MADE THE MISTAKE, a few years back, of arriving late to Mark Maclure’s 40th birthday party. By the time he got there, about 20 of his former players had already gathered around the barbecue on the hill.

What do you see up here? Parkin was asked. Twenty Carlton footballers, he replied.

Have another look.

Twenty great Carlton footballers.

Have another look.

Sorry, 20 premiership players.

Have another look.

I give up.

You sacked the lot of us.

Five hundred games as a coach can do that to you. Stay around long enough and players who helped bring you a premiership or two in your first stint at a club have to be tapped on the shoulder when you return, in Parkin’s case, six years later for another 10-year association.

Only four other coaches have lasted longer in the VFL/AFL than Parkin, who has now delegated the match-day responsibilities to his assistant Wayne Brittain—Everybody thinks I finished at 493, he quipped—but whose 500th game will officially come against Richmond on Monday.

He is friends with all except, obviously, the late and legendary Jock McHale. Parkin succeeded Allan Jeans as Victorian president of the Australian Football Coaches Association and regards Jeans as an enormous contributor to football; Tom Hafey paid an unsolicited visit briefly to provide reassurance after the incident in which Parkin took a swipe at a spectator as he left the ground; Barassi was one of the idols of his Melbourne-supporting youth and dropped by near the end of Parkin’s Fitzroy days.

I was about to be sacked and didn’t know it, Ron came in and spent a couple of hours, slipped in off the street, he must have perceived what was about to happen and he was telling me about life after footy, Parkin recalled. I didn’t understand at that moment but two weeks later I did and I was always thankful for that, and Ron and I have remained pretty good mates. I didn’t know Jock, obviously, but the other three I’m pleased to be in that sort of company.

Parkin’s journey has encompassed four stints at three clubs, over 22 seasons for four premierships, including 336 games at Carlton. There have been stress and pressure, dismissals and regrets (notably at Fitzroy), and, last year, a debilitating illness that reduced his capacity. The only game of footy he says he truly enjoyed was the 1995 grand final, when he was keen to pop the champagne in the box during thethird quarter, only for his focus to be slapped back into place by long-time lieutenant Col Kinnear.

Much in football has altered since Parkin returned from a stint with Perth club Subiaco to inherit a champion Hawthorn team in 1977. He jokes that when he began, teams did endless circle work each night at training to prepare to play straight up and down the ground.

So the good thing is that footy’s now changed: we train up and down the ground and we go round and round when we play, so there’s been a massive revolution in footy over the last 40 years and it’s basically just summed up in that.

Parkin describes himself as not so much a great innovator as the man unwittingly responsible for introducing a language of footyspeak that others came to adopt. Yet he says that came from an international sports language and a community into which he taps regularly, often seeking out Brian Goorjian and Jan Stirling (basketball), Wayne Bennett (rugby league), Charlie Walsh (cycling), and confidante Joyce Brown (netball).

He said football teams had followed the lead of soccer, hockey and others, using depth and width to create time and space. Giving up ground to eventually gain advantage was one example of what would not have happened 25 years ago, he said.

Nor, of course, were such huge coaching teams in place back then, although Parkin insists he is still totally responsible as he was in 1995, when empowerment was the successful theme. Yet there is no doubt the help, and the ability to delegate have enabled him to continue, while also combining a long tertiary education career he continues to cherish.

I think the milestone reaffirmed where I am with my life, he said, apologising for his at-times shocking treatment of the media and admitting a weakness of pessimism.

"I think it’s been a long and pretty tough innings. It’s been a massive output in my life that I didn’t quite understand, and the punishment that you take physically and mentally through the whole thing.

I started in 1960 or ’61 at Hawthorn and I’ve been fortunate to stay in footy in some form, playing, coaching, developing footy, for the last 40 years. That’s a long time to give to any one institution in anybody’s life so I’m thankful. I’ve received far more from the game than the game’s received from me.

The Age 21 April 2000

THE MALCOLM BLIGHT SACKING

Rohan Connolly

WHEN YOU’RE A COACH WITH as big a reputation for unpredictability as Malcolm Blight, it’s hard to keep surprising people. But it’s fair to say Blight’s sacking as St Kilda coach yesterday surpasses any of his wild and wacky stunts over the years for pure shock value.

It’s only 10 months into the supposed ride of a lifetime, and a mere 15 games into the new and more professional approach to football that Blight was supposed to be bringing to Moorabbin.

In hindsight, that ride was the Mad Mouse going spectacularly off the