The Blight Files — Part 5: Third AFL flag one miracle too many, even for Malcolm

AFTER two flags, Crows coach Malcolm Blight found himself under pressure at work and, due to his wife’s health issues, at home. It was too much, even for the Messiah.

• Blight Files: Part 1 — The start of greatness
• Blight Files: Part 2 — Getting Cats up to scratch
• Blight Files: Part 3 — Messiah’s glorious return
• Blight Files: Part 4 — ‘Blighty almighty’ conjures miracle

MALCOLM Blight had delivered the freakish flag as Adelaide successfully defended its breakthrough 1997 premiership. But the third was the miracle not even “The Messiah” could deliver.

“People actually started to think he was that — The Messiah,” says John Reid, Blight’s long-time friend and right-hand man as the Crows football chief.

“He could not go to the shop to get a carton of milk without someone holding him up for 20 minutes telling him he had to deliver the third flag. It wore him out. It genuinely wore him out.

“What I have always admired of Malcolm is how through his career (as a player and coach) he could soak up all that expectation, all the media hype and the pressure of the game. He coped with it enormously well.

“Malcolm could be at ease — and make people feel at ease — if he bumped into two strangers coming out of the front bar or was at a function with the Premier and the Governor-General. Malcolm had plenty of confidence.

“But by 1999, getting that third flag started to get to him.”

Shaun Rehn clutches his injured knee during the Crows’ pre-season clash with the Power at Football Park in 1999. Picture: Ray Titus

The year started disastrously, with star ruckman Shaun Rehn lost for the season to a knee reconstruction, after he slipped on an artificial disc placed in the centre of AAMI Stadium to help the umpires bounce the ball.

Despite that, the Crows had a 4-2 record after beating Port Adelaide by 28 points in Showdown 5 at Football Park.

The strangers at the delicatessen were dreaming another street parade down King William St to have the third flag hanging off the Town Hall balcony. And Blight was struggling both at work — and at home with his wife Patsy battling serious health issues.

Adelaide lost its next five games — by 56 points to North Melbourne in the grand final rematch at the MCG, 54 to West Coast, 11 to Richmond with Blight and Reid leaving the coach’s box at Football Park with three minutes still to play, 48 to Essendon and 39 to Fremantle.

Adelaide was 4-7. The Crows were 14th.

A 48-point loss to Carlton at Princes Park — remembered for how Blight pushed 1995 club champion Matt Connell to the middle of a team huddle to berate the midfielder — marked the end. Not even club chairman Bob Hammond’s offer to have a caretaker coach close out the season and give time for Blight to regenerate and deal with Patsy’s health to stay for the 2000 season.

“I played in five (VFL) grand finals and won two flags with North Melbourne (1975 and 1977). I coached in five (VFL-AFL) and won two flags,” said Blight. “There’s a lot of luck and good timing in that. And I’ve never taken any of it for granted because the ball doesn’t always bounce your way.”

Blight remains Adelaide’s only premiership — and only grand final — coach in the club’s 27-year history. But his legacy to the game — as recognised with his rise to Legend status in the Australian Football Hall of Fame this month — goes far beyond West Lakes.

It even lives at Alberton today, with Power senior coach Ken Hinkley one of several disciples in coaching ranks who are significantly influenced by Blight’s philosophies.

The Crows hierarchy can still manage a smile, as Malcolm Blight announces his resignation as Adelaide coach in 1999. Picture: Russell Millard

Now in his fifth year as an AFL senior coach, Hinkley reflects on the power of a coach — as he learned from Blight — not only as a mentor in football but in life. It has shaped his approach in AFL coaching since he ended his 132-game VFL-AFL career in 1995.

“Malcolm played a major hand in everything I have done and achieved at the AFL level,” Hinkley said.

“At the time I made it to Geelong (as Blight was starting his tenure at Kardinia Park in 1989) I had the feeling footy was mainly done for me (after 11 games in two seasons at Fitzroy).

“My first year at Geelong (with just one league game) footy was not my great passion; it was not that important to me any more. But Malcolm had this belief in me that was stronger than my own.

“Malcolm made me continue down this path with football. And I do reflect on that today when I am in his role as a coach. And that is why I am a relationship-based coach.”

Blight finished his remarkable three-year stint at Adelaide on August 29, 1999 as the Crows crashed by 76 points to North Melbourne at Football Park. He walked off — with two flags and a 41-33 win-loss record at the Crows — with Green Day’s Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) as the backing tune to the video tribute.

The pertinent theme from the song was in the lyrics: It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right. I hope you had the time of your life.

Blight had his own way of putting it: “Footy was like visiting an old aunty: It was always comfortable, always nice and she always had something for you. Did I do it my way? Yes I did.”

How Blight’s Crows beat the odds

The pay-off ... Malcolm Blight celebrates the 1998 AFL Grand Final win with his team.

MALCOLM Blight learned from the best card players when he bluffed with his teammates after Thursday night training sessions at Woodville Oval in the 1970s. He would not always win, but he never held back on a hunch.

And it was the same as a coach, particularly in 1998 when Adelaide successfully defended the AFL premiership with a touch of luck through the most demanding finals campaign put before a team.

“I’d roll the dice — and I make no apology for it,” Blight says.

Adelaide’s 1998 defence was awkward — and controversial. The Crows finished the home-and-away season with a 13-9 win-loss record — just as in 1997 — but ranked fifth rather than fourth.

They were belted in their first final — by 48 points by Melbourne at the MCG — but were blessed to stay in the premiership by a system that eliminated just two of the four losers in the first week of the major round.

The hook was put on seventh-ranked West Coast and eighth-placed Essendon rather than the other two qualifying final losers, the Crows or sixth-ranked St Kilda.

The draw demanded Adelaide play all its finals away from home — an equation that added up to five consecutive weeks on the road from the round 22 closer against West Coast in Perth to three finals in Melbourne and one in Sydney.

“We became the first team to win the flag from fifth,” notes Blight.

And he immediately gambled to do it. Blight sacked cult-hero full forward Tony Modra, the team’s leading goalkicker from 1993 who was on the comeback trail from a knee injury that had cost him a place in the 1997 grand final team.

Matthew Robran kicks the ball forward during the 1998 AFL Grand Final. Picture: Joe Sabljak

Blight smashed the team on the training track before the semi-final with Sydney at the SCG. So intense was the main practice session he refused to allow centre half-forward Matthew Robran to go to the medical rooms to have a cut eye stitched up.

“You won’t bleed to death,” Blight told Robran.

Former Geelong captain Garry Hocking had known this method to correct failing teams from his experiences with Blight at Geelong from 1989-1994.

“The one thing you were really scared of with Malcolm is the reaction after a loss if you weren’t doing the things he expected,” Hocking recalled. “He’d train you really hard. He’d make you accountable for your performances.

“We got so fed up of bashing and crashing into each other at training that we made sure we’d do it at weekends.”

Adelaide won the storm-hit semi-final against Sydney by 27 points at the SCG. It won the preliminary final against the Western Bulldogs at the MCG, by 68 points. It completed the premiership double by beating the Wayne Carey-led North Melbourne by 35 points, after the Kangaroos left the game ajar at halftime by kicking 6.15.

“He made changes at halftime, like Simon Goodwin coming off the back of the square,” said former Crows football chief John Reid. “But he also gave them hope. He stated the facts. They had not played well — not as well as they could have — and North Melbourne had not closed the game.

“He didn’t complicate it. Malcolm gave them the belief that if they played their best and took their chances, they could win. And they did.”