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Ted Whitten was chosen by the Footscray Football Club as its player to be included on the inside of the Footscray Stamp Booklet.He was a Centre Half Back/ Centre Half Forward who played 321 games for Footscray, kicking 364 goals between 1951 and 1970. He won Footscray's Best and Fairest on four occasions.
He coached Footscray from 1957-66 and 1969-71. As a player he participated in their only premiership in 1954 under Captain-Coach Charlie Sutton.
Because of his extraordinary skill and all round ability he was dubbed Mr Football by Ron Barrassi, another Legend of the Game.
After a long battle with prostate cancer he died in 1995.
Mr Football was named at Centre Half Back in the Team of the Century named during the Centenary Season.

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A day never goes by that Ted Whitten jnr doesn't think of his famous father. In fact, he is reminded about him in so many ways, "in a way I feel he's still here with me, only that I can't talk to him".

And Whitten certainly thought about the footy legend yesterday for the simple reason it was the 10th anniversary of the day his father died, aged just 62, from prostate cancer.

"Something I do every day reflects a memory of him," said Whitten. "Whether it be through the 10 photographs of him that hang in my office or by the videos I have of him, or those old Four'n Twenty commercials of the players in the bus that is back on telly again or by those various 'memorable moments' that have been bobbing up. And then there's the people who constantly ask about him, saying things like, 'How would your dad have thought about how the Doggies are going this year'."

Ted Whitten jnr was with his dad, along with his mother and Ted snr's brother Don, when he died on August 17, 1995, the day etched in many football fans' memories because it was announced soon after on The Footy Show.
Only a couple of months earlier there had been an outpouring of emotion as Ted jnr accompanied his dying and near-blind father on a final lap of honour around the MCG before his beloved Big V took on South Australia. In fact, so moving was that moment that Kevin Bartlett said on his SEN program yesterday it reduced him to tears and turning to his fellow radio commentators, Stephen Quartermain and Sam Kekovich, he discovered they were crying, too.

But if Ted jnr has become prouder than ever of his father this past decade, we feel

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YEAR OF THE DOG

They say a week is a long time in football? Try 10 years.
Year Of The Dogs is a fly-on-the-football documentary taking in the 1996 AFL season for the Footscray Football Club. In that year the 'Doggies' were truly the underdogs both on and off the field. On the ground they were being beaten to the ground, elsewhere their dwindling support base meant little financial restitution for the club, leading AFL bosses to attempt to force a merge with another team.
Such a merger had failed the year before between Melbourne and Hawthorn (the Melbourne Hawks) and it's the kind of scenario that is a nightmare for lifelong fans of any club. So it is for the mother and daughter duo of Pat and Jenny Hogson, who wrap themselves in blankets and tout umbrellas for not only every Footscray game, but every training session to boot. The team's win/loss record breaks their heart at almost every turn, but they have a lot of love to give for their beloved Doggies.
That's the sentimental view, but we are also afforded the tough guy angle, as the production team had near-unlimited access to the team and its coaches. As the season becomes more forlorn, the legendary Alan Joyce eventually vacates the coach role, to be replaced by his former assistant, Terry Wallace (now coaching Richmond), who comes aboard as caretaker coach.
The team is full of characters, all sharing small triumphs and greater tragedies. Club veteran Steve Wallis is nearing the end of his career; Tony Liberatore is body-broken at the end of every game but is a nuggety solider; Danny Southern attracts more injuries in a single season than many players face in a career and, toughest of all, the club's youngest player, Shaun Baxter, battles with cancer.
History shows that there was no miracle comeback for Footscray in 1996 and that the club would soon evolved into the Western Bulldogs. As it stands now, Year Of The Dogs is a hands-on study of the slings and arrows of the great game.