Book extract: Waiting for the Big Dance with the Western Bulldogs

http://www.watoday.com.au/afl/wester...13-p4z08y.html

Noon, grand final day. Bulldog club elder John Schultz stands at the changeroom door, greeting the players. He believes the Dogs can win. Has all year. The old champion foresaw all along that the bye makes it a season of two halves. One half is getting into the finals. The other half is what you do when you get there. If you’re a young team and get on a roll, anything can happen. He believes that’s the lesson of ’61 when a young Bulldog team made it to the grand final, the club’s last. Schultz shakes the hand of each player as he arrives. Marcus Bontempelli feels history slide through his palm.

It ''hits'' Zaine Cordy after he enters the Bulldog changerooms and sees his name on a locker. His father, three uncles and brother all played for the Dogs. Now, in only his 11th game and at the age of 19, he’s going where no Cordy has gone. He concentrates his mind on his role, on backing his instincts. ''Only way to play,'' he says. ''You don’t have time to think.''

Outside the grey walls of the stadium are thousands of people, rows of cars, fast-food trucks and statues of past footy gods like Haydn Bunton, Ron Barassi and ''Lethal'' Leigh Matthews. E. J. Whitten’s statue is not there, a sore point out west. Comedian Wil Anderson is broadcasting from a mobile booth for radio station Triple M. Standing amid the audience of match-goers who have paused to watch, he spots Jason McAinch, the kid at Haywood Primary School who attached him to the forlorn narrative that has been his lot as a Bulldog supporter up until this year, until this day. The comedian tries to suppress the thought that a glorious sunburst of joy might now be coming his way.

Jason McAinch is a farmer from Denison, a tiny place in eastern Victoria. Denison is surrounded by other tiny places like Winnindoo, Nambrok, Wurruk and Bundalaguah. People in all those places will be watching this game today, watching the drama about to unfold inside the high grey circular wall. People all around Australia are watching. Ashlea Wainwright is flying 65 hours to see this game and get back to work at her university in Brussels by Monday morning. People are about to watch the grand final in, among other countries, England, Ireland, Germany, Papua New Guinea, Japan, China, the United States and, most remarkably, Mongolia.

Fiona Wood, mother of Bulldog captain Easton, is rung by the aged-care facility she works for in Camperdown. A phone is passed among the 20-odd residents and, one by one, they wish her luck, even two who can’t speak. Easton dropped in to see them the last time he was home.

Tom Liberatore has forgotten his boots. Bulldog equipment manager Jayden Shea spots him rummaging through the spare boots case. ''I’ll just wear someone else’s,'' he says. ''You definitely won’t,'' says Shea who has a decisive edge about him. Under the anti-gambling rules, Libba has handed in his phone. They have to retrieve the phone to find the number of Libba’s housemate. Shea rings the housemate and directs him on a search of Libba’s room. Having unearthed two pairs of boots, the housemate is directed to call Uber and get a car to bring him and the boots to the MCG pronto. And that is how Libba’s boots, which play a big part in the afternoon’s events, arrive at the ground.

Annie Nolan meets her father-in-law, Billy Picken, inside the ground. He gives her ''the biggest hug''. Billy is one of a generation of Collingwood players haunted by grand-final failure. In a succession of grand finals in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s, Collingwood were seen, rightly or wrongly, as having repeatedly fumbled premiership opportunities. At an individual level, Billy Picken played bravely and well. Even so, as a Collingwood player from that ill-fated period, a certain aura surrounds his name to do with unrequited ambition and grand-final disappointment. Now his son Liam is about to step on to the stage and meet his football destiny …

Trainer Kev O’Neill hands the 1954 Australian penny given to him during the grand-final parade to coach Luke Beveridge for good luck. Six survivors from the Bulldogs’ only VFL/AFL premiership team, the men of ’54, visit the Bulldogs rooms before the match – Ron Stockman, Harvey Stevens, Don Ross, Jimmy Gallagher, Dougie Reynolds and Angus Abbey. Beveridge chats with them for 10 or 15 minutes, asking them questions about the club as they knew it and how their careers had started. ''He had no airs or graces,'' Ron Stockman tells me, adding slightly mystified, ''He was calm as a cucumber.''

The Bulldogs’ equipment manager Jayden Shea remembers the Bulldogs’ rooms being relaxed. ''We'd had such a big build-up. We’d come so far. We just had to do it once more.'' The Dogs have Brad Lynch running in the grand-final sprint. There’s a bit of banter among the boys about that.

The first warm-up, before the pre-match entertainment, is only 15 minutes. Bonty (Marcus Bontempelli) uses it to look around, to try and adjust to the colours and noise. JJ (Jason Johanissen) uses it to get a feel of the ground. Literally. He lies down on the 50-metre arc and tells Dale Morris he’s going to catch ''a quick 10''. On his back, looking up at the sky, he notes what a sunny day it is. Telling me this, he remarks, ''I’m actually a really relaxed person.'' Fletcher Roberts has had a difficult week, not knowing he was playing until Thursday, then putting his mind to the subject of his likely opponent, high-rise 203-centimetre forward Kurt Tippett. His friend Jack Macrae says, ''It is so tough not knowing if you’re playing – he had the stress of that.'' Roberts says that it is only during the warm-up that he starts to feel ''a bit normal''.

Steve Wallis played 261 games for the Dogs from 1983 to 1996 but never made it to a grand final. Now his son, Bulldog midfielder Mitch Wallis, will miss also, having suffered the club’s most traumatic injury, a broken leg that left the bottom section of his leg flapping in round 18. Steve and Mitch flew to Sydney for the preliminary final, Mitch’s first flight since the injury. They went to the GWS game simply as Bulldog supporters and cheered as lifelong fans. When the Dogs won, father and son embraced and father shouted, ''We’re going to win the grand final, Mitch!'' Now, one week later, Mitch Wallis walks out onto the MCG to sense the grand-final atmosphere, knowing he’s not playing. To his surprise, Sydney’s Gary Rohan, who broke his leg badly in 2014, runs the length of the ground ''to check out how I was going''. ''I will forever respect him for that,'' says Mitch. ''It’s my duty to be there for someone else who goes through this.''

Jack Macrae says no-one’s really 100 per cent fit. He’s ''pretty confident'' in his hamstring. Easton Wood thinks he’s got six leaps in his right ankle before it’s ''cooked''. Here is the Bulldog club doctors’ bill of health for the grand final team: “JJ and Hamling both have slight calf strains; Hunter has knee issues; Macrae’s hamstring is still a concern. He was the riskiest one coming back early. Cordy has a minor fracture in his upper back; Stringer has had chronic AC joint soreness since the Suns game; Dickson has toughed it out with groin soreness for the past six weeks. Tom Boyd has the unstable shoulder he has played with all year; he also sprained an ankle against Freo in the last roster match. Dunkley is carrying an ankle injury; Caleb Daniel has a torn cartilage and a bit of floating bone in his shoulder. A couple of games it has popped out. Morris has fractures through his transverse processors (bones attached to the vertebrae of his back).”

The previous week, a ball kicked into Jordan Roughead’s face resulted in bleeding between the retina and the lens of his right eye. The Bulldog ruckman has only been cleared to play in the grand final at 10 o’clock that morning. The docs, Jake Landsberger and Gary Zimmerman, feel the team’s medical issues are ''under control''. They feel ''unusually confident'' and believe the players do, too.

Club psychologist Lisa Stevens has been on the journey with the Bulldog players for three years. She has been a safe place for their stories, she’s been an astute observer and, when requested, a guide. She writes of grand final day: ''Many have contributed to paying the admission price to play today, but I am acutely aware that only 22 get to lace up their boots for the Big Dance. The fickle hand of form and fate deals out limited passes to the dream. The three emergencies don’t know which way it’s going until that first siren.'' She will wait with them in the empty rooms listening, sharing the question beating in their minds which she expresses this way: ''Is it boots or suits?''

Matthew Boyd is beating the drum, building up to the match. We’ve beaten them twice on their home deck, we’re primed, we’ve got real potency, good mix of attack and defence. Joel Hamling, who will play on Buddy Franklin, is seen by many as the Bulldogs’ weakest link. Although he didn’t manage a single senior game in his three years at Geelong, when you watch the Bulldogs over the course of 2016, in which he played 12 matches, you see that his form was solid. The only time he looked out of his depth was against Geelong when he was played as a forward. In all the other games he’s been serviceable, steady, equal to the occasion. What he does well, he does surprisingly well. In the course of the finals, he has held his own against the elite of AFL forwards – West Coast’s Josh Kennedy, Hawthorn’s Cyril Rioli and Jack Gunston, GWS’s Jeremy Cameron. Life has brought him to this moment for a reason, he believes. Whatever’s thrown at him, he’ll throw back.

Trainer Frank Dimasi has been confident all week. On Sunday, he sent a text to Beveridge congratulating him on the two premierships he’d been involved with over the previous weekend – the Footscray VFL team and Sandringham in the VFL under 18s. Beveridge’s son Kye was in the Sandringham team. Beveridge’s reply was short: ''ONE MORE TO GO FRANKIE.'' Frank remembers what he calls ''the warm-up to the Big Dance''. ''The playing group were so relaxed – except for Keith [Matthew Boyd] – but we expect that. No over-the-top antics, nerves were in check, behaving like just another game really. Then that look from The Bont (Marcus Bontempelli). He noticed me swaying to the pre-game rap music which just oozed through my body and calmed me down – I found myself so relaxed. The Bont looked at me and gave me this massive smile and nod of the head, as if to acknowledge welcome to our playground – ‘IT’S OUR TIME’.”

Out in the stadium, this restless bowl of animated colour holding 99,982 people, a sign appears on the giant scoreboard saying 13 members of the Swans team have played in an AFL grand final, eight in a premiership. The Dogs have no players in either category. Once upon a time, this would have been taken as a sign that the Swans were going to win. But that logic doesn’t work any more. Not here. John Schultz says the Dogs have got no baggage. It’s all just new and exciting.''

In Perth before the first final, Beveridge told them to run towards the fire. Now his word is fury. But he aligns fury with two other words, system and persistence. ''The pain of discipline is less than the pain of disappointment.'' He gives me his list of 14 scenarios that he foresees might arise in the course of the grand final and the moves that will be made to counter them. These are expressed in highly compressed language using code words. For example, Scenario 2, ''A mid hurting us with their transition and possession.'' One of three proposed solutions is ''Consider Bonty to expose him.'' Beveridge will back 20-year-old Bonty to beat Sydney’s best midfielder. Scenario 9A: ''Franklin coming up to the stoppage.'' Two responses. ''A: Trust our system. B: Moz (Dale Morris) go all the way with him.'' A partnership of Libba and Jack Macrae is responsible for Sydney midfield star Luke Parker while Bonty and 19-year-old Josh Dunkley are responsible for Swans captain Josh Kennedy.

Easton Wood leads the Western Bulldogs from their rooms beneath the MCG. Turning, they stride up the race. The ground appears as a pocket of blue and some roof from the Great Southern Stand followed by a giant light tower looming down, then they come into the crowd’s view and are swallowed by an ocean of noise and colour. ''You think you can imagine what the roar is like,'' says equipment manager Jayden Shea, ''but it’s like nothing you’ve ever imagined.'' Libba says, ''I nearly shit myself. Yeah, definitely, I couldn’t hear anything.'' Trainer Paul Maher sensed the rising excitement and tension during the first warm-up. Walking out the second time he meets the roar like a thunderclap that shakes him. ''Oh, God,'' he thinks, ''this is it!'' Jake Stringer feels ''massive vibrations'' in his body. Tory Dickson coolly registers that the Dogs have more support. The roar makes Liam Picken ''half excited, half nervous. It lasts five seconds, then you’re back into the moment.'' Bonty says it wasn’t as loud to him as it might have been to some of the others because he was thinking.

The Bulldogs’ grand final banner:We’ve beaten all the othersDefied all of the oddsToday this team of puppiesBecome true BullGods

For Dale Morris, running out onto the MCG on grand-final day is everything he has ever wished for. ''It’s like I had dreamt and more – the sound, the atmosphere, the smell of the grass.'' For Caleb Daniel, running out ''is a childhood dream come true only it feels like a blur''. It’s that for Fletcher Roberts, too. The roar at the end of the national anthem is so loud that Josh Dunkley, the Dogs’ youngest player, can hear nothing out on the ground. And Easton Wood, the Bulldog captain, says, ''A grand final is like no other game. You get that roar – the whole building is shaking. You’ve got this mass of people going insane. This is the whole reason we play. This game is for keeps: you’ll never forget it for the rest of your life.''

Readying himself for the all-important first bounce of the grand final, “heart going 200 beats per minute”, Jordan Roughead has this absurd thought. He thinks he’s scared – briefly he imagines how scared the umpire must be. “Imagine if he f---s up the first bounce. After all this?!!!” The thought relaxes him just a bit. Just enough.

A Wink from The Universe by Martin Flanagan, published by Penguin Random House. RRP $34.99

Looking forward to getting my hands on this one. Knowing Martin Flanagan's writing, there will be at least one reference to:

1) irish catholic
2)working class
3)blue collar

Can guarantee it will be top shelf and good to see it wasn't rushed out last year simply to cash in. Will be good to get an inside view like his 1993 book on our club 'Under a Western sky'.

Just one thing; wasn't the crowd 99,981 not 99,982?

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Originally Posted by HOSE B ROMERO

Looking forward to getting my hands on this one. Knowing Martin Flanagan's writing, there will be at least one reference to:

1) irish catholic
2)working class
3)blue collar

Can guarantee it will be top shelf and good to see it wasn't rushed out last year simply to cash in. Will be good to get an inside view like his 1993 book on our club 'Under a Western sky'.

Just one thing; wasn't the crowd 99,981 not 99,982?

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Definitely 99, 982. I remember thinking we were 18 short of 100 000 and that's how many players were on one team.

Just rewatched the replay and the official attendance comes up as 99,981, so it looks like Hose is right.

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Originally Posted by Murphy'sLore

Just rewatched the replay and the official attendance comes up as 99,981, so it looks like Hose is right.

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I have 99,981 on my Doggies premiership scarf so that must be the official attendance.

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Originally Posted by Murphy'sLore

Just rewatched the replay and the official attendance comes up as 99,981, so it looks like Hose is right.

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Definitely 99981.

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Originally Posted by Twodogs

Definitely 99, 982. I remember thinking we were 18 short of 100 000 and that's how many players were on one team.

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Originally Posted by Murphy'sLore

Just rewatched the replay and the official attendance comes up as 99,981, so it looks like Hose is right.

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Originally Posted by Eastdog

I have 99,981 on my Doggies premiership scarf so that must be the official attendance.

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Originally Posted by westdog54

Definitely 99981.

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Oh well, I got that one mistaken,

http://www.news.com.au/sport/afl/wha...3987e21ed7997b

What you didn’t know about the stars of the AFL’s greatest fairytale

THEY combined to win a flag that came from nowhere and, as a new book reveals, they’re an extraordinary bunch behind closed doors.
THE Western Bulldogs’ 2016 premiership came from nowhere — they were the club with no luck, no stars, no right to win, no culture of success.

They were the rank underdogs and they swept to victory on an unprecedented tide of goodwill that washed over the nation.

Only Martin Flanagan could bring to life this particular miracle. The club’s two guiding spirits — captain Bob Murphy and coach Luke Beveridge — welcomed him in, Beveridge making available his match diaries, pre-match notes and video highlights.

Flanagan interviewed every player, watched every match, talked with the trainers, the women in the football department, the fans who never miss a training session, the cheer squad.

What Flanagan shows is that the Bulldogs found a new way to play partly because they found a new way to be a team — a new way to support each other, even a new way to be.

His book, A Wink From The Universe, on sale this week, includes detailed insights of every player on the team, including these edited revelations on some of the Dogs’ biggest stars.

TOM LIBERATORE — THE READER
He’s a reader. The three writers he names to me are William Burroughs, Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson, all somewhat rebellious figures from twentieth-century American literature.

He has some lines of the man he calls Hunter S. tattooed onto the inside of his left forearm: ‘When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.’

As chance has it, while writing this book, I happened to meet Libba’s Year 10 English teacher at St Kevin’s — he told me how strongly young Tom engaged with Shakespeare’s Othello.

Jason Johannisen describes him as ‘a strange, intelligent person who’s fun to be around. He’s a prankster. You need those people in a footy club. We spend a lot of time together, it has to be fun.’

LUKE BEVERIDGE — THE LEADER
Luke’s mother says he never did anything very radical — he was just different.

She tells me he always had ‘this different way of writing. In Year 10, a teacher accused him of copying. In Year 11, he wrote an essay. It said, “I want to be a leader.” The teacher realised it was his own work.’

For a time, he had dreadlocks, listened to Bob Marley and wanted to be a park ranger. He met his wife, Dana, when he was fifteen on a school bus. They have two sons, Kye and Noah.

He played thirteen AFL seasons on one-year contracts.

JAKE STRINGER — THE BALLER
He lived in the central Victorian town of Maryborough until he was eleven. So did Matthew Dellavedova.

I had heard that Stringer was more highly regarded as a basketball prospect than Dellavedova at that time. When I ask Stringer, he nods. ‘I thought I had him covered as a junior.’

He follows Dellavedova’s NBA career, and adds tiredly, ‘I don’t really watch that much footy.’

Jake Stringer doesn’t watch much footy but he does watch highlight reels of Gary Ablett senior.

He has no illusions about his abilities relative to the original Gazza’s, but there are certain respects in which the two are similar.

Geelong’s maverick star of the 1980s and nineties was famously indifferent to training. Stringer’s lack of enthusiasm for training is well-known to his teammates, although occasionally, according to Fletcher Roberts, ‘he turns it on. When he does, only Dale Morris can go with him.’

EASTON WOOD — THE TRAVELLER
His father, Phil, made the final of the triple jump at the Edmonton Commonwealth Games in 1978.

His mother, Fiona, a 400 and 800 metres runner, finished second in an Australian title race.

Among the countries he’s visited are Turkey, Jordan, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Ireland, England, US, Germany and Czech Republic. ‘There’s good people everywhere,’ he tells me, ‘that’s one of the beautiful things you learn from travelling.’

Has an older brother, McLeod, who is a captain in the Australian Army and has done two tours of duty in Afghanistan.

MARCUS BONTEMPELLI — THE THINKER
Off the field, he’s inquisitive, a thinker, making stands on issues like domestic violence and same-sex marriage.

I ask about his surname — where’s it from? He says that he once read — on Facebook or Twitter, he can’t remember — that ‘bonte’ means kindness in French. When I get home, I check — he’s right.

His nonna and nonno were from Trentino in northern Italy. They’re still alive. His father, Carlo, who worked mostly as a concreter in the construction industry, married Geraldine Hunt who was from what Marcus describes as an Irish family.

Her brothers Bernie, Jim and Peter were no-nonsense footballers, one playing under 19s with Collingwood.

Geraldine’s sister Eileen married Peter Dal Santo. Their son Nick was drafted in 2001 by St Kilda and went on to play over 300 AFL games. Another cousin, Luke Stanton, made it to Carlton but only got a couple of games.

Great stuff! Reading that takes you back.

On the booktopia website you can preview the entire first chapter. It promises to be a fantastic book.

Click on chapter samples here.

I'm a little disappointed.

I've read to page 12 and I've found two factual errors in the text. There was no Premiership cup in 1954, the one in the museum is a replica awarded years later, so the team couldn't have returned to the Town Hall with it and the rumours about the 1924 match didn't surface until ten years later in the Sporting Globe. There's no way the VFL would have admitted us if there rumours swirling over the game at the time.

Oh, that's disappointing. Surprised they didn't get someone (ie Twodogs) to check over the text before publication.

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Originally Posted by Murphy'sLore

Oh, that's disappointing. Surprised they didn't get someone (ie Twodogs) to check over the text before publication.

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I have a particulat set of skills (according to whom you speak, my mum doesn't seem to think my autistic knowledge of football history is all that useful)

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Originally Posted by Bulldog4life

Comedian Wil Anderson is broadcasting from a mobile booth for radio station Triple M. Standing amid the audience of match-goers who have paused to watch, he spots Jason McAinch, the kid at Haywood Primary School who attached him to the forlorn narrative that has been his lot as a Bulldog supporter up until this year, until this day. The comedian tries to suppress the thought that a glorious sunburst of joy might now be coming his way.

Jason McAinch is a farmer from Denison, a tiny place in eastern Victoria. Denison is surrounded by other tiny places like Winnindoo, Nambrok, Wurruk and Bundalaguah.

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Originally Posted by Twodogs

I'm a little disappointed.

I've read to page 12 and I've found two factual errors in the text. There was no Premiership cup in 1954, the one in the museum is a replica awarded years later, so the team couldn't have returned to the Town Hall with it and the rumours about the 1924 match didn't surface until ten years later in the Sporting Globe. There's no way the VFL would have admitted us if there rumours swirling over the game at the time.

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Another mistake I think above. I don't think there is a place called Haywood. There is a Heywood but it's in Western Victoria, hundreds of kilometres away from Denison. Wil Anderson is from Heyfield, right next to Denison.

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Originally Posted by Axe Man

Another mistake I think above. I don't think there is a place called Haywood. There is a Heywood but it's in Western Victoria, hundreds of kilometres away from Denison. Wil Anderson is from Heyfield, right next to Denison.

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I worked with a bloke called Dennis Heyfield. Lovely bloke, his brother played footy for North Melbourne.

When i was young we had a builder called Haywood. His first name was Ted. But he was not related to E.J.

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Originally Posted by HOSE B ROMERO

When i was young we had a builder called Haywood. His first name was Ted. But he was not related to E.J.

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Not the commodore Ted! (Teddy Bullpitt is the only other Ted I could think of off the top of my head.)

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Haydn Bunton, Ron Barassi and ''Lethal'' Leigh Matthews. E. J. Whitten’s statue is not there, a sore point out west

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That really shits me that an out and out cowardly thug like Mathews (the back of anyone's head never frightened Lethal. He was happy to coward punch anyone. A bloke facing him and ready to hit back would send him screaming like a frightened ninny though. He was soooo brave:rolleyes: ) gets a statue and EJ misses out.

Typical AFL. Glorify the bloke who went North and spent all that AFL money.

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Originally Posted by Twodogs

That really shits me that an out and out cowardly thug like Mathews (the back of anyone's head never frightened Lethal. He was happy to coward punch anyone. A bloke facing him and ready to hit back would send him screaming like a frightened ninny though. He was soooo brave:rolleyes: ) gets a statue and EJ misses out.

Typical AFL. Glorify the bloke who went North and spent all that AFL money.

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What's worse is there is a statue of Jimmy Stynes. Yes he was a great footballer but no way is he a legend. There are many more that achieved greater things than a 265 gamer.

It has been said before but I still believe EJ deserves a statue at the MCG. He contributed to the game so much and was huge with the State of Origin - loved it.

EJ is recognised in our heartland

In Footscray Whitten Stand, Whitten Oval, Whitten Avenue
In Braybrook a statue outside the Braybrook Hotel
The Western Ring Road bridge over the Maribyrnong river named the EJ Whitten Bridge
And in the future hopefully an EJ statue outside the home of footy where we all had the greatest day of our lives.

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Originally Posted by bornadog

What's worse is there is a statue of Jimmy Stynes. Yes he was a great footballer but no way is he a legend. There are many more that achieved greater things than a 265 gamer.

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Actually I can understand Stynes getting a statue. It's his story that gets him accross the line I reckon. He traipsed halfway around the world to take up a game he didn't know as a teenager. Having an atypical teenager who has trouble negotiating that tricky space between the couch and the rest of the world that impresses me.

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Originally Posted by Eastdog

It has been said before but I still believe EJ deserves a statue at the MCG. He contributed to the game so much and was huge with the State of Origin - loved it.

EJ is recognised in our heartland

In Footscray Whitten Stand, Whitten Oval, Whitten Avenue
In Braybrook a statue outside the Braybrook Hotel
The Western Ring Road bridge over the Maribyrnong river named the EJ Whitten Bridge
And in the future hopefully an EJ statue outside the home of footy where we all had the greatest day of our lives.

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It's a good point about State of Origin. Teddy drove that for years.

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Originally Posted by Twodogs

Actually I can understand Stynes getting a statue. It's his story that gets him across the line I reckon. He traipsed halfway around the world to take up a game he didn't know as a teenager. Having an atypical teenager who has trouble negotiating that tricky space between the couch and the rest of the world that impresses me.

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TD, I disagree with this. Jim Stynes has only been put up there because of some influential people, just because he died young. He was an ok player that did win a Brownlow, but other than that I think he was fairly ordinary over his career.

Statues currently around the MCG are:

Ron Barassi
Leigh Matthews
Dick Reynolds
Haydn Bunton
John Coleman
Norm Smith
Jim Stynes
Kevin Bartlett (in 2017)

Stynes is no legend or overly exceptional player and is no where near those players above. Stynes is even in the Australian Hall of Fame - why? Gary Ablett senior hasn't even been given that honour.

You look at someone's record like EJ's or even Scott West. 324 games, 7 B&Fs, 5 times All Australian but because they played for us there is no statue.

I bet if I think about it hard enough I can pick out many more players from other clubs that should be ahead of Stynes.

EJ is universally known to be one of the greatest players to play the game - yet no MCG statue.

I may be incorrect but i thought the original criteria for the statues around the mcg was 'sportspeople who had a long standing impact at the ground'. Rather than the greatest vfl/afl players.

Regardless, maybe 'woof' members could take things into our own hands? Meet outside the mcg under the cover of darkness ? Anyone handy with bronze?

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Originally Posted by HOSE B ROMERO

I may be incorrect but i thought the original criteria for the statues around the mcg was 'sportspeople who had a long standing impact at the ground'. Rather than the greatest vfl/afl players.

Regardless, maybe 'woof' members could take things into our own hands? Meet outside the mcg under the cover of darkness ? Anyone handy with bronze?

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Umm, are we knocking down statues that are already there, or putting one up?

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Trainer Kev O’Neill hands the 1954 Australian penny given to him during the grand-final parade to coach Luke Beveridge for good luck. Six survivors from the Bulldogs’ only VFL/AFL premiership team, the men of ’54, visit the Bulldogs rooms before the match – Ron Stockman, Harvey Stevens, Don Ross, Jimmy Gallagher, Dougie Reynolds and Angus Abbey. Beveridge chats with them for 10 or 15 minutes, asking them questions about the club as they knew it and how their careers had started. ''He had no airs or graces,'' Ron Stockman tells me, adding slightly mystified, ''He was calm as a cucumber.''

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Thank goodness his grandsons' foolishness didn't lead him to sever ties with the club.