Speaker 1: Some of the stories about Barras are the best stories
Speaker 1: of all time because he had no he had this
Speaker 1: no bullshit field that was just incredibly raw. So he
Speaker 1: would rather He'd rather have an argument than tell a lie.
Speaker 1: And he gets to Mark Bayze, now the most loved
Speaker 1: player in the team, the La Chronics and a half back.
Speaker 1: He said, bays Base, if this team was any good,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be getting a game.
Speaker 2: I'm John Ralph and I'm Glenn McFarlane.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Sacked, a podcast that explores what really happens
Speaker 3: when the ax falls in the AFL world. Will take
Speaker 3: you behind the scenes with some of the biggest names
Speaker 3: in football and find out how they found out their
Speaker 3: time was up and who pulled the trigger. Sacked AFL
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Speaker 3: Herald Sun. To find out more, go to Herald Sun
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Speaker 4: Your app store today.
Speaker 5: Coaching with Barras The Who Couldn't Lie the first part
Speaker 5: of our chat with Damien Drum. Damien Drum was a
Speaker 5: late bloomer when he was plucked out of Bush Footy
Speaker 5: by Geelong at the age of twenty and spent eight
Speaker 5: frustrating seasons battling to sixty three games, and yet it
Speaker 5: was only another injury sustained in the nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 5: preliminary Final that denied him the notorious role on Dermot
Speaker 5: Breton eventually performed by Mark Yates in the opening moments
Speaker 5: of that famous nineteen eighty nine Grand Final. Drum would
Speaker 5: eventually become famous as the last one to know he'd
Speaker 5: been sacked as Freemantle coach. But that journey got its
Speaker 5: start at the Sydney Swans as the right hand of
Speaker 5: the man who couldn't lie, Ron BARRASSI.
Speaker 2: What kind of play was Damien Drumm.
Speaker 1: Well, mainly probably an inside contested player. Now I talk
Speaker 1: in today's language, you know, I played sixty odd games,
Speaker 1: largely off the bench, just in the team most of
Speaker 1: the time about one hundreckns. So you know, as a
Speaker 1: players probably always felt it was a bit too good
Speaker 1: for the seconds and not quite good enough to be
Speaker 1: a genuine player in the seniors. But you know, some
Speaker 1: years you'd play three or four or five games. Other
Speaker 1: other times you'd play one, played twenty two and your
Speaker 1: one year played all of them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and John Devine and Devin's first year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then Malcolm turned up and blind turned up
Speaker 1: at the end of my career towards the end, and
Speaker 1: he picked me two or three times through the year,
Speaker 1: and I kept breaking down because I had.
Speaker 5: So many injuries. That's the thing. You would just get
Speaker 5: a start and then you'd suffer it. Tell us about
Speaker 5: them and what held you back? Was it a because
Speaker 5: you trained hard? Speaking to a few people about it
Speaker 5: as well, but I.
Speaker 1: Think everybody trained hard in those days, and training was
Speaker 1: also quite physical, so it was there was no it
Speaker 1: wasn't out of the ordinary to do fully contested training
Speaker 1: where the coach just kicked the ball away and two
Speaker 1: guys would chase each other try and bring it back,
Speaker 1: so I think. But I had a lot of soft
Speaker 1: tissue injuries, so I again always felt like I was
Speaker 1: pushing myself. Yeah, so you do an occasional calf, or
Speaker 1: you do an occasional hammy, you strain something that you
Speaker 1: just knew was a groin would just you know, slow
Speaker 1: you down. So you just had to put your hand
Speaker 1: up and say I can't play knees. And the occasional
Speaker 1: you know, the occasional fracture here and fracture there, but
Speaker 1: mainly it was a soft tissue stuff.
Speaker 5: So in February eleven I found a story Februy eleven,
Speaker 5: nineteen eighty one. You get an invite it's from Geelong
Speaker 5: sent I think your mum actually had part of it.
Speaker 5: And you get asked to take part in a practice match.
Speaker 5: You get a hotel room in Gelong. You must be
Speaker 5: thinking you're pretty good here, and you get a thirty
Speaker 5: five dollars traveling allowance.
Speaker 4: Not bad there. You must think I'm going to make
Speaker 4: this now.
Speaker 1: Well, the very first invitation I got was inviting me
Speaker 1: to come down and train with the end of nineties, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: So I'm thinking Gelong really haven't done their homework here
Speaker 1: because I'm already twenty. So I rang them up and said, listen,
Speaker 1: I'm not able to play train with them an because
Speaker 1: I'm already twenty and said, oh, we've just come down
Speaker 1: and train with the seconds or the seniors. So but yeah,
Speaker 1: when it finally came about, I was still doing an
Speaker 1: apprenticeship for that first when Geelong were interested, and I
Speaker 1: went down and trained over Christmas while I was having
Speaker 1: my holidays, which all builders back in those days would
Speaker 1: always take January off. So I was training with Geel Long.
Speaker 6: So your carpenter Joiner, Yeah, and I'm in my last year,
Speaker 6: so we make an agreement that well, you can play
Speaker 6: the practice matches and then we'll see how we go
Speaker 6: from there.
Speaker 1: So, as it turned out, I would travel down on
Speaker 1: the weekends for the first half of the year and
Speaker 1: just played in the seconds. And then I finished my
Speaker 1: apprenticeship halfway through the year and the club said, right
Speaker 1: now you can move down. So but for the first
Speaker 1: half of the year I was completing my apprenticeship in
Speaker 1: Sheperdon and then would travel down on a Friday night
Speaker 1: and stayinge along and then jump on the bus or
Speaker 1: go to Coney Park wherever we were playing.
Speaker 3: See your taboo in ninett eighty two against Cartner Princess Park.
Speaker 3: What a rude initiation and nine games in your first year.
Speaker 3: What's your memories of that first contest?
Speaker 1: Very first contest, I reckon. I tackled Bruce dool and
Speaker 1: it's one of those ones where I could have just
Speaker 1: made the tackle standing up and the umpire was just
Speaker 1: ready to blow. The whistler was at our buggert and
Speaker 1: dumped him as.
Speaker 4: Hard as I could.
Speaker 1: And he's got legit. As the wind goes out of
Speaker 1: his out of his lungs and he rolls over A
Speaker 1: good tackle son.
Speaker 4: Probably the only words he said. He didn't say it really.
Speaker 1: Was going to hit me, and he said, good tackle son.
Speaker 1: So I had a new respect for brucetool, not that
Speaker 1: it needed to, not that it was ever any different.
Speaker 3: So Gary a Butt, the Great Gary Ablet as he
Speaker 3: would become, arrives in eighty four. Take us through your
Speaker 3: your greatest Gary Ablet stories, your recollections. You probably didn't
Speaker 3: know your name, didn't know the name of too many others.
Speaker 3: What was it like playing under the Great Gary Senior?
Speaker 1: Well, he was possibly the most explosive, most dynamic player ever.
Speaker 1: He what he could do the average punter couldn't do,
Speaker 1: the average player couldn't do. It was quite phenomenal. It
Speaker 1: wasn't as consistent as he should have been. You know,
Speaker 1: had some issues off field that were that was sort
Speaker 1: of you know, only a superstar could ever get away
Speaker 1: with some of those, and in an era where he
Speaker 1: probably got away with a bit too so. But oh,
Speaker 1: there were just some of those games where that he
Speaker 1: you know that he's more or less one of his
Speaker 1: own boot and he was quite a phenomenal player. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there is a real there's a
Speaker 1: real case to be made that I made him the
Speaker 1: player that he was. Like this, So if you think
Speaker 1: about the Geelong teams of the day, you know, Bestow
Speaker 1: would run around the back of the pack calling for
Speaker 1: a handball. He'd get the handball, he'd look up from
Speaker 1: the forward line, take two or three bounce as Ablett
Speaker 1: would lead. Best would put the ball beautifully out in
Speaker 1: front of him. Ablett would come out and take the mark,
Speaker 1: go back and kick a goal. It's okay, Cauchy, you
Speaker 1: know the best. He would always head off on his
Speaker 1: right and then he woul shooting back on his left,
Speaker 1: always leaving the opposition for dead. As soon as he
Speaker 1: went back onto his left, Ablet would lead catcher, would
Speaker 1: wait the ball perfectly out in front of him, so
Speaker 1: that when Ablett took the ball out of the air,
Speaker 1: it was just there was no no effort nowhere, just
Speaker 1: beautifully weighted kicks from Paul Couch. Ablett would there take
Speaker 1: this easy mark, go back and kick a goal. Gary
Speaker 1: howk in the four time Best and Ferres, he would
Speaker 1: just he would go into a pack, head down, pick
Speaker 1: up the ball, shrug the opposition off him, charge forward.
Speaker 1: Ablett would lead straight out him, but it would drill
Speaker 1: it down his throat. Ablett again would come out.
Speaker 2: And take an average.
Speaker 1: He's a good player. He's a good Player's kicking a
Speaker 1: few goals. But when I got the opportunity to go forward,
Speaker 1: Ablet would lead. I get the ball twenty meters over
Speaker 1: his head fifty meters to the right, had to stop
Speaker 1: on a six month to go back into the fly
Speaker 1: to play jump at the oncoming pack, sometimes taking mark
Speaker 1: of the year. If a ball spilled the ground, he
Speaker 1: would pounce on it like a like a cougar, picking
Speaker 1: the ball up with two or three blokes hanging off
Speaker 1: his jumper, snapping over his shoulder for goal of the year. Now,
Speaker 1: all these incredible things of Gary Ablett, we're at the
Speaker 1: behest of my shit skills, and you know, I get
Speaker 1: no credit for it. Whereas he picks up cars and
Speaker 1: he picks up holidays around the world, and the people
Speaker 1: that really make it all happen just say along the listed.
Speaker 4: As Bert leaves the ground, applet prod and take the mark.
Speaker 4: Oh he's a light Gary ablet look at this.
Speaker 2: There is the moticil at work. He shoots towards goal.
Speaker 2: What more can you say?
Speaker 5: And he didn't look after you in that sense. You
Speaker 5: didn't get any free trips off with him as well.
Speaker 1: We are talking about Gary apl.
Speaker 3: Correct exactly what would he be like in the morning
Speaker 3: are because I think about Clayton Oliver and he's had
Speaker 3: his issues and so there's lots of players with issues
Speaker 3: in the modern era. But would Gary have been more
Speaker 3: consistent because he'd have better support around you, or would
Speaker 3: he have left forty because he didn't want the constrainits
Speaker 3: of modern day professionalism.
Speaker 1: It's a really good question, and you would imagine that
Speaker 1: Gary in today's era would have been picked up as
Speaker 1: a stunning fifteen year old and a lot of the
Speaker 1: issues I'm sure with our young guys coming through sort
Speaker 1: of out well a long time before they ever get drafted.
Speaker 1: You know, Gary more or less was plucked out of
Speaker 1: the drune area, taken to Hawthorne, didn't sort of work.
Speaker 1: Then he has that year at Murderford. You know, luckily
Speaker 1: the murder Food Football Club banned together and kept him
Speaker 1: on a straight and narrow and then he gets his
Speaker 1: second opportunity of Geelong, and whilst he didn't do anything
Speaker 1: wrong Geelong, he was just he was just slack in
Speaker 1: relation to you know, when you turn up. He was
Speaker 1: just a bit slack and could just he could simply
Speaker 1: rely on his absolute brilliance to people would sort of
Speaker 1: you turn a blind.
Speaker 5: I was to say, they certainly did turn to buy
Speaker 5: blind eye to a lot of stuff in that time
Speaker 5: because he was that good, wasn't he was?
Speaker 1: He was more than that, Yeah, he was. He was
Speaker 1: just stunningly good. And you know, his body shape was
Speaker 1: just full of six foot one but just could jump
Speaker 1: over any pack. He could kick the ball a mile,
Speaker 1: He was incredibly skillful. He didn't fumble, so it's really
Speaker 1: you know, his what he could do on the field
Speaker 1: was very very special.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure was.
Speaker 5: And obviously Tommy Hafees there for a period of time.
Speaker 5: Did you get on well with tom and.
Speaker 1: He was there for yeah, so I got on really
Speaker 1: well with all my coaches. So Billy Gogan was just
Speaker 1: so hard and tough, a fierce and some of the
Speaker 1: dressing downs we got after a game were you know,
Speaker 1: tear skin off you didn't wear. So Billy Gogan, by
Speaker 1: the way he goes preliminary final, preliminary.
Speaker 4: Final, close games too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then he might have finished sixth when the
Speaker 1: final five was the five finals and then sacked.
Speaker 4: It's cruel, isn't it.
Speaker 1: Well, in today's age, it is just ridiculous. So then
Speaker 1: incomes Tommy Hafey, and Tommy was again all about one
Speaker 1: hundred percent effort. But he also liked the runners, and
Speaker 1: you know, we were competitive under Tommy. We probably just
Speaker 1: didn't have didn't have the cattle to support him. And
Speaker 1: but you know, he was just he had these first
Speaker 1: thing that Tommy would do when he went to any
Speaker 1: club was ensure that the players were with him. So
Speaker 1: he had the players all the time. And some of
Speaker 1: the older boys might have rebeled against Tommy, but the vast,
Speaker 1: vast majority of the team were just full devotees and
Speaker 1: when he asked you for effort, you were prepared to
Speaker 1: give it.
Speaker 3: Did he evolve in he's cotching obviously the tigers down
Speaker 3: the guts, you know, as straight as quick as you
Speaker 3: can bombit long. Was there an evolution at all or
Speaker 3: still a Tommy?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. I think generally speaking, it was
Speaker 1: one on one, you know, we're going to be a
Speaker 1: little bit stronger and tougher and hard at it. And
Speaker 1: the contest is always about the contest. And you get hit,
Speaker 1: you get up, knock you down again, you get up again,
Speaker 1: and you know, I just keep running hard and chasing
Speaker 1: and kicking and all those all those he just dropped
Speaker 1: the g off everything tackling, kicking.
Speaker 2: And that stood up in a lot of finals for
Speaker 2: a lot of teams.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and I just say he could easily have
Speaker 1: had seven or eight Premierships in his name if it
Speaker 1: had a little bit like a Collingwood anyway, he I
Speaker 1: think he just had a fantastic way with people and
Speaker 1: was able to was able to embed himself in the players,
Speaker 1: and you know, didn't drink, so he sort of it
Speaker 1: wasn't as though he did it over the over the
Speaker 1: bar players. You know, he just had that way of
Speaker 1: he could sit in the spa and he talked to
Speaker 1: the shirt off and talk pretty ripped. He's talking about
Speaker 1: your family, he'd be talking about your girlfriends. He'd be
Speaker 1: talking all this stuff, and all that stuff was just
Speaker 1: building relationship. So he was a beauty.
Speaker 5: The hot gospeler Johnny Devine, Well, you played some good
Speaker 5: foot under Johnny. You had that year of when you
Speaker 5: had the twenty two games and he was a beauty.
Speaker 1: Again, we weren't good enough to carry it out and
Speaker 1: john was back. He was probably back to the fire
Speaker 1: and brimstone. Yeah, so there was a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: told us, possibly his first meeting with us, we are
Speaker 1: not going to lose a game at Cadennia Park. I'm
Speaker 1: telling you now, we're going to make this a fortress.
Speaker 2: Early because it did happen.
Speaker 4: It did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we I think we lost the first four games. Yea,
Speaker 1: three of them are at home.
Speaker 4: It's hard to go back after that, isn't it?
Speaker 1: That he was again he was one that just appreciated
Speaker 1: effort and again the whole coaching caper back through the eighties,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a lot of nous and in fact, you know,
Speaker 1: we get to the next one. Malcolm Blyth I think
Speaker 1: was the very first of the teaching of the teaching
Speaker 1: type of coaches. So another great mate of ours, a
Speaker 1: guy called David Whedon who came and he got his
Speaker 1: he got his opportunity in AFL football or VFL football
Speaker 1: with Tommy Hagen. So Tommy appoints David Weed as our
Speaker 1: reserves coach and for the first time I've got someone
Speaker 1: who played a handful of games at Collingwood but predominantly
Speaker 1: wasn't a great footballer now making his way as a coach.
Speaker 1: And David Wheden would go on to coach at four
Speaker 1: or five club, six ge probably and he's currently still coaching.
Speaker 2: He was stills practitioner and the art of the drop part.
Speaker 1: And so whilst you learn a lot from all these
Speaker 1: great coaches with big names, David Whedon probably taught me
Speaker 1: more about coaching anyway.
Speaker 4: It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And you know a guy called Bernie Shay who
Speaker 1: I had one year with at Werribee. Again just teach
Speaker 1: you so much about footy. The these guys that have
Speaker 1: been in the coach in Caper all their lives just
Speaker 1: might have great AFL careers to stand by.
Speaker 3: But so Malcolm Blyde arrives and is this a new dawn?
Speaker 3: Like immediately you think to yourself, this is something different.
Speaker 1: Totally totally different, you know. And one of David Whedon's
Speaker 1: great sayings is coaches can now through that nineties started
Speaker 1: to teach you how to win, whereas it always teach
Speaker 1: you why you should win and so we hate these bastards.
Speaker 4: Yeah we owe them.
Speaker 1: We'll stick it up and you know, and they'll give
Speaker 1: you all these reasons why you've got to win on
Speaker 1: the weekend. Whereas Malcolm Blyde, I think was one of
Speaker 1: the first coaches that said, listen, this blokes a cent
Speaker 1: a half back. He's always a left hander. He will
Speaker 1: always punch from the left. The balls always going to
Speaker 1: go to the right. As you're coming in, expect the
Speaker 1: ball to be there. The bloke you're playing on as
Speaker 1: a left footer and he cannot kick on his right,
Speaker 1: so box him in. So they're all these little all
Speaker 1: the little tweaks to our game where blind he was
Speaker 1: actually teaching us how we can be a little bit
Speaker 1: and I think it was the first time and it
Speaker 1: wasn't just our club. I think every club was going
Speaker 1: through that transformation that in the nineties and it's now
Speaker 1: got to the stage where the coaching is they're all teachers.
Speaker 1: They're pretty fantastic.
Speaker 3: He was also a motivator as well as a technician
Speaker 3: and a tactical freak. What were some of the motivations
Speaker 3: or some of the crazy bloody stories, And there's been
Speaker 3: a lot of them over the years, but some that
Speaker 3: you experienced.
Speaker 1: He was uncompromising and so he would on one particular
Speaker 1: start to the year he said, listen, Gary hasn't turned
Speaker 1: up again, as you would all know, and this is
Speaker 1: our third or fourth training session in January. If he's
Speaker 1: not here on Friday, he's not playing this year, this.
Speaker 4: Year, the whole year.
Speaker 1: He's going to get rid of him.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: So here's Malcolm Blair telling all the players that turn
Speaker 1: up for pre season. Is that important that it's the
Speaker 1: best player the club doesn't turn up on the weekend
Speaker 1: or doesn't up on Friday, that's it for him. So,
Speaker 1: you know, and quietly Malcolm would say, don't ever make
Speaker 1: close statements.
Speaker 4: You know, you know, but he did.
Speaker 1: He made his unbelievably closed statement. Obviously Gary turned up
Speaker 1: on Friday and the threat was never had to be
Speaker 1: followed through, but it is. He was an incredible He
Speaker 1: was fierce, you know, he was he was very fierce.
Speaker 1: But he had he had this real way of being
Speaker 1: able to communicate with the players, and again, to a
Speaker 1: little bit of luck, the time was right. So all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you know, Barry Stoneham is becoming a
Speaker 1: sensational player, Gary how a sensational player Paul Couches come
Speaker 1: through now and ends up winning a Brown Low in
Speaker 1: that year. So mar Besto comes to the club a
Speaker 1: couple of years earlier, so he's finally actually which nothing
Speaker 1: to do with Malcolm Blake.
Speaker 4: The group's sort of come together and the.
Speaker 1: Maturity of the group was right to go. And Malcolm
Speaker 1: Blight was just at the right place in the right time.
Speaker 1: But he was also the most stunning coach, you know,
Speaker 1: so he was very, very good.
Speaker 3: So Hawthorne's surging that the powerhouse team gelongs getting better.
Speaker 3: Geelong's got a star studded team. Where the hell is
Speaker 3: Damien drum for the entire home and away series?
Speaker 1: You're yeah, well again. Malcolm put me in the team
Speaker 1: about three times throughout the course of the year. And
Speaker 1: there were twice that I simply was carrying a either
Speaker 1: a bad corky or a knock on the knee, or
Speaker 1: I was carrying something. I thought i'd come through on
Speaker 1: a Thursday, but I just knew I had to put
Speaker 1: my hand up because I just wasn't coming up. And
Speaker 1: then there was a third time that he says you're in.
Speaker 1: I said, you beauty, I'm right to go. And I
Speaker 1: actually tweaked a hamstring on Thursday night, so that was
Speaker 1: the third time throughout the course of the year. And
Speaker 1: then I came back from that hammy and played two
Speaker 1: games in the reserves and played quite well, and he
Speaker 1: picked me for my first game in the first final.
Speaker 5: In the qualifying final against Essendon, which is a selection
Speaker 5: shock in that sense.
Speaker 4: Were you surprised or you knew that he had.
Speaker 5: He factored you in into that sort of bracket a
Speaker 5: bit of both.
Speaker 1: I sort of knew that if I was right in contention,
Speaker 1: and he'd been talking to me, he said, if you're
Speaker 1: going to be you know, the two games you played
Speaker 1: show that you. So anyway, I get the opportunity. And
Speaker 1: it was an amazing that the game. I think, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure that's the game that No, it wasn't, because
Speaker 1: Essenon beat.
Speaker 5: Us Speature in the first one and then you smash
Speaker 5: them in a few weeks time. You get to play
Speaker 5: those three finals. You lose the first week, you play
Speaker 5: reasonably well and you keep your spot the following week
Speaker 5: against Melbourne and then beat Essendon in the preliminary final.
Speaker 5: But in that first quarter something went wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah again, just tweaked a thigh this time, so just
Speaker 1: tore a thighs. I'm kicking the ball in the ford
Speaker 1: line again, letting Gary Tablet work his magic, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, I just felt this thing go. And
Speaker 1: it was one of those ones. I've never had one
Speaker 1: of them before, quite basically quite And I jog around
Speaker 1: for five or ten minutes until three quarter time, until
Speaker 1: quarter time and I just told him, I said, I've
Speaker 1: torn a thigh. So that was pretty horrendous sitting there
Speaker 1: watching the club. In the end, we just power away
Speaker 1: that with that win. Yeah, points that you know that
Speaker 1: you're not going to make it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's got to be given how hard you'd work
Speaker 5: to get that position. How do you deal with the
Speaker 5: You trained. I don't know whether you ever fought you
Speaker 5: were a chance to play the next week, but you
Speaker 5: trained on the on the Thursday night, and Malcolm White
Speaker 5: said after it that that he's finished for the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it. So they thought they could strap it
Speaker 1: up and just see how I went. Because I didn't
Speaker 1: really hurt until I stretched out, And as soon as
Speaker 1: you stretch out, you feel it. I feel it restricting you.
Speaker 1: So it only took five ten minutes after the warm
Speaker 1: up to test it out. But that's pretty.
Speaker 2: Tough, toughest moment in your career.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is, but it is, but horrible at the time,
Speaker 1: But what a great opportunity in the same breath, you know. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd love to have had the opportunity to go out
Speaker 1: and take them on, you know, and Hawthorne were a
Speaker 1: ripping team. Just you just always think, you know, as
Speaker 1: you get older in your footy career, the actual confidence,
Speaker 1: the natural confidence comes to you. It happens. It doesn't
Speaker 1: happen in any one moment. But you know, if I
Speaker 1: was twenty two or twenty three and they're giving me
Speaker 1: that opportunity, I would have been so lacking in confidence.
Speaker 1: I don't know whether I would have been able to
Speaker 1: handle it, you know. But at twenty eight, twenty nine,
Speaker 1: I was twenty nine at the time, I knew I
Speaker 1: was right to go. I was ready to take these
Speaker 1: blokes on. And you get the opportunity and you can't
Speaker 1: do it anyway. So that happens.
Speaker 5: Tell us about that Grand Final and who you sat with,
Speaker 5: what difficult must have been one of the hardest days
Speaker 5: of your life and comes in one of the changes
Speaker 5: as well as one of the changes, and it's the
Speaker 5: most one of the most extraordinary Grand Finals you would
Speaker 5: ever see.
Speaker 1: Well, Malcolm had Malcolm had myself penciled in to do
Speaker 1: the to do a certain job on Dermott until that
Speaker 1: didn't work out and then actually probably did it.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: But it was always based around you got to keep
Speaker 1: an eye on you know, like it's been said about this,
Speaker 1: and I know Dermott and Mark a great mates, so
Speaker 1: there's no doubt. Yeah, coach Dermot in Sydney as well,
Speaker 1: so he's he's totally over this. But yeah, he just
Speaker 1: said keep the eye on Breton and if he goes
Speaker 1: for Couch, you've got to be there that you have
Speaker 1: to the center of the ground from everywhere fifty minutes
Speaker 1: complaint prom them down start.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure Jurney's going down. There was some certainly
Speaker 4: controversy simply that's what he got.
Speaker 1: So came straight off the line and went straight for
Speaker 1: Couch and I didn't see yg coming and and it worked.
Speaker 1: You know, it was in the day, in the day
Speaker 1: of a legitimate bump square.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he's got to be unaware, didn't.
Speaker 1: He Today they would have taken him out to the
Speaker 1: wing and shot him that.
Speaker 5: But certainly Blindy had spoken to you previously about potentially no.
Speaker 1: He because it was something that but it was this
Speaker 1: is after.
Speaker 4: The event, after the event he told you that white chat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he said you would have been the block the guy.
Speaker 1: So but anyway, that's that's those things happen.
Speaker 4: And listen.
Speaker 1: It was a great Grand Final. Yeah, to see applicick
Speaker 1: nine to one. The one the one point he kicked,
Speaker 1: if you have a look on the video was a
Speaker 1: snap over his shoulder from and you can see the
Speaker 1: fifty meter arc in the in the in the shot
Speaker 1: as he snaps the ball over his shoulder and it
Speaker 1: hit the goalpost on the full, about two feet up
Speaker 1: from the from the ground. That's my memory. So it
Speaker 1: could easily have been ten ten straight. We would have
Speaker 1: lost by a point had that kick gone through. But
Speaker 1: he gets rightfully, he gets norm Smith. But the way
Speaker 1: we were a bit careless early gave away a medium
Speaker 1: free kicks. Early Hawthorne looked very good, just just very
Speaker 1: very good. And then we come steaming home and we've
Speaker 1: probably got we've probably got him on the ropes. Looks
Speaker 1: like we're wo always looks like we're going to run
Speaker 1: out of time, but we just kept scoring some goals.
Speaker 4: That's the thing. It just kept rolling and rolling them
Speaker 4: seemed to roll and roll.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it was one of the so rightfully so
Speaker 1: it's been put down as one of those great ground finals.
Speaker 1: It was fierce, the amount of Hawthorne boys it were injured,
Speaker 1: Gelong boys were injured. Everyone sort of put their neck
Speaker 1: on the line for the game. And at the end
Speaker 1: of the day we we miss out and Hawthorn for
Speaker 1: the first time I think go back to back.
Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely, So with that, like if it had been
Speaker 5: a draw, it was a six point margin in the end,
Speaker 5: would you have been any chance to play the next week?
Speaker 4: Do you think no chance? No chance, no chance?
Speaker 1: A full blowing torn as four or.
Speaker 4: Six weeks there, so you're gone.
Speaker 3: You remember the I mean we're talking about the game,
Speaker 3: and of course you know the drama of it and
Speaker 3: Hawthorn players in the hospital and what was the the
Speaker 3: atmosphere in the rooms, Like after the game, would you
Speaker 3: have gone down? Because I mean you think of the
Speaker 3: missed opportunity now and you think hot day.
Speaker 4: Lay.
Speaker 3: You just think about the chances that you had and
Speaker 3: you know, and then for a long time, of course,
Speaker 3: too long, can't get back to where they love to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we were down there in the rooms and so forth.
Speaker 1: You know, Johnny Platten was sort of knocked out so
Speaker 1: he was sitting on the bench. But we had a
Speaker 1: lot of our boys who were injured as well, like
Speaker 1: you know, just quietly they were. They were injured. So
Speaker 1: we I reckon there would have been five or six.
Speaker 1: I think there was a statistic out there that maybe
Speaker 1: six or seven of the players that played that day
Speaker 1: spent the night in hospital. Yeah, and there's a whole
Speaker 1: range of different reasons why. But it was a fierce,
Speaker 1: fierce game, and you know, I think in the day,
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone maybe maybe Johnny Plattin's might have
Speaker 1: been Buddha might have got Johnny plattin a bit high
Speaker 1: free kick maybe, But yeah, it wasn't it wasn't dirty
Speaker 1: playing anywhere, but it was just so just so fiercely contested.
Speaker 1: Blokes got hurt.
Speaker 2: So Geelong would get more chances.
Speaker 3: Of course didn't win those chances, but you didn't play
Speaker 3: another AFL game football.
Speaker 2: We came back the next year.
Speaker 1: I probably should have look always thought, in hindsight, I
Speaker 1: probably should have called it quits there and except that
Speaker 1: the last month of playing in those finals with Blighty,
Speaker 1: the team was on the rise. I did have the
Speaker 1: chat with him. He said, no, no, if you want
Speaker 1: to stay, make sure you stay. So I stayed, but
Speaker 1: just the body was just a bit gone at that stage,
Speaker 1: and I was working incredibly hard in my job. I
Speaker 1: had a business where I was building sheds and it
Speaker 1: was an incredibly physical job.
Speaker 5: And I'm reading I read you the quote. Damien Dramm
Speaker 5: is a footballer and a workerholic. He runs his own
Speaker 5: business in Whereby building sheds and garages, which means he's
Speaker 5: often the last or near laster training and invariably running late.
Speaker 5: His lifestyle would leave sorry, would see most footballing orchards
Speaker 5: wilt in a month.
Speaker 4: I love this.
Speaker 5: Up at six am working around Whereby until three point
Speaker 5: thirty to four on training nights, home to north Shore
Speaker 5: to work on quotes after training and then maybe some welding.
Speaker 5: Midnight finishes are not uncommon. Incredible You're able to do
Speaker 5: that while maintain a footy career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it was sort of the first couple of
Speaker 1: years of the business and great so it was you know,
Speaker 1: when we did the monthly, did the monthly accounting finances. Realized, well,
Speaker 1: we're going to do something a bit different. So start
Speaker 1: you start off working harder, and then you know, you
Speaker 1: get some some professional help and start doing things a
Speaker 1: little bit differently. But yeah, it was more or less
Speaker 1: you do what you have to do to make it work.
Speaker 1: And eventually that became a fantastic business and I was
Speaker 1: able to I sold it to football. He made of
Speaker 1: mine called Craig Olders Ice. So Craig played thirty or
Speaker 1: forty games for the Cats, originally from the Kahuna area,
Speaker 1: couldn't rook kahunaokah. And he was just a lovely bloke
Speaker 1: who was working for me, and he bought the business
Speaker 1: off as I went to Sydney to do the assistant coaching.
Speaker 1: So but I often think about now how hard that
Speaker 1: physical work was, dig digging holes, digging stump holes in
Speaker 1: the ground, like they've got to be seven of the few.
Speaker 2: And shortcuts.
Speaker 1: And the dirt around Werribee is largely rock. And because
Speaker 1: you're digging these sheds in someone's backyard, you can't get
Speaker 1: a digging machine in there. You just got to go
Speaker 1: in there with the shovel and a crowbar and go
Speaker 1: for it and anyway. So it was physically very tough.
Speaker 1: And as we got on a bit into that and
Speaker 1: that last year, I just remembered work wasn't actually helping
Speaker 1: foot you with it, you're making a bit.
Speaker 2: No regrets from her footy career.
Speaker 1: No none at all. I mean to get the opportunity.
Speaker 1: As I said, I'm so lucky to get the opportunity.
Speaker 1: One of my great mates from the Golden Valley, Ashley Bignell,
Speaker 1: who we played in the Grand Final together, we played
Speaker 1: in the Grand File together when we're eighteen. He wins
Speaker 1: the Best in Fairest for the club that year. I'd
Speaker 1: played a game in the seconds because I wasn't going
Speaker 1: that well. I played anywhere within two years I went
Speaker 1: Geelong and Ashley's the star player at shepard and United.
Speaker 1: And he just said to the other day, said I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe it. I always had you covered. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I get this opportunity and I was lucky,
Speaker 1: you know. When that first summer I was probably the
Speaker 1: last name read out on a list of forty six, right,
Speaker 1: but I get the opportunity to show that and that
Speaker 1: I'm that I'm committed and passionate, and I train as
Speaker 1: hard as I possibly can and play as hard as
Speaker 1: I can. And I had a coach ring me up
Speaker 1: when he dropped me in the first year. In the seconds,
Speaker 1: I got dropped one week, so I rang the coach.
Speaker 1: I said what's going on? And he said, well, are
Speaker 1: you sitting down?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: Yeah, he said, you're as weak as piss, mate.
Speaker 4: I said you serious.
Speaker 1: He goes, yeah, you are as weak as piss. And
Speaker 1: you make you have these things that just hit you
Speaker 1: in the mouth, you know, these see statements. And I go, right, okay,
Speaker 1: no one's ever going to say that to me. No
Speaker 1: one's ever going to say that to me. Well it
Speaker 1: might have been true, because you know I've come out
Speaker 1: of the bush where I could dodge around people. Well,
Speaker 1: I've come out of the bush where I could take
Speaker 1: three or four bounces. I've come out of the bush
Speaker 1: where I was a little bit better than the other players,
Speaker 1: and maybe thought I could do that. And here are
Speaker 1: you saying to me, mate, your weakest bizz. So you realize, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a tough nut.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: It was coaching.
Speaker 5: When you leave Gelong was coaching on the radarter year
Speaker 5: you went and played Wereby for a period of time,
Speaker 5: played the Grand final there. Then you went to coach
Speaker 5: Port Melbourne in ninety three. Was that always something that
Speaker 5: you wanted to do?
Speaker 1: I reckon, about three or four years out from the end,
Speaker 1: I realized that I was just always looking at the coaches,
Speaker 1: see how they're going, what they're doing, sort of having
Speaker 1: my own opinions on whether that sounds right or whether
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Sitting down with the reserves coach, sitting down
Speaker 1: with some of the assistant coaches and having chats over
Speaker 1: a few years the next day. So always I was
Speaker 1: heading that way from the time I was about twenty
Speaker 1: six or twenty seven about I reckon, you guys are
Speaker 1: doing an amazing here. I'm not quite sure what you're
Speaker 1: doing about this, so and you start to sort of
Speaker 1: build your own build your own philosophies and so forth. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was always heading that way. And the main role
Speaker 1: about going to Werribee with Leon Harris and Bernie Shay was,
Speaker 1: you know, I needed to get into the coaching group.
Speaker 1: So Bernie Shay very selflessly just stepped back from being
Speaker 1: the assistant coach to allow me to take that role,
Speaker 1: you know, and then I end up learning as much
Speaker 1: from Bernie Shay had to learn from Leon Harris and
Speaker 1: Neil Danaher was also at the club in that year.
Speaker 1: So again Neil and I were in the same pack
Speaker 1: of guys at Assumption College, but I had left and
Speaker 1: then Neil turns up. So when I go back to
Speaker 1: Assumption and see my old footy mate on my old schoolmates,
Speaker 1: that introduced me to this new kid from Hungary. And
Speaker 1: I said, right in the end, we both go. He
Speaker 1: goes a bit earlier than I do. But we became
Speaker 1: great mates while we're playing against each other because we
Speaker 1: had this connection at Assumption College and then at the
Speaker 1: end of our careers we have this year together at
Speaker 1: Wearrib and then we more or less then start competing
Speaker 1: for assistant.
Speaker 4: Senior coaching jobs.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely in Melbourne later on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think it's amazing. Yeah, And so Neil
Speaker 1: and I always been great mates, and to the extent
Speaker 1: where when Melbourne would play Freeman, he'd come over and
Speaker 1: you stay over. And when Neil was coaching the Allies,
Speaker 1: you know, he grabbed me out of senior to come
Speaker 1: and help. You know, I was the club. I was
Speaker 1: the lead, the runner for the Allies the year before
Speaker 1: I coached the coach them. Yeah, but that was all
Speaker 1: through the connection with Neil and so anyway it was.
Speaker 1: It's amazing how many people you meet that can help
Speaker 1: you with your coach in philosophy other than just a
Speaker 1: senior coach.
Speaker 3: Tell us about a year at Port Melbourne in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three, so runners up as premiers, David King had
Speaker 3: arrived at another assumption.
Speaker 2: Boy in the Grand Final is a huge ball spectators
Speaker 2: on the field.
Speaker 3: King, he might have even got whacked something different something
Speaker 3: you about catching Port Melbourne.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it is. It's an amazing place I've been involved.
Speaker 1: If I just talk about my footy career, you know,
Speaker 1: ten years growing up as a kid at kinguvernor ten
Speaker 1: years at Geelong, two years at Werribee and one year
Speaker 1: at Port Melbourne, five years at Sydney's assistant coach, three
Speaker 1: years at Frio and one year back at Bendigo with
Speaker 1: the Benio Diggers. I've got more gags about my one
Speaker 1: and they're all true. I've got more gags about my
Speaker 1: one year at Port Melbourne than all the others put together.
Speaker 1: And seriously will be here at seven o'clock tonight if
Speaker 1: we start talking about the funny things that happened at Port.
Speaker 1: But you know, David King was a stunning plant, a
Speaker 1: bit of a late developer. I couldn't believe the talent
Speaker 1: that was sitting out there on the wing. You know,
Speaker 1: he was faster than most of the others. He was
Speaker 1: a solidly built guy, but he could take a strong mark.
Speaker 1: But his strength was he could kick the ball if
Speaker 1: I have seventy meters and they couldn't catch him. So
Speaker 1: we had this phenomenal player and the wing. And I
Speaker 1: got recruited to Sydney that year and I was telling
Speaker 1: our boys there is a guy at Paul Melbourne. But
Speaker 1: because you haven't quite got that confidence about how good
Speaker 1: everyone else is. Yeah, you know I was a bit
Speaker 1: mine was mindful of holding my piece. You know, I've
Speaker 1: got this. I've got a high opinion about this guy
Speaker 1: I coached. As it turns out, I should have been
Speaker 1: a bit more outspoken.
Speaker 3: Yeah, As it turns out he has a seminal moment
Speaker 3: in the ninety six Grand Final against.
Speaker 2: Him in the next week and turns a grand file.
Speaker 5: Absolutely so it does. And what about that Grand Final.
Speaker 5: There's famous vision still on YouTube now about that Grand Final,
Speaker 5: what happened, It's hard to work out what actually happened.
Speaker 1: Well, unfortunately we're probably three goals down now, But ultimately
Speaker 1: what's happened is wherever you have kicked a guy to
Speaker 1: effectively clinch the game, and what sounded like a siren went,
Speaker 1: but it was somebody that had our own little horn
Speaker 1: on a wing on the other wing that just tweeted
Speaker 1: this horn. So three or four hundred people have all
Speaker 1: from where a you've gone outs on the ground and
Speaker 1: at the same time, the players realized that the game
Speaker 1: is still going, so they're having a bit of a
Speaker 1: push and shove. It's turned into a punching match, and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the supporters have got involved.
Speaker 1: So there's probably two hundred and three hundred supporters on
Speaker 1: the ground and there's three or four spotfires going on.
Speaker 1: Some of the spotfires have got supporters involved, so it
Speaker 1: was pretty messy. But anyway, they were able to clear
Speaker 1: the ground. Took them probably good five or eight minutes
Speaker 1: to clear the ground, and we played the last three
Speaker 1: minutes and then they rang the.
Speaker 2: Siren, so King got wackwise to ram spectator.
Speaker 1: Basically, I don't know about that. But there were guys
Speaker 1: getting hit all day, all over the ground, and it
Speaker 1: was an ear where that was. We knew that sort
Speaker 1: of thing was going to happen because it was one
Speaker 1: step removed from the VFL back then the VFA, and
Speaker 1: you know, this was a little bit more allowed towards the.
Speaker 4: Latter part of that final term.
Speaker 5: I guess the one fellow that would feel terrible about
Speaker 5: the whole.
Speaker 4: Thing is Damien drum Knowing Damien, he would.
Speaker 5: Be absolutely appalled by the incidents, and he.
Speaker 3: Was not asking and he said, ask Drumming about the
Speaker 3: cat never happened, and the golf balls he tried to
Speaker 3: buy ring a bell again.
Speaker 4: We'll be here.
Speaker 1: I get started. But along the lines of along the
Speaker 1: lines of as I go into training, I look over
Speaker 1: and I look over to see some boys got some
Speaker 1: stuff in the boot of the cars. What do you
Speaker 1: boys sell them? Said Drummer. You like golf, don't you?
Speaker 4: Said?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm addicted to golf. I said, right, we've got
Speaker 1: some golf balls. I said, right, how many of you got?
Speaker 1: I said, I don't worry about how many I got.
Speaker 1: How many you want? I said, thinking to myself, right,
Speaker 1: golf balls? I said, oh, yeah, I reckon, I lost
Speaker 1: four on the weekend. I yeah, listen, I put him
Speaker 1: in the woods, I put him in the water. How
Speaker 1: many you got, because I'm thinking about taking a lot,
Speaker 1: and they said, don't worry about how many were got,
Speaker 1: just how many do you want? Right, I'll take them all.
Speaker 1: So quite exasperated, they turned me around and I said, Drummond,
Speaker 1: we've got a container load. It used to be easier
Speaker 1: for them to nick a whole container at the wharf
Speaker 1: and put that container in someone's backyard than it was
Speaker 1: for them to open the container to take a couple
Speaker 1: of paletts. I had to explain where the palettes had gone.
Speaker 1: But whereas if I should palette if the whole container
Speaker 1: just fell off the ship and then it's just gone missing.
Speaker 1: So that was one of the funny aspects of yeap
Speaker 1: of Port Melbourne. And but anyway, as I say that,
Speaker 1: it was a different era and there were a whole
Speaker 1: range of whole range of stories that would go around
Speaker 1: and feed and feed on the you know a lot
Speaker 1: of the connections of the wharf, and you know, you
Speaker 1: could walk in after a game or after a Thursday
Speaker 1: night where a few guys are lined up at the
Speaker 1: bar and you'd see a parish priest sitting next to
Speaker 1: sit next to a cop, and see next to a
Speaker 1: criminal and you sort of say that works.
Speaker 4: It still does as well, doesn't.
Speaker 1: Well everybody comes from all these difference, but they've got
Speaker 1: Port Melbourne as they're only think in common. Absolutely just
Speaker 1: it brings people together. It just is an amazing club.
Speaker 1: And I went back last year for one of their
Speaker 1: events and it was just brilliant and the amount of
Speaker 1: people that are involved at Port, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: great clubs, as I'm sure Williamstown is a great club.
Speaker 1: But my involvement was with Werriby who I had amazing time,
Speaker 1: and then with Port and just so lucky to be
Speaker 1: involved in those two great clubs.
Speaker 5: How did you come to work with Ronald Dale Barrassi
Speaker 5: in Sydney?
Speaker 1: So brass brass? So I think it happens when Kenny
Speaker 1: gannon Lee's the Geelong Football Club and starts working for
Speaker 1: the AFL. The AFL put barrass up there after round
Speaker 1: four or five. He goes up there to become the
Speaker 1: senior coach and they realize that he needs someone a
Speaker 1: bit younger to help him out, and Ken Gannon puts
Speaker 1: my name up as one who might keep an eye on,
Speaker 1: and again, very lucky for me, I've walked into a
Speaker 1: Port Melbourne team that is ready to go. You know,
Speaker 1: we put four or five additional recruits into that team,
Speaker 1: but ultimately, you know, the previous coaches in the previous
Speaker 1: staff had put together a pretty good list, including a
Speaker 1: twenty year old David King. But they were seriously good
Speaker 1: players all through that team. And so I said most
Speaker 1: of the year on top of the ladder as their coach,
Speaker 1: and a bit like Malcolm Blight did for Geelong, he
Speaker 1: was able to come in. You're able to be a
Speaker 1: new coach with a very positive message because your team
Speaker 1: keeps winning. It's totally different, I'm going to learn a
Speaker 1: few years down the track. It's a totally different message
Speaker 1: when your team keeps losing losing, But you're able to
Speaker 1: maintain this positive fresh you know, and you can and
Speaker 1: you can be a bit out there, you can be
Speaker 1: a bit different. And of course, if you keep your
Speaker 1: team keeps winning, a lot of these differences, a lot
Speaker 1: of these quirks are seen to be very very positive
Speaker 1: and influential.
Speaker 3: But so.
Speaker 1: I've had probably two or three different interviews with Ron Bressi,
Speaker 1: and ultimately about a month out from the finals, they
Speaker 1: they say, yeah, we're going to make it work and
Speaker 1: I get the So I had to keep that quiet
Speaker 1: right through the finals and just announced it. I told
Speaker 1: I told the football club grand final night when we lost.
Speaker 1: So but I knew for about a month prior that
Speaker 1: we were heading up to Sydney, you know, probably back
Speaker 1: in the time, possibly the first full time assistant coach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it just wasn't that wasn't that need. There were
Speaker 1: only a couple of interstate clubs going on anyway, and
Speaker 1: so it was a lot of the other clubs coming
Speaker 1: from you know, coming from football states. They were able
Speaker 1: to put people on after work, still part times, but
Speaker 1: to have and I got the opportunity to work with
Speaker 1: Dennis Carroll, Rod Carter, George Stone, all these guys were
Speaker 1: just wonderful football people. Craig Holden are up there at
Speaker 1: a time when the club was no good and they
Speaker 1: were all played this incredible hand in making the Sydney
Speaker 1: the transformation in those few years under Roun incredible, just
Speaker 1: incredible and brass. If you go back, and an interesting
Speaker 1: way is the year before so in Ron Barrassi's last year,
Speaker 1: I reckon we finished tenth. We played a game against
Speaker 1: Brisbane with about five or six games to go, and
Speaker 1: we lose by four points I think, and someone had
Speaker 1: a shot for goal on the boundary forty fifty meters
Speaker 1: out and it's a point. If that one goes through,
Speaker 1: we win that one by our point or two. It
Speaker 1: turns our eight wins into nine wins. It takes one
Speaker 1: away from Brisbane, and you look at the percentage would
Speaker 1: have put the Swans into the finals. One kick would
Speaker 1: have put the Swans into the finals on nine wins,
Speaker 1: like totally unheard of, and it would have been Brassis
Speaker 1: like it took over in his first year his Swan
Speaker 1: song Yeah bang, And so it's an interesting one. And
Speaker 1: then of course Rodney he turns up and just again
Speaker 1: breath of fresh air, smart as all get out, a
Speaker 1: brilliant coach in his own right. We're going to work
Speaker 1: out just how brilliant Rodney heat is in the next
Speaker 1: few years. And he just did an amation job as well.
Speaker 2: So Kevin Sheedy.
Speaker 3: Twenty years later he became the figurehead JWS coach and
Speaker 3: expansion side. But Mark Williams is ostensibly coaching them for
Speaker 3: some of those Barassi years. And I think you've said
Speaker 3: he was saving the game. Huge responsibility at Sydney. Were
Speaker 3: you ostensibly the coach in or butit no mainly.
Speaker 1: Well, he allowed me to take training. Well, he wanted
Speaker 1: me to take training. So that took a while for
Speaker 1: him to you know, when I say a while, it
Speaker 1: probably took a month for him to be confident enough
Speaker 1: that he could back away and just sort of so
Speaker 1: barrass would address the players in between drills and then
Speaker 1: more or less just hand than rode o drumming what
Speaker 1: are we doing now? And that was an incredible opportunity
Speaker 1: for a thirty four year old who was more or
Speaker 1: less just trying to work through Okay, these are the
Speaker 1: things we need to work on, and so to be
Speaker 1: given that opportunity to more or less take set training up,
Speaker 1: take training and I would sit down with Barras and
Speaker 1: sort of say these are the drills we're doing tonight.
Speaker 1: He goes, fantastic, can we deal a bit of this
Speaker 1: and we'll do that and deal with that other one.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: So it was always worked out with Brass what we
Speaker 1: were doing. And but he was just because he was
Speaker 1: so comfortable within himself. He didn't have to worry about.
Speaker 1: There was no ego that he had to sort of
Speaker 1: that he had to sort of protect or there's no
Speaker 1: ego that he had to sort of stick up for.
Speaker 1: He was just such a right you know when he signed,
Speaker 1: when he signed his name seventeen for ten amazing look
Speaker 1: at that and you think when it just after a
Speaker 1: while you realize what that means. Seventeen Grand finals for
Speaker 1: ten premierships. And so he's his own man, you know.
Speaker 1: Some of his some of the stories about Barras are
Speaker 1: the best stories of all time because he had no
Speaker 1: he had this no bullshit field that was just incredibly raw.
Speaker 1: So he would rather have a he'd rather have an
Speaker 1: argument than tell a lie. And sometimes it happened that way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and so gives an example, Oh well there
Speaker 1: were there was one game where we're getting ready to
Speaker 1: getting ready to run out, and he's going through the
Speaker 1: players give him his fine little g up and and
Speaker 1: he gets to you know, you know, Plugger, you got
Speaker 1: to keep moving around a bit more. Paul Kelly, I
Speaker 1: know you work hard. You got to work even harder.
Speaker 1: Darren Krazwell, you've got to push deep into defense. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got to be tied on your opponent today. Da da,
Speaker 1: And he gets to Mark Bayes, now the most loved
Speaker 1: player in the team, little conics and a half back.
Speaker 1: He said, bays base, if this team was any good,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't be getting the game. And I'm thinking, oh no,
Speaker 1: not before they run out. So anyway, the team goes out,
Speaker 1: the team runs out. I grab Ron's arm as he's
Speaker 1: leaving this little little room. I said, mate, we need
Speaker 1: to have a chat. And he goes what I said,
Speaker 1: Bays the most loved player in the team, and you
Speaker 1: just told the whole team they're no good before they
Speaker 1: run out. Well they're not. I said, yeah, but there's times,
Speaker 1: and there's times maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow morning, when we're
Speaker 1: going through the game. You know, maybe you can tell
Speaker 1: them then that they're no good. They got all wet
Speaker 1: to get over it, he said, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: lie to them.
Speaker 4: He said, okay.
Speaker 1: Anyway, The argument then turns south. Right, you think that
Speaker 1: was a tough argument. No, The argument then gets personal
Speaker 1: him and.
Speaker 4: I is that what he's saying?
Speaker 1: No, well more or less, say I said to you,
Speaker 1: if an idiot, you what would you know. You think
Speaker 1: you've done this, but you've done nothing. You you passed it.
Speaker 1: So we get into this horrendous argument. In the end
Speaker 1: he says we're going to stop this, we need to
Speaker 1: go upstairs. But again he just wouldn't tell a lie.
Speaker 1: So anyway, we're walking up the stairs and I've coached,
Speaker 1: I'm coaching the second at this stage, and I leave
Speaker 1: them at three quarters time to go in and help
Speaker 1: with the senior preparation and I get I get hit
Speaker 1: on the on the stairs on the way up by
Speaker 1: the uncle of one of my young players. He says
Speaker 1: to me, Damian Drum, you are ruining little Billy's career.
Speaker 1: And I said, yeah, I know, that's I know, Russell,
Speaker 1: I know, I know, and he goes, no, I'm serious.
Speaker 1: You are the worst thing ever.
Speaker 4: You're having a good day.
Speaker 1: Next thing, Ron Brassy steps in front of me says, listen, Russell.
Speaker 1: If whatever little Billy's problem is, and ain't his problem now,
Speaker 1: this this bloke is the best thing your boys got going.
Speaker 1: As with all the other Seconds players, he's doing this,
Speaker 1: and he's doing this and he'll be doing this for
Speaker 1: as long as he wants because he's good at what
Speaker 1: he does. You've got a problem, you come and see
Speaker 1: me next week.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 4: I just walked off.
Speaker 1: I walked off because I knew Brassy had just made
Speaker 1: me out. Brassy had made me feel to myself like
Speaker 1: a total failure. Because I knew that if the things
Speaker 1: were opposite, I would have let I would have let
Speaker 1: Brass fight for himself. Like for me to have just
Speaker 1: had that argument with this bloke and we were fierce,
Speaker 1: what we were it wasn't nice. And then two minutes
Speaker 1: later here he is coming to my.
Speaker 2: Defense apologizing, No, it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I wasn't, he said. So the next day I say
Speaker 1: to Bras, I need to talk to you about what happened.
Speaker 1: What happened for the game, and he goes, listen, we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have got it. We shouldn't have got so upset
Speaker 1: in the room. We shouldn't have done that. And I said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about that. I'm talking about what you did
Speaker 1: on the stairs on the way out. He said, He said,
Speaker 1: what I said. You stood in front of that aggressive
Speaker 1: uncle and you defended me. He said, well, why wouldn't
Speaker 1: I He said, yes, but I just spent five minutes
Speaker 1: calling you everything I could think of and he goes, yeah,
Speaker 1: but that had nothing to do with that. It was
Speaker 1: just the most he could compartmentalize these things. And it
Speaker 1: was the biggest lesson I've ever learned. He said, don't
Speaker 1: get one don't let one thing get influenced something else,
Speaker 1: something else, has nothing to do with it. So you said,
Speaker 1: we're good, are we good?
Speaker 2: He said?
Speaker 1: I said, of course we're good. I said, but you
Speaker 1: are too good. I said, I want to see some
Speaker 1: faults in you. You know, And how did play bas
Speaker 1: is good? Bays was good and you know, and he
Speaker 1: was very, very harsh, but because he was laconic Mark,
Speaker 1: Mark would drift across the back line someone with flicking
Speaker 1: a handball and seventy five meters down the ground it
Speaker 1: would be and be lace out.
Speaker 4: But you know, a bloody good player.
Speaker 1: He was a fantastic player. And again as well, and
Speaker 1: much love and much love by his team.
Speaker 4: Anyway, did you did you want the job?
Speaker 2: When, of course Brass moved on and Rodney got it.
Speaker 1: So I I went and saw the club when Brass
Speaker 1: retired and I said, well, I want to be considered.
Speaker 1: They sort of said, yeah, right, okay, So I hear
Speaker 1: that there's a big going on and be going on
Speaker 1: with different names coming through in my My time comes
Speaker 1: for the interview, and the first interview is simply going
Speaker 1: to be with the CEO, Kelvin tem Calvin. And anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm ushered into a waiting room next door to Kelvin's
Speaker 1: office and I can hear him on the phone, and
Speaker 1: he's a bit anxious. He wants to get off the phone,
Speaker 1: wants to get my interview into that, and in I
Speaker 1: can hear him. I can hear him clearly, and he
Speaker 1: just said, listen, I'll call you back. I've just got
Speaker 1: to get rid of drums interview. Tuble, I've just got
Speaker 1: to get rid of Drumm's interview, okay. And so I'm
Speaker 1: having the interview and I'm as flat as attacked, and
Speaker 1: I'm sort of saying, this is Kelvin. I don't think
Speaker 1: you know. I'm probably three quarters way through it, and
Speaker 1: I said, Kelvin, I think you've already made up your
Speaker 1: mind at the club, and he goes, what do you
Speaker 1: say that? I heard what you said before you got
Speaker 1: into the meeting. He said, right, sorry about that, but
Speaker 1: that was cool in a sense. Better to know there
Speaker 1: than to go through a whole process, get your hopes
Speaker 1: up and then get him smashed. And as it turned out,
Speaker 1: Rodney id gets the job and you know, starts off
Speaker 1: his brilliant coaching career, but unlucky not to have had
Speaker 1: more success in his career. But sharp, smart understanding. Again,
Speaker 1: Modern Rocketeed was the first coach I heard it. Says, I, reckon,
Speaker 1: I'm going to send I'm going to send somebody off
Speaker 1: the field, off the training track. Why he's just training terrible? Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're not going to get up him? He said, no,
Speaker 1: it's he's having a bad night. He's just not into it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get rid of him, Just take it,
Speaker 1: send him home. Said right, and he said, Eddie says
Speaker 1: to me, lady, he says, you know you can't always
Speaker 1: train at your top level. And I said, yes, you can,
Speaker 1: you can at least you can at least you can
Speaker 1: at least budget.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, sometimes blokes have a night off.
Speaker 1: So he again he had this deep understanding. You know,
Speaker 1: you can still be a great player. You don't have
Speaker 1: to get everything right. And again teaches you an awful
Speaker 1: lot about him.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening to Sacked.
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