2017 Australian Football Hall of Fame: ‘The Messiah’, Malcolm Blight, becomes footy‘s 27th Legend
HE was already a legend in the game’s story. Now Malcolm Blight is a “Legend” in the Australian Football Hall of Fame - and still contributing to the sport which has been blessed by his brilliance.
MESSIAH … or “Legend”?
“People understand ‘Legend’ more,” answers Malcolm Blight.
This is Blight’s 50th year in senior Australian football — and the journey from chasing as many games as he could as teenager on any weekend in Adelaide’s western suburbs to the highest pedestal in the game is indeed legendary.
Magarey and Brownlow Medals, as the best in the SANFL and VFL.
Ken Farmer and Coleman Medals, as the leading goalkicker in the SANFL and VFL.
AFL premiership coach twice at Adelaide and grand finalist three times at Geelong. All-Australian.
It is a resume that, even before it was completed, had Blight as an inaugural inductee to the Australian Football Hall of Fame in 1996, through his playing achievements with Woodville, North Melbourne, SA and Victoria.
His rise to “Legend” — the 27th in the Hall — was assured by the enduring mark Blight left on Australian football as a coach at Woodville, North Melbourne, Geelong, Adelaide and St Kilda ... and also in the media.
It is a career filled with legendary moments, both in his praise and at his expense — be it the winning goal after the siren for North Melbourne against Carlton in 1976 or the bypassing of an open goal to kick a behind against Hawthorn in 1977.
“Some were good … some were ordinary,” Blight said. “I’ve kept some blooper shows going for 30 years now.”
And then there are the bizarre moments, particularly as a coach, that gave Blight his own chapter in football’s history book — such as the day in 1993 when he had the Geelong team line-up as a “guard of honour” to the Crows at Football Park.
So the official title of “Legend” fits with a man who already was a legend.
“I never thought I was the ‘best’,” Blight told The Advertiser. “But I always wanted to get better.
“I had a casual fashion compared to a lot … I wasn’t the greatest trainer. I wanted to play.
“Training was a means to an end … Saturday, 2-5; being with your mates. I would have been a frustration for coaches.”
As a player, Blight achieved it all — and it seemed to come so naturally. As a coach, there were extremes by the sackings at North Melbourne and St Kilda, the incomplete fairytales at Woodville and Geelong and the back-to-back flags at Adelaide.
So with every honour on his mantle piece — and a statue at Adelaide Oval — is Blight finally fulfilled?
“I think I am,” said Blight. “The statue … that’s when I started to get a kick from a whole series of (tribute) events and started to ask, ‘Did that happen?’ A statue at Adelaide Oval? You’re kidding, right? I didn’t grow up thinking of statues.
“Now ‘Legend’ … that’s the highest honour.”
Fulfilled … but still wondering, that is Blight today.
“I wish I’d got a few more kicks,” said Blight, completing the sentence by mocking himself.
“I could have been better.
“I had that feeling at the end, if only I had played a bit better … only a bit better. That kept me going,” added Blight who closed his playing career at Woodville in 1985 as the SANFL’s leading goalkicker with 126 goals.
Blight found his love for Australian football in the early 1960s on the mounds of Alberton Oval watching Port Adelaide, in particular its goalkicking hero Rex Johns.
“I was mesmerised by the whole thing; besotted by it,” Blight recalled. “Watching (SANFL league football) was amazing — it was what I wanted to do.
“I’d go to a game to see the big boy (Johns). I loved it. It was amazing how quick, how big they were.”
And then Blight would chase three games on a Saturday, be it at Brompton, the Kilkenny Kats or Woodville South.
“I went via the Cape — I didn’t play for the school (Findon High) until I was 16 … when they made me,” said Blight, the five-goal hero from half-forward in the Camels’ 1966 premiership season.
“For me, the greatest thrill was playing really well in a winning team. For me, it was playing … not far behind was coaching. But nothing replaces playing, being with your mates.”
Good and bad chapters in an epic story
MALCOLM Blight has scars, some deeper than others — in particular from his sacking at St Kilda after 15 games as coach in 2001. It marked the end of his remarkable 33-year story as a player and coach.
“Life is not a bowl of cherries,” said Blight.
“How do I explain this?” adds Blight of the last chapter at the frontline of Australian football. “Across my 50 seasons, every box was ticked … including my removal from jobs (at St Kilda and as playing coach at North Melbourne after 16 games in 1981).
“I made decisions on people — that was my role (as coach). People made decisions on me too.
“You stay as long as I did, you learn everyone is in the same boat. There will come a time when someone will say, ‘Malcolm, your time is up.’
“And just as some of those decisions hurt me the deepest, I know the decisions I made on some did the same to them. I’ve been through every emotion … every situation, every outcome.”
St Kilda’s intriguing call on Blight — after it eagerly chased the premiership coach out of retirement at the end of Season 2000 when he was in the media — remains one of the most controversial stories in Australian football.
There is not only the hasty sacking, but also the side issues of mistrust and betrayal at St Kilda, a club that ultimately did not understand the man it was so eager to have as coach.
This complex situation seems fitting for the legend of the 27th Legend of Australian football inducted to the national Hall of Fame — and true to the Blight story.
“Here was a group of people who had won two games (in 2000) who came to me, asked me to coach them. Did they have a good history? Had they done more than I had?,” Blight said.
“Yet after 15 games (with three wins) they got rid of me.”
Blight had five stints as coach. He was the last playing coach in VFL-AFL history at North Melbourne in 1981.
He gave the SANFL’s Woodville long-wanted respect, first as a playing coach and then from the box, in the 1980s.
He was the coach who changed Geelong but was three times unlucky in grand finals with the Cats. He was the “messiah” at Adelaide with his breakthrough back-to-back flags in 1997-98.
“I coached the Crows because it was almost like coaching the SA State team … a role I wanted, I would have loved to have done that,” Blight said.
“And in 1996 when John Reid, Bill Sanders and Bob Hammond came wondering if I would do it, I was not fulfilled (as a coach) … I knew I was a little short.
“I always felt as a coach I was there to assist the players win. And if we lost, I was duty bound to find a way to have the team win. Sometimes, some of the stuff I did looks silly,” adds Blight.
Blight’s two decades of coaching are loaded with tales — he says more myth than fact — of eccentric ploys. The most famous at Adelaide was when he had his squad line up by their lockers as he delivered a blistering assessment of each player while perched on a ladder.
“Some of it was silly, but some of it was great too,” Blight said. “I always felt a commitment to do something. I wasn’t going to sit there. I would roll the dice. I make no apology.”
Legend fears for footy’s future
MALCOLM Blight still enjoys the game of Australian football — but he is starting to question if it is Australia’s unique sport anymore.
“Do we want to look like all other sports … or do we want to be different?” says Blight when the new “Legend” of the game is asked to look at the state of Australian football.
“And we need to address that question before it gets out of hand.”
Beyond a great player and a successful coach, Blight also made his name as a forthright commentator who never held back in his newspaper columns or summaries in the Channel Seven coverage of AFL football in the 1990s and later with Channel Ten.
Blight is still the master of the unconditional comment that provokes more commentary. Such as: “Counting tackles … what garbage! That’s not our game.”
Blight built his legendary status as a player and a coach by emphasising the qualities that made Australian football stand out as a sport like no other, in particular with his exhilarating marks as a matchwinning forward; his attacking themes as a coach who was striven to entertain the fans; and a purist in the commentary box.
Now an ambassador for the Gold Coast AFL club after serving the Suns as a board member, Blight still watches the game with a sharp eye.
“And I still enjoy the game … aspects of it,” Blight says. “I saw the game played in the 50s and 60s. I played it in the 70s and 80s. And it was a different game.
“Now, we have half the time in the game played in one-eighth of the field. It is something between rugby league and rugby union … it is becoming too close to the rugby codes to be different.
“And is that what the forefathers of Australian football intended when they set out to devise a game that was different to all the others?”
Blight this year is in his 50th season of senior football, a journey that has prompted one unauthorised book written by Essendon premiership hero and former St Kilda coach Tim Watson — and repeated requests for a biography.
When asked which of the many infamous “Malcolm Blight stories” he tells at his expense, Blight responds: “That is why I have never written a book. Most of those stories get out eventually — and many get mixed up.”
This increases the anticipation for his autobiography.
“I’ve been asked many times ...,” Blight said.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au