Melbourne high flyer Shaun Smith’s Gabba hanger voted the No.1 mark of all time
Gary Moorcroft, Shaun Smith, Jeremy Howe or Leo Barry? When it came down to deciding the greatest mark of all time, one high flyer stood tallest for our panel of Herald Sun and Fox Footy experts.
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Gary Moorcroft, Shaun Smith, Jeremy Howe or Leo Barry?
While there have been plenty of amazing marks throughout AFL history, these four stand above all else.
And finally, we can declare which one is the very best. Did the Herald Sun and Fox Footy experts get it right? Scroll down to see the list and have your say.
THE GREATEST MARK OF ALL TIME REVEALED
David Neitz reckons Shaun Smith owes him a goal.
Twenty four years after Smith’s spectacular leap in the Gabba goalsquare which saw him drag down the mark Herald Sun and Fox Footy experts have adjudged the greatest in the past 50 years, the two former Melbourne teammates still have friendly banter about it.
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Neitz holds the Demons’ goalkicking record with 631 majors from 306 games, but for Smith’s springheeled efforts, it could have been one extra.
“David Neitz reckons I cost him a goal that night … he reckons it was going to go through post-high for a goal before I went for the mark,” Smith recalled. “He says his goals tally should have been plus one.”
“I remember thinking if (the Neitz kick) drops short, I am going to have a crack at it. Nathan Chapman was on me and he was trying to block my legs in front of me.
“It just dropped perfectly for me at the goal-line and I ended up having a good run at it. It’s great to be remembered for something.
“Some people kick the ball a long way; some can run fast. I could jump high. I certainly had a crack at it over my career.”
The Smith leap on the back of an unsuspecting Garry Lyon edged out Gary Moorcroft’s Docklands launch in to the stratosphere in 2001 as the Herald Sun and Fox Footy’s experts mark of the past 50 seasons.
Leo Barry’s premiership-saving pack mark in the dying seconds of the 2005 Grand Final was in third place.
Moorcroft’s mark won the Herald Sun public vote, from Jeremy Howe’s Queen’s Birthday mark in 2017, leaving Smith’s mark in third place.
Herald Sun columnist and dual North Melbourne premiership player David King says Smith’s mark was a no-brainer as the best, given it fulfilled his criteria for a spectacular mark — height, degree of difficulty, courage, location on the ground and a dramatic sense of the occasion.
“When someone jumps that high and at full length and does it in that particular spot on the ground, it all just adds to the theatre,” King said.
“It was a Friday night game in Brissie (Brisbane), you could see all the heads looking up to the sky and there was even the flash in the background of the photo being taken by someone in crowd.”
Smith’s standout moment from his 109 games and 134 goals for Melbourne and North Melbourne was captured perfectly on the television frame.
But the only still photograph came from a $100 Hanimex autofocus camera captured by first-game AFL supporter Nicole Lovelock from Noosa.
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A version of that photo still hangs in Smith’s home.
Lyon was left rubbing his head, while fans were rubbing their eyes, wondering what they had just witnessed.
As a kid, growing up in Canberra, he used a jasmine vine hanging over the back fence to learn how to fly.
As an under-12s junior with Ainslie, he was isolated at one end of the kick-to-kick sessions in order to protect the shoulders and backs of his young teammates.
Neitz would joke years later: “Shaun should have left it … I was getting ready to celebrate a goal. It would have gone through halfway up the goalposts!” he said.
Originally published as Melbourne high flyer Shaun Smith’s Gabba hanger voted the No.1 mark of all time