Mick McGuane and Dermott Brereton select their 2020 Big V team and look back at the best moments from State of Origin
Ted Whitten was a larger than life figure and came into his own for State of Origin. But things didn’t alwys go to plan. Dermott Brereton reveals how a big night in EJ’s hotel room after a win against WA went wrong.
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For Victorians, State of Origin football became more important the more we lost.
Heaven forbid if it happened two years in a row.
By the mid 1980s, the Victorian team had so many resources thrown at them by VFL football general manager Alan Schwab you could be excused for thinking that we were an actual club.
But back then playing State of Origin was a fast track to learning from the game’s elite.
You could learn from Greg Williams and the way he focused on his craft at training or from Terry Daniher about what competitiveness is really like at the next level.
You could see how to use your profile to promote the game by watching Teddy Whitten massage and manoeuvre the media.
Ted’s fulfilment of a bet to wear a Croweaters jumper down at Rundle Mall if we lost was as hilarious as it was honest.
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You could learn where the greatest tap ruckman I have seen — Simon Madden — liked to tap the ball. Being on the same Victorian side, you only had to ask him.
You could learn which players would prefer to die rather than give up. And you would learn which ones were full of “huff and bluff”.
The friendships I made through State of Origin football have never been lost.
I am better for having made friendships with Andrew Bews, Stephen Silvagni and Dougie Hawkins.
The respect gained by playing these games has never been lost either.
Mark Yeates’ attack on the South Australians at Football Park in 1985 was so fierce on a foe that I should have remembered better.
My friendship and respect for him has lasted across the past 35 years.
The respect for Gerard Healy and Dale “Flea” Weightman and what it meant to them to play for Victoria is immeasurable.
But is also about the stories of friendships and moments we experienced together. After beating South Australia on a Tuesday night back in 1985, we all went back to the team’s hotel – the players, the officials and the Victorian media.
The league had shouted the bar and I stood next to a young reporter named Eddie as a number of the group started some silly drinking games.
I introduced myself to the young reporter and said: “I’m glad we won, but I’m not all that much into watching grown men play drinking games. I prefer to go to nightclubs.”
He replied: “Me too.”
So Eddie and I went to town to find a club — at midnight in Adelaide in the depths of winter on a Tuesday night.
Needless to say, nothing was open.
But a great friendship was made and has been ongoing for the best part of four decades.
When we played West Australia, we would stay at the Merlin Hotel, which was arguably the best hotel in Perth.
We had beaten the Sandgropers and later about 12 of us made our way up to Teddy’s suite.
Teddy thought we needed a feed so he called room service and ordered a dozen toasted bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches.
Teddy was hilarious to be around and he could get very excitable.
So it became a nightmare for room service when they asked him to repeat his order and he was already holding three different conversations with different people in the room.
Amid the confusion, Teddy, sporting his unique boyish grin, raised his voice to the staff member on the other end of the phone and started to repeat the order: “a dozen, a dozen, a dozen, a dozen”.
Twenty minutes later, a waiter pushed a trolley through the door with 144 BLT sandwiches stacked in a metre-high pyramid.
Ted looked up and said: “Oops”.
We probably have Ted to thank for four on the bench these days as well.
In a lead-up to another game, there was conjecture about playing two or four players on the bench.
Eventually, the South Australians said that they would only play two, so Ted said: ‘Bugger them, we’re playing four.” And we did.
In the lead up to that game, our team bus was stuck in a gridlock several kilometres from the oval and we hadn’t moved for more than 20 minutes.
Ted ordered the bus driver to open the door. He stepped out and saw a young police officer in operation giving hand signals to traffic at an intersection.
Ted yelled at him and told him who we were, how late we were and told him to get his motor bike and escort us down the wrong side of the road with his lights on and push any oncoming traffic out of the way.
The young officer looked up and said: “Yes, sir, Mr Whitten” and away we went.
I know that State of Origin football these days has so many obstacles placed in its path, but have we missed some of what could have been football’s truly glorious moments without seeing the likes of Lance Franklin receive the ball from Jeremy McGovern and then passing it onto Josh Kennedy while wearing the same Western Australia jumper?
Or Paddy Dangerfield work at a centre bounce with Scott Pendlebury and put Gary Ablett Jr into space to kick a running goal from 60m in that most beautiful of all jumpers, the Big V.
Perhaps? And most probably more than likely …
HOW DERM AND MICK PICKED THEIR 2020 BIG V TEAM
Timing is everything.
It’s one of the most underestimated words in the English language and it’s no different when you are asked to select a Victorian State-of-Origin team alongside Dermott Brereton.
Who’s fit and would relish the opportunity to wear the Big V for what hypothetically would be a game this Saturday?
Who’s injured and who’s out?
Who has just come back from injury and hasn’t had the necessary game time to allow them to perform to their best in what would be a high intensity State-of-Origin game, which was a cornerstone of those contests when Dermott and I played.
What’s the best structure required for this Big V team rather than necessarily just selecting the best 24 players?
We wanted to choose players who would be ready for a high-intensity, high-pressure game, not the Mickey Mouse contest that the bushfire relief game played between Victoria and the All-Stars was earlier this year.
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I’m talking about the intensity that used to have Big V legend Teddy Whitten and South Australian spruiker Neil ‘Knuckles’ Kerley pumping their iron fists off the field back in the old days.
It was a fierce rivalry and didn’t it rub off on the players when they graced the field. It was win-at-all costs.
We locked in the incumbent Victorian coach and captain – Damien Hardwick and Trent Cotchin – given they took on and beat the All-Stars earlier this year.
There was a time when the previous year’s premiership coach was automatically selected as Victorian coach, so there should be no arguments with Hardwick, although Chris Scott and Ken Hinkley would be in the mix too.
Cotchin has had his own injury challenges this season, but as Victoria’s 2020 captain in the bushfire match, Dermott believed we needed to stick with him.
His recent Grand Final experiences to lead this team would hold him in good stead.
Probably the most contentious position on the ground was centre half-forward.
Given there are no Jonathan Browns, Matthew Pavlichs or Nick Riewoldts dominating that position now, you can understand the debate, and there was plenty of it.
I was in Matt Taberner’s corner. He has had a breakout season with Fremantle and could easily have been included in this star-studded side.
I’m not saying he is the best centre half-forward in the competition but his current form cannot be questioned.
But Dermott pinned his faith in Jeremy Cameron.
He knows Cameron well, and given Dermott’s own playing record as a centre half-forward, we went with the Giants’ forward in that position. A pre-game talk from Dermott would help as well.
It might be the spark Cameron needs.
The stocks of big key forwards proved a bit thin. Tom Lynch, Cameron and Taberner were debated, while young guns Max and Ben King had some early support and may get their chance in the future.
Tom Hawkins played Vic Metro as a teenager, despite being from Finley in NSW. But as we saw in the bushfire game, he represented the All-Stars.
The use of hybrid forwards such as Christian Petracca – and the opportunity to use mids Patrick Dangerfield, Dustin Martin and Marcus Bontempelli in attack at times – would assist the talls.
Then you have pressure forwards Dan Butler and Tom Papley, who are both in contention to win the Coleman Medal with 22 and 21 goals respectively.
Travis Boak starts as a forward but would roll up in general play and play as a fifth midfielder so we get an extra around the ball but he also empties out our forward 50.
Will the opposition let him go? If so, this will allow Dusty or Paddy the creative licence to drift forward and rebalance the team.
We picked the model of the team based on seven defenders, 10 mids and seven forwards, with flexibility being a key to selection.
Toby Greene, Scott Pendlebury and James Sicily were stiff to miss out, but with the emphasis on the game being played this weekend, we couldn’t pick them. Fully fit and match hardened, they would play.
Recent injury concerns went against Toby and Scott, while James would have been entertained as part of the backs but for his knee injury suffered last week.
Others who were in the conversation – and narrowly missed out – included Jack Gunston, Mitch Wallis, Clayton Oliver and Zach Merrett.
What a story Jordan Ridley is. He has come from near obscurity to have an outstanding year in Essendon’s defence.
He is a no fanfare player. He just gets the job done, which makes him a silent assassin much as Nick Haynes and Luke Ryan are. These three have great intercept ability and use the ball exceptionally well.
Adam Saad gives rebound run out of defence and he complements the intercept markers.
Jake Lloyd defends strongly, but he is also a great accumulator and will kickstart our offence.
Jacob Weitering is a lockdown defender close to goal. Darcy Moore would relish the opportunity to go out a line to give him the freedom to take the game on and go for his marks, not dissimilar to Peter Knights just on 40 years ago.
The reason why we went with Todd Goldstein over Max Gawn is that he gets involved in more phases of play in terms of handball and kicking chains, his work rate out of stoppage exceeds Gawn’s this year and he has polled 32 votes in the AFL Coaches Association award this season.
There was strong debate over Josh Kelly’s slot on the wing. But he does give the team some outside balance and adds creative class.
Hugh McCluggage was thrown up as a wing option, but my concern about him was collapsing his role in defensive structure at the expense of kick chasing and trying to win his own footy. That cost him.
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Mark Blicavs offers the team great flexibility as he can be used as a relief ruck, tall winger or even as a key defender. He was a no-brainer.
The only clubs not represented are Adelaide, Gold Coast, Hawthorn and Brisbane Lions.
You might question that in regard to the Lions, but most of their key players this season – with exception of McCluggage – come from outside Victoria.
Matt Rowell might have been a chance in his debut year, but his season-ending shoulder injury put an end to that.
It’s no easy feat trying to pick a team such as this, but I’m confident these men wouldn’t let the Big V down.
Originally published as Mick McGuane and Dermott Brereton select their 2020 Big V team and look back at the best moments from State of Origin