RON BARASSI
Barassi in full flight kicking for goal in the 1959 Grand Final
The Greatest Big Occasion Australian Rules Footballer and Coach
How is greatness measured in sport, or any of life’s endeavours? One yardstick is performance or decision-making on a big occasion. Prime Minister John Curtin in early 1942, under enormous pressure from three Australian former PMs, Winston Churchill, President Roosevelt, and even his own advisers, defied all of them. They wanted him to divert Australian troops coming home from war in the Middle East to Burma to fight the Japanese. Curtin wanted them in Australia to defend the country.
General Sir John Monash, always conscious of not leading his troops into slaughter, made the best-planned and most important moves of all Generals in the deciding battles of World War 1 in 1918, when his superiors lacked the nerve and confidence.
In cricket, Don Bradman was the number one performer in series-deciding Test matches, not with a defiant fifty, but a century, 150, 200, 250, 300 and more.
More times than anyone (except Norm Smith) in any code of football at the highest level in Australia, Ron Barassi lifted as a player and coach. (Smith played in four wins and coached six)
In a quarter century of dominance in the game as a player and coach he was in 17 VFL grand finals for ten wins. He was best-on-ground in four grand finals, 1955, 1956, 1957 and 1959, in front of the biggest crowds even seen in Australian sport. His skill and inspiration as a coach saw him win four premierships, including the monumental 1970 Grand Final when Carlton came from 44 points down against Collingwood to win, thanks to Barassi’s moves and instructions.
His ability as a chess player to think many moves ahead saw him beating a world champion. This capacity translated into on-field moves of well-drilled teams. He was the first coach in history to watch his squad perform from a high vantage point rather than at ground level. It allowed him, as he said, to see the entire chess ‘board’ and pick up moves before opposing coaches.
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My assessment of him comes from seeing him perform in at least 70 per cent of his 204 games for Melbourne beginning in 1953, and most of his 50 games for Carlton, ending in 1968. I saw his final game, and it was against Melbourne. He tore a thigh muscle and did not play after half-time. Barassi wanted to reach fifty games for Carlton so that his sons could play for either Melbourne or Carlton under the father and son rule.
He should not have gone on and played a few years later for Port Melbourne in the VFA, the second tier Melbourne competition, after he stopped coaching Carlton. I watched him struggle in front of goals on a wet Saturday afternoon at the windy Sandringham Oval. Fortunately, he was injured again and soon afterwards gave away this ‘comeback’ at age 36 years.
He was criticized in the media for bothering. I asked him about this. He just shrugged. He’d missed playing after several years coaching and wanted to play again.
‘I love the game,’ he said without care for his image.
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Melbourne was second bottom in the Victorian Football League in 1953, when I began barracking for them, thanks to my mother’s sister Betty, who had dated a famous Melbourne star Bluey Truscott before World War Two. She married an American soldier at the end of the war and moved to Minnesota instructing me, aged six, that I had to barrack for Melbourne for the memory of Truscott, a fighter pilot who was killed during the war. This was a tough directive. I lived in suburban Murrumbeena. Most of the kids barracked for Collingwood, especially my good mate Ken Jungwirth (who, with some irony, ended up playing for Melbourne) and I wanted to go with the herd. Aunt Betty wrote to me that it would be advisable to support Melbourne to keep receiving the advanced toys she sent me each Christmas.
I went with the bribe and from 1953 never looked back. My hero was 6 ft 6 inch [198 cm] Melbourne ruckman Bob Johnson, who lived in Murrumbeena. At age 9, I plucked up courage to visit his home and knock on his front door, uninvited. His father, Bob Sr, a Melbourne star in the 1920s and 1930s, sent me around to the back door, and Big Bob, aged 19, greeted me. This encounter began my career as an investigative author. Its brevity allowed me to recall it well.
I looked up at Big Bob and shook hands:
RP: ‘Are you really six foot six?’
BBJ: ‘Yes.’
RP: ‘Gee!’
I now had bragging rights at Murrumbeena State School. Everyone in Melbourne knew who he was, and I had spoken to him, at his home!
Someone pointed out that I was most unlikely to reach Big Bob’s height. (I fell 23 centimetres short.) It would be better to have a role model of more average size. I stuck with Big Bob, a Murrumbeena boy.
During the golden era for Melbourne, in which they appeared in seven successive grand finals to 1960 for five premierships, and then picked up another flag in 1964, Barassi emerged as the most accomplished and dominant player in football.
Astute judges at the time such as Jack Dyer, the Richmond strong man, and Alf Brown, the Melbourne Herald’s chief football writer ranked him as Aussie Rules’ number one performer.
There are, and were measures. Channel 7 ran a football kicking competition during some seasons, which included long kicking, left and right foot, torpedoes, punts and drop kicks. Barassi won most and was hardly ever beaten.
Footscay’s Ted Whitten, also a gifted footballer, was his best competition who never overcame his complex about Barassi’s superiority and tenacity. Their rivalry was helped along by the media and papers wishing to call one or either of them ‘Mr. Football.’
Barassi thrived on it. Coach Norm Smith encouraged it when Melbourne played Footscray by putting Barassi on Whitten. Barassi was faster and even harder at the ball and on each occasion outdid his rival. Whitten was a high- flier but halfway through his career was grounded like a Dodo bird, and used his elbows freely, even smashing the face of his good friend, Bobby Skilton, another outstanding player of the era.
Whitten was the best ‘showman’ in the VFL off the field; Barassi was the better performer on the field as player and coach. I am biased, but the record speaks for itself.
The most astute football observer, the Herald’s Alf Brown, after one such contest between the two late in 1959 at the MCG observed:
‘This [game] settled it for me. Barassi is the greatest player in the VFL.’
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Barassi was also a most accurate kick for goal in actual competition. Most importantly it was rarely in ‘junk’ time when a game was already won. Barassi delivered the big, team-lifting goals at critical moments.
I can still see in my mind’s eye, his eight-minute performance in the second quarter of the 1959 Grand Final, Melbourne versus Essendon. The Dons had edged ahead. Barassi kicked a brilliant snap goal from the boundary line after brushing off two tackles. He then took a soaring mark on the half-forward flank fifty metres out at the Richmond end of the ground.
I was watching from an elevated section of the then Olympic Stand. Barassi delivered a perfect torpedo that spilt the middle. It kept rising beyond the fence with a huge crowd crescendo of appreciation, which was a surprise. Of the 103,506 in attendance, probably seventy per cent favored Essendon. But on occasions great play transcends supporter bias. Fans appreciate the highest skills. Think of Geelong’s Gary Ablett Senior in the 1989 Grand Final, Richmond’s Dustin Martin in the 2017, 2019 and 2020 Grand Finals, and Christian Petracca in 2021. Supporters of all clubs in recent times could only marvel at the performances by Hawthorn’s Cyril Rioli and Buddy Franklin (and also of the Swans).
In that 1959 Grand Final stanza, Barassi took a second high mark a minute after. It was identical to the first and in the same position on the ground.
The crowd went silent as he lined up the goal.
Showing a confidence and control beyond the norm at age 23, he went for another torpedo. It was a further huge kick with an identical result. Again, the crowd reacted.
The psychology of the game changed.
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Those two kicks were the most exhilarating moments I ever witnessed in sport and just pipped a similar ‘high’ watching an Ashes cricket match at the MCG nine months earlier. It was an overcast morning on the first day of the Second Test in Melbourne on New Year’s Eve 1958. I was seated in the outer behind the wicket.
Left-arm, medium-fast Alan Davidson was bowling in the third over of the day. He took three wickets in the first five deliveries of an eight ball over: Peter Richardson (0), Willie Watson and Tom Graveney. His unplayable away swingers were moving two metres, something I have never seen since. The low cloud cover helped, as did the electric atmosphere generated by the packed crowd.
England was 3 for 7. in walked England’s best bat and captain, Peter May. Australian captain Richie Benaud sidled over to Davidson.
‘Give him an in-swinger,’ Benaud instructed.
‘Why, Richie?’
‘He has been watching you [from the dressing-room] swing it away and won’t expect it.’
Davidson was reluctant but did as instructed.
May blocked the in-swingers and went on to a memorable 113. Davidson reckoned another prodigious away swinger would have given him an unprecedented four top order bats in one Ashes over. It rankled with him for life.
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Barassi was at that Test and enthralled by Davidson’s effort, which was the most riveting he had witnessed in cricket. He was surprised that I ranked his 1959 game-changing cameo as the best I’d ever seen. I wasn’t alone in my thinking. Frank ‘Bluey’ Adams said that commando stanza by Barassi was the best he had ever experienced from on or off the field. The speedy red head was forward of the pack when those two big marks were taken. ‘It was just like the parting of the water,’ he told Peter Lalor in his biography of Barassi. ‘The pack split, and you could hear the smack of the ball hitting his hands.’
Barassi went on to be Best-on-Ground and Melbourne won by 37 points.
[Footnote: As a digression, imagine the stupidity of taking Barassi off after he’d kicked the first of those three goals, which is now the norm for coaches. Players need a rest, apparently; it is the new ‘science’ in sport. But anyone who has ever played the game at any level knows the adrenalin rush that comes with kicking a big goal. The last thing a player wants to do, unless truly exhausted, is to run to the bench.]
2: Game Changer
Commenting on the 1959 Grand Final, Jack Dyer remarked ‘that apart from Barassi only [Essendon’s triple Brownlow Medalist] Dick Reynolds and [Collingwood’s] Harry Collier had the quality [to change the psychology of a game] to the same degree.’
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Channel 7 also ran a handball competition. Barassi usually won that, until the great Polly Farmer in 1962 joined Geelong from Western Australia. Barassi had to be content coming second to the freak ruckman, who could handball further and with more accuracy than most players could kick.
Barassi had faith in handball, because of his capacity with it, to change the pattern of a game. It is the reason he ordered his team to use it against Collingwood after half time in the epic 1970 Grand Final. Barassi, from his elevation, could see his Carlton players struggling to kick beyond the wall of tall Magpie rucks and backs. The handball instruction was meant to overcome the wall, and it worked, only because Barassi, the strict disciplinarian, had drilled his side like an army sergeant major. No one queried his judgement. They just did what he wanted, and won against all odds.
It looked desperate at first especially when big Percy Jones handballed to Adrian Gallagher on the last line of defence. Gallagher was not ready for it. Jones managed to grab the ball again and handpass once more to Gallagher, who this time was alert. Such passing on the backline was a complete ‘no-no’ until that game.
TV Commentator Michael Williamson was apoplectic about what he saw, but he was not aware of Barassi’s daring instruction. It was a game-changer and Premiership winner in more ways than one.
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Barassi was aided as a player with exceptional physical gifts. He was the Jim Stynes of his day, winning all the Melbourne Club’s long-distance competitions. He was a sprinter too, and often challenged Bluey Adams, the professional sprinter playing at Melbourne.
Barassi had long arms, which allowed him to compete for marks with much taller players. Yet this and large heart and lungs, do not make even the most gifted player a match-winner. Determination, courage, stamina and a positive mind-set are the more necessary assets.
I watched Melbourne play the Dons at Windy Hill in a pressure game in 1960. Melbourne was a few points in front with about ten minutes to go. Barassi, at 180 centimetres and 86 kilograms, was the first real ‘ruck-rover’ and on this day he demonstrated what it meant.
He kept hurling himself over the pack at throw-ins on the wing and punching the ball out-of-bounds. Ten times he had the stamina to go beyond exhaustion and repeat this ‘third-up’ act (today outlawed) over the much bigger ruckmen.
It bottled up Essendon and Melbourne hung on for a win.
I doubt any other player could have had the presence and energy to literally lift himself with such will. Certainly not anyone of his height.
I recall a round 5 game against Collingwood in 1965, for whom he mostly saved his better performances over his entire career as player and coach. He was playing at Victoria Park with Carlton for the first time and seemed to be making a point to everyone: he would always be the magpies’ nemesis.
There was a lot of passion in his effort on the field. He was utterly spent in a Best-on-Ground effort. So much so that Carlton’s big John Nicholls helped him off the ground with Barassi looking like a rubber man with the air taken out of him.
I asked Barassi about this keenness to boost himself against the black and white:
‘They are a great Club, our [Melbourne’s and Carlton’s] greatest rival over the decades. You always wanted to beat them.’
There was no hate, just respect in that declaration. The Magpies were the second-best side of the era 1954 to 1964. Melbourne had control of them through this era, winning nearly every time they played and with Barassi always dominant, either at the MCG or Victoria Park.
At age 11, I was at the Grand Final in 1958 when Melbourne was aiming at winning four flags in succession, only once performed by any other team, which happened to be Collingwood in 1927, 28, 29 and 30.
It was a wet day. Collingwood knew it had to stop the 22-year-old Barassi, then the ‘veteran’ of three successive Best-on-Ground performances in Grand Finals. They had a vigorous tagger, Barry ‘Hooker’ Harrison, on him. Harrison’s job was to target his man any way he could, with tactics fair and unfair, to put Barassi off his game.
Collingwood captain Murray Weideman, who was a ‘good mate’ of Barassi’s, aided Harrison by tangling with Barassi off the ball, too. The champion was sucked in by this tag team and retaliated.
Only a handful of Melbourne players, harassed all over the field, went in with their usual endeavour. I cheered my team on to the end and was crying through the last quarter as the game slipped away, along with the record of four flags in succession.
I was embarrassed when a woman called out that I deserved a medal for barracking on through the rain and tears. I didn’t want a decoration; just the elusive four flags in a row. At that stage I’d seen Melbourne win every grand final I witnessed. The loss was a reality check for a child. You can’t always get want you want. [When I told Mick Jagger about this, he penned a song.]
The result was a three-goal Collingwood victory, the most celebrated in the grand club’s history.
Melbourne was a most determined outfit after that experience. They were the best side through 1959, accounting for Collingwood through the season, and the speedy Essendon, who challenged but was beaten for the 1959 Flag. Then came 1960. Melbourne was its dominant self and sailed into the grand Final. Collingwood was its opponent again.
The weather was poor, and it put a shudder through all Melbourne supporters. Would the Magpies use the same tactics as in 1958? Would Barassi, now captain and aged 24 fall for ‘playing the man tactics’ once more?
It was clear from the first quarter that Melbourne had steeled itself for the repeat onslaught. John Lord at centre-half back revelled in the heavy conditions and dominated. He nullified skipper Weideman and kept him quiet.
The seminal moment occurred in front of the MCC Members Stand in the first quarter when the Collingwood captain punched Barassi in the face, giving him a fractured cheekbone. I was close to the boundary line and took in the gladiatorial drama just ten metres away. Umpire Jack Irving separated the players and gave Barassi a free kick.
The Members yelled for him not to retaliate. You could see his instinct was to fly at Weideman. Instead, he grimaced, stretched his fingers in a typical gesture and took his kick into the forward line. It led to a Melbourne goal. The responsibility of leadership, and more maturity had restrained him.
Every observer knew that the 1960 Flag was going to Melbourne.
Thanks to the team’s back-line led by John Lord and former captain John Beckwith, Collingwood were held to 2 goals 2 points (with one of those goals in doubt), the second lowest score in Grand Final history, and Melbourne thrashed it, scoring 8.14 in front of 97,467 fans.
Revenge was bitter-sweet for Melbourne. The next flag encounter between these two main rivals was in 1964. Melbourne crushed Collingwood in the second semi-final, but the Magpies came back hard in the Grand Final.
Melbourne supporters watched in horror late in the last quarter as Collingwood’s big ruckman Ray Gabelich lumbered sixty metres for the goal, bouncing the ball unevenly, to score and put his team in front. Minutes later Melbourne back-pocket player Neil Crompton followed his man into the centre, gathered the ball and kicked a fifty-metre goal.
Melbourne hung on to win in front of 102,469 spectators.
Dominance over the black and white was secured, just.
It was Barassi’s last of 204 games for Melbourne.
3: The Player is Father to the Coach
He was always desperate for victory. He combined his courage with his skill and staying power to achieve it, especially in big games and finals. It was one reason he was Ming the Merciless in driving the players on the training track and in matches. He wanted them used to stretching themselves and never to surrender; never to slow up. He believed that only this way could premierships be won, often. The proof of his approach was in the results: ten flags as player and coach, a record in Australian football (equalled by his mentor Norm Smith only.)
It was the Barassi way or the highway. His clashes with players, in public and private are cringeworthy but rivetting. His verbal attacks on players that were not supposed to be heard are part of media folklore. Just look up ‘Barassi Sprays’ on the Internet. They are not sweet.
From the grandstand when coaching Melbourne and on the phone to a runner:
‘Healy off, Ellingworth on. Bloody weak as piss!’
The Healy at the end of this was Gerard, the brilliant Brownlow Medalist.
Then there was his stoush with Melbourne player, Shane Zantuck; or the blast at a North Melbourne player, which ended with the coach saying:
‘You probably don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?!’
The player agreed.
My favourite was a rant to a North player that would make the priest in the movie The Exorcist proud:
‘You give me possessions and I’ll shut-up!’
He pushed the more talented players harder. The reason was pure Barassi. He knew what greatness was. He wanted others to squeeze that little bit extra out of themselves.
Some were uneasy with it. Champion Malcolm Blight was one, who played under Barassi in two winning premierships for North Melbourne in 1975 and 1977. Blight said in private that the coach lacked empathy. But many other players accepted Barassi’s driven ways and were unconcerned he was not a nurturer. Ken Jungwirth, who played for Melbourne and Carlton, bumped into Barassi at a footy function.
‘Ken…?’
‘Jungwirth. Don’t you remember? You sacked me at Carlton.’
Barassi apologized and was concerned. He enquired if Jungwirth was alright about it, thirty years on.
‘No worries,’ Jungwirth replied, ‘you put me in exclusive company. North Smith sacked me at Melbourne.’
Jungwirth was sure that despite his forceful approach, he had real sympathy for players.
‘There was nothing personal with Ron,’ he said. ‘He played and coached only to win. He was respected by all, especially with those he took on Premiership-winning journeys with him.’
Barassi as a player seemed to give plenty of lip to umpires, who mostly seemed to accept it, possibly because he may have not been wearing his false teeth. The verbals meant less.
I was at the Lakeside Oval, Albert Park on 29 July 1960 when Melbourne was playing South Melbourne. His first child, Susan, had been born the day before, and he seemed more agitated or excited than normal. He followed an umpire from the goal mouth to the centre, chipping him all the way.
In the modern era he would receive a fifty-metre penalty, or be reported. Yet umpires respected him and turned a deaf ear to his arguments about decisions. But it did not help him gain Brownlow votes. Barassi never got higher than third in the count.
He even let fly at other coaches. He was playing coach for Carlton against Hawthorn, when John Kennedy was coach. Kennedy waited until Barassi was close to him on the boundary line and abused him. Barassi waved his arm at the Kennedy.
‘Look at the fucking scoreboard!’ Barassi yelled.
Kennedy remembered the moment.
‘It was touché to Ron,’ he said with a grin. ‘Carlton was thrashing us!’
Barassi had tempered his methods in his last stint as coach, at Sydney in the 1990s. The tirades against players were gone; what remained was inspiring articulation. He had adjusted to the times and had mellowed. There is no doubt that if he coached in the current era, he would have used more psychology, at which he excelled, and less confrontation.
Today, players sensibilities are taken into account, which has led to pampering, more emphasis on skills and fitness and less on toughness. Today a ‘shirt-front’ means something white worn to a black-tie event. Competing for the sheer joy of winning and being the best has been usurped by bonus incentives for goals scored or scientific measures reached.
In recent decades, the Australian ethos of several generations of ‘winning is everything’ has been challenged by the modern claim that participation is the key. Losing is acceptable. This sense of ‘victory’ before everything else stemmed from the Australian military, or at least was enormously accentuated after World War 1, 1914-1918.
The person I regard as the greatest ever Australian achiever, General Sir John Monash, instigated a ‘win only policy.’ He was a grand engineer, who built about 120 constructions, mainly bridges, around the country. He was the most successful ever barrister in the nation’s history, losing only one case of scores. In that case the opposition legal team bribed the presiding magistrate.
‘I put up bridges that will not fall down,’ he told his chief of staff, Tom Blamey. ‘I plan battles only to win.’
He did not lose one that he planned and commanded, at the most critical time of that war. Planning was critical to his success, as it was to Bradman in not losing one encounter of 34 in the gruelling Ashes tour of England in 1948.
Barassi’s preparation and psyche embraced the same mentality. Whether playing football, chess or table tennis, the compelling goal is to win.
I experienced this several times playing the Octogenarian at table tennis. His agility and speed of thought and action, and powers of concentration were that of a person half a century younger. The ‘focus’ was akin to Bradman’s, which I also experienced first-hand playing billiards.
The drive to ‘win’ is understandable. But comprehending Barassi’s deeper inner force is more complex. Barassi, aged 5, lost his father Ron Sr, who was the first Australian footballer killed during World War 2, at Tobruk. It had an impact for life. Barassi could not comprehend then or later why his beloved dad had been taken from him for no apparent reason. It eventually led him to declare he was an atheist, and caused him to take up the mantra:
‘If it is to be, it is up to me.’
His thinking was not difficult to comprehend: you can’t count on an all-seeing God to look after you in an, at times, hostile or challenging world. If you want to achieve something you are better to rely on yourself to do it.
Yet Barassi was a superb team player and natural leader, which is not a contradiction. If all those under him took the same attitude he would have a winning team.
Barassi never had a father to admonish or console him, inspire or love him, or show feeling. He was a leader showing the way. His method was to push the soldiers to the limit.
Fathering was not his role but he was a teacher. He was dealing with the cogs in his well-oiled football machine. He did not hold grudges. Any flare-up was soon forgotten.
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The great Melbourne coach Norm Smith took young Barassi into his home when Ron’s mother married again and moved to Tasmania. But Barassi was in his mid-teens and to a degree ‘shaped’ in character. Smith’s role was as a mentor, who laid down disciplines for living, which Barassi had innately. It was made more complex by Smith coaching him at Melbourne, where he received no special favours, in fact the opposite. Smith berated Barassi more than any other player and in front of the rest of the team, driving him to tears at least once.
Teenage Barassi was impetuous and told by Smith to pull his head in. Hence, another factor in Barassi hammering the more gifted performers in his charge. Smith teased the best out of him by riding him; Barassi passed on the method to his players.
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I was privy to his thinking about his monumental move from Melbourne to Carlton. Kevin McIncroe, a businessman on the committee that lured Barassi to the Blues, was a friend of my father’s. In late 1964, we heard of the dithering over this huge sporting decision. On the one hand, Barassi was loyal to Melbourne and North Smith. On the other hand, he wanted new challenges, especially in coaching, and he would never want to replace Norm Smith, his mentor.
It meant a clean break to become Captain-Coach of Carlton, a club that was near rock-bottom. Its saving grace was that it had an outstanding administration.
‘I asked him if he would ever have coached Collingwood?’
‘Definitely,’ he replied, ‘but its administration [then] was not as good as at Carlton, or North Melbourne.’
Carlton’s move to snare Barassi was a masterstroke. He gunned them to two Flags in 1968 and 1970. The confidence, prestige and lift to the Club as a whole, especially after the miraculous 1970 win, set it up for the next 30 years as a top club, always in contention for big prizes. The same applied to North Melbourne, whom he coached from 1973 to 1980. The Kangaroos had never won a flag in half a century as mainly lowly ladder-dwellers. After Barassi had finished with the Kangaroos, they were a Club to be reckoned with also for a further 30 years.
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I have known Barassi for more than half a century. We first met when I interviewed him for The Age at his city furniture business in 1970, not long after he had pulled off the most amazing come-back in a Grand Final. It was summer and we lunched at the Carlton café of a West Indian mate of his. He was in a relaxed mood, and we did not talk football at all.
It helped in knowing these two giants---Barassi and Don Bradman---of Australian sport that I was not a big player of cricket or football myself. In Bradman’s case I was wrote the first ever biography of him, the 58th book about this exceptional character. I have not written Barassi’s biography but have nevertheless gotten to know him well outside sport.
I saw similar character traits in these two sporting dynamos. Both were modest, as opposed to being falsely so. Not once did either of them say to me something arrogant about their achievements. I reminded both of their excellence on sporting fields. I only ever heard Barassi talk about his effort in the 1964 Grand Final against Collingwood when he put in an ordinary effort.
When at a function, and only he could hear me, I asked him:
‘Don’t you ever recall the big games you played such as the 1959, ‘56, ‘57 and ‘59 Grand Finals?’ I added a brief description of that three-goal burst, including those two perfect torpedoes.
He leant close and said softly, but with emphasis:
‘Of course I do….’
I asked Bradman who he thought was the greatest cricketer of all time.
‘Garry Sobers [the West Indian all-rounder],’ he replied without equivocation.
‘But what about you…?’ I began.
‘I’ve just given you my answer,’ Bradman said without rancor.
4: Striving for Perfection
When I elicited responses from Ron Barassi and Don Bradman about their sensational efforts in their respective sports, they both replied with analysis about their views of perfection, for which they strove. Bradman spoke of his 254 at Lord’s Ashes Test in 1930.
‘I did not make a false stroke,’ he commented, ‘even the cover drive I was caught out on was well executed.’
I disagreed, citing his 334 at Leeds also in 1930. 309 of those runs were made in one day, a batting feat never bettered, so far, in 145 years of Tests by all cricket-playing nations.
I asked Barassi about the 1957 Grand Final against Essendon in which he kicked five goals and was instrumental in another five. Inside 13 seconds from the first bounce, he received the ball down the ground and ran into an open goal.
‘Everything went my way---kicking for goal for instance,’ Barassi said, ‘I was not caught with the ball once. My hand and foot passes worked. I can’t recall another occasion where everything fell into place so sweetly.’
They were both just 21 years of age, fully fit and mostly uninhibited by any significant ‘failures’ when they achieved their sporting nirvanas.
Their judgements were free of bombast and based on their own inner-clocks and measurements of perfection.
Both characters could be in the dictionary as defining ‘integrity.’ They were incapable, as far as any human could be, of lying. This stemmed from an in-born capacity to be honest with themselves. Bradman was a shrewd, even cunning captain, who led from the front, but was not a motivator, except by personal performance. Barassi was by nature a leader and motivator with heart-felt, riveting speeches.
They were both quick-witted and had the saving grace of humour. I don’t recall, except at times of bereavement of some sort, that they did not make me laugh or smile.
I remember being with Barassi to visit a former Melbourne premiership captain Noel McMahen at Melbourne’s Box Hill Hospital. We had been having lunch at the nearby RSL. When we walked into the hospital foyer it was as if we were in ‘freeze frame.’ A score of people from young nurses to other medicos, patients and visitors, stopped, whispered and pointed at Barassi. We approached the reception desk to find out McMahen’s room number. Aware of the reaction, and noting that Barassi seemed oblivious of it, I said:
‘Do you realize that everyone here is conscious of your arrival?’
‘Don’t forget I was at four football clubs [Melbourne in two eras; Carlton; North Melbourne and Sydney],’ he said.
To Barassi, this explained it. After all, Australian Rules is the most popular sport in Australia. Yet this is just part of his unmanufactured charisma.
Barassi’s drive, character and success are closer to the answer.
Unlike Bradman, Barassi embraced adulation rather than avoided it. I was with him in at a football match in 2009 at a Melbourne Coterie lunch. We were in the lift after the game with a group of suited Coterie members. The lift stopped at a floor. A Collingwood supporter, aged about 45, stepped in, replete with black and white beanie, scarf and footy jumper.
He stood nose-to-nose with Barassi. The supporter was startled.
‘You’re Ron Barassi!’ the man said in an otherwise silent lift.
‘I know,’ Barassi said.
‘You are a fucking legend! A fucking legend!!’
‘How’d you know about my sex life?’ Barassi said.
The Coterie members laughed.
The supporter was so pleased with meeting the football super-star that he was not aware of the quick-witted response. The supporter insisted on several phone photos and selfies with Barassi, who simply rolled with the moment without a hint of impatience.
This moment was poignant. If there was one individual who was Collingwood’s nemesis, it was Barassi. In football terms he was hated but respected. With the passage of time that respect had morphed into admiration.
Barassi’s reaction to being ‘crowded’ by fans was not because he craved this fervent attention. He simply dealt with it, although I had been with him once when we skipped out of a movie crowd before the end of a film to avoid a rush of fans. He had the personality to absorb the attention and saw it as part of his life in the public domain.
Bradman was different. He wanted ‘space’ at all times when in the public eye although it was almost impossible to attain. He thrived on anonymity. He and wife Jessie drove from Adelaide to the Bradman Museum in Bowral, NSW in 1996. He rang me from a hotel they were staying at en route.
‘We checked in as Mr. and Mrs. Smith and no-one recognized us,’ he said, pleased that they were incognito and would not be harassed.
On another occasion he was on a boat trip on the Murray River with friends. They stopped to buy petrol at a jetty. Bradman volunteered to fill a can. As he was doing so, the bowser salesman scrutinized him and commented:
‘Has anyone ever told you that you look like Don Bradman?’
‘No,’ Bradman said, ‘they haven’t.’
Again, he was chuffed that he did not have to lie, technically at least, thanks to his shrewd, fast-acting mind. It was misleading although it had the desired effect of no further chat.
*
There is another element to Barassi that goes with his capacity to sum up a situation in a split second, and act.
It also fits with the famous line by Hawthorn great John Kennedy, who urged his players during a final:
‘Don’t think, do!!’
It goes to Barassi’s integrity, courage and quick decision-making at moments of life or death, literally. An instance of this occurred, not at the MCG, but in the streets of suburban Fitzroy in 1962. He and another Melbourne footballer, Tassie Johnson, were driving back to the city after a club picnic function. An accident happened right in front of them.
‘We had to swerve avoiding hitting a car that had rear-ended another,’ Barassi said. ‘The hit car then burst into flames.’
A petrol tank burst and caught fire. Barassi and Johnson stopped and helped the three stricken Greek immigrants. Barassi tore off his shirt and put out the flames engulfing the badly burnt Tom Gavrilos, who was helped from the front of the vehicle. Nicholas Kanatos got out of the back seat. Johnson pulled out the trapped Emilios Danos from the back seat.
The three rescued men owed their lives to the quick-thinking fearless Barassi and Johnson.
There was another occasion, this time outside a restaurant in Fitzroy Street, St Kilda on New Year’s Eve, 2009.
Barassi, then 72, wife Cherryl, yachtsman John Bertram, and Ron’s cousin Ken, were enjoying a meal on a balmy night. It was interrupted by a skinny 26-year-old ice-addict punching a young woman in the face. The semi-conscious woman crashed under Cherryl’s chair. Barassi was the only one of the group who saw the punch on the woman. He flew at the offender and his mates. They brought Barassi down and kicked him many times in the head and body.
CCTV footage showed Barassi’s lightning reaction. He tackled and brought the culprit to ground, but was then set upon by the vicious gang. They kicked Barassi many times in the head and body, then took off at full speed through the crowd. Unfortunately, only one of the thugs was identified.
In the subsequent court case, the cowardly offender was given six years jail, which was reduced to three years at a later appeal.
While it could not be proved to the judge’s satisfaction that Barassi had incurred brain damage, he had.
The beaten woman did not know the offenders. After being taunted and attacked in an act of random street violence. In a nightmare incident, she was left with a broken eye socket and nerve damage to her face.
While Barassi’s memory has declined slowly since the incident, he still works out, plays mean games of chess, backgammon and table-tennis, and is still the cheerful character who engages with people in the moment, despite the damage done to his recall capacity.
Barassi still enjoys life and is aided by Cherryl, manager Rosemary Long, his family and friends. He loves his sport and still attends Melbourne footy games, finals, Boxing Day Tests and endless functions. And he loved every moment of the Demons’ victory in the 2021 Grand Final.
You can add the personification of the word ‘courage’ to the dictionary definition of ‘integrity’ for Ronald Dale Barassi.