The night Brendan Fevola was left stranded on 99 goals when Clarko made sure he spoiled the party
SATURDAY August 30, 2008, was billed as a very special day with Lance Franklin and Brendan Fevola poised to become centurions in the same game, but one of football’s most ruthless figures had other ideas.
BRENDAN Fevola’s first inkling that football’s most magical night was about to turn sour came when Luke Hodge sidled up to him after three-quarter-time.
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The date was Saturday August 30, 2008, the then Telstra Dome was packed to the rafters, and history was about to be made.
For the first time in more than 100 seasons football was about to witness two players becoming centurions in the same game.
Lance Franklin had already clocked up the ton and been serenaded by 49,000 rabid fans, and after setting the Docklands venue alight with four three-quarter goals, all Fevola needed was four more.
But it was not fate about to intervene, it was one of football’s most ruthless figures — Hawthorn coach Alastair Clarkson.
“I vividly remember Hodgey coming up to me at three-quarter-time,” Fevola recalled this week.
“He said Clarko had told them, ‘This is Buddy’s night. Don’t let this such-and-such kick 100’.
“He said everyone drop back, don’t let it get inside (Carlton’s) 50.
“Hodgey said, ‘I am not going to go back and sit in the hole. I want you to kick it’.
“But they put half of the Box Hill Hawks in the grandstand in front of me.”
Franklin’s 100-goal milestone remains the most recent ton in football, and yet Fevola had grown up dreaming this day might be possible for him.
“I am literally a full forwards’ tragic. I was there when Tony Lockett kicked 100 goals, I ran onto the ground when Gary Ablett Sr kicked a ton, I ran on at Waverley when (Jason) Dunstall kicked his ton,’’ Fevola said.
“For two blokes in the same game on the same day to kick 100 goals, it would have been amazing. It’s never been done before and it never will be again.
“It was one of the best moments of my career just watching everyone run on for Buddy.
“I felt like, ‘This is going to happen for me, this is amazing’. And then it didn’t.”
Two days on from the 10-year anniversary of that dramatic night, Fevola still cackles with laughter at the events of that final quarter.
He would kick his 99th goal at the 28-minute-mark, with 2.17min on the clock and his teammates doing everything possible to help him hit the ton.
The flashpoint came with a borderline free kick that went against him. His chance at history was over.
“Gee I have copped some s--- since then,” he jokes. “Everyone brings it up wherever I go. … sportsmans nights, functions. ‘Remember when you got stuck on 99?’ ‘No, I don’t actually, thanks for reminding me’.
“Even Warnie (Shane Warne) sent me a text message saying, ‘Don’t worry, I got stuck on 99, too.”
BUDDY’S TON
Franklin started the game needing only two goals for his first century, with a finals berth ahead if he missed the milestone in Round 22.
Fans had been threatened with a $6000 fine if the ran onto the ground, while Telstra Dome had security contingency plans in place.
As Campbell Brown says: “Pre-game there was a security briefing. They came in to talk to the group and especially to Buddy, saying he had to get off the ground as quickly as he could, so the game wasn’t held up for long.”
Franklin’s second goal — his 100th — came 25 minutes into the first term, and the best-laid plans quickly went to hell.
“They said, ‘As soon as you kick it, make your way down a race’, but in the moment he forgot, and Roughy and Cyril and a few of the boys got around him, and the crowd came on,’’ Brown recalls.
“Then he was sort of stuck and couldn’t get down the race for a while.”
Channel 10’s Mark Howard was not supposed to be at the game, yet quickly became central to the circus.
“I was doing the Saturday arvo game and Christi Malthouse was heavily pregnant and (Ten football boss) David Barham said, ‘if you do the night game you might be a chance to speak to Buddy as soon as he kicks 100 goals on the ground’,” Howard said this week.
“I ran out when he kicked 100 and he wasn’t there. He had been ushered off by security under ground.”
Undeterred, Howard and his crew raced into the Hawthorn rooms, only for Franklin to initially rebuff them before eventually agreeing to a quick TV grab.
“Quarters (Stephen Quartermain) threw to me and (Franklin) came out and his eyes were just spinning,” he said.
“I remember thinking, ‘he is that jammed full of adrenaline’. I compared him to Mick Jagger and my girlfriend at the time, who became my wife, said couldn’t you have gone with Jay Z or Chris Martin or someone more up to date?
“Then when he came back out on the ground people were just going crazy. It was the loudest roar I have ever heard.”
THE BUILD-UP
Fevola joked pre-game to his wife he would kick 99 goals, but pre-match it was all about Carlton’s performance.
“Before the game we didn’t really speak about it,” says Fevola.
“Juddy (Chris Judd) went and tossed the coin. I always spoke to the boys then. I said, ‘Let’s see how we go against these guys, let’s see if we can match them’.
“Juddy came back in from the toss and said, ‘Let’s just kick it to Fev’.
At halftime Franklin had been feted, Hawthorn was 38 points up, and Fevola had endured a nightmare.
Of his four shots two were behinds — one a shank and one out of bounds on the full.
“At half time Ratts (coach Brett Ratten) said, ‘Righto, Fev is on no goals. Let’s see if we can get it to him at any point’. He had never said that beforehand.
“Then I kicked four goals in the third quarter and I thought, ‘S---, I am going to get it’.”
HARD-NOSED CLARKO
Watching from the bench, having broken his second and third metatarsal bones in the opening quarter, Brown could sense Clarkson’s fury as a wayward Fevola suddenly honed his radar.
“No one had anticipated Fev getting so close to the 100,” Brown recalled.
“We had put the cue in the rack and then he went bang, bang, bang, bang.”
Calls from the coaches’ box to the bench became more frequent.
“I was almost barracking for Fev,” Brown confessed.
“I was thinking ‘Just let him get to 100’, but that’s not just Clarko’.”
A decade on, Xavier Ellis can’t recall what Clarkson said at three-quarter-time, but the theme was unmistakeable — ‘Stop Fev’.
“It really highlighted the ‘unsociable Hawks’ tag that gained momentum in 2008,” says Ellis.
Asked why Clarkson was so intent on ruining Fevola’s night, Ellis replied: “I would say to you, ‘how well do you know Alastair Clarkson?’
“When the siren went and Fev was stuck on 99 goals, Chance Bateman — who never showed a lot of emotion — celebrated as if we had just won the Grand Final,” Ellis says.
“They (Carlton) were running away from the goals trying to square the ball up to Fev, and we were defending like the last minute of an AFL Grand Final.
“Back then Fev was a bit of a scallywag, too. He still is, but it wasn’t as if he (Clarkson) left a choirboy stranded on 99.”
THE LAST QUARTER
The final term was chaotic and confusing, with the Hawks pouring on eight goals while simultaneously attempting to drop loose numbers in front of Fevola.
As Carlton players looked for him at every chance, he kicked goals at the eight and 15 minute marks of the last term to get his total to 98.
“My dad who doesn’t really know too much about footy was in the forward pocket waiting to jump the fence. I remember afterwards looking at him and it was such a let-down,” Fevola said.
His opponent Trent Croad felt under the pump.
“Kept him scoreless until halftime, I never knew what Fev would do next,” Croad says. “(But) the Big Boy, who was strong and a fast leader, put seven goals on me within a half.”
At the 28-minute-mark, Brad Fisher gathered in the pocket and instead of slotting the goal handballed to Fevola, who was grabbed by Hawthorn’s Tom Murphy.
Umpire Matt Stevic gave Fevola a goal-square free kick, and with 137 seconds left and one goal needed, it was on.
THE DECISION
Fans begin to the fill the aisles, security guards begin ringing the arena as Ten’s “Fev Watch” graphic ticks to 99.
Yet Jarryd Roughead kicks the next goal, then goes behind the ball as Michael Osborne boots another with 55 seconds left.
“It just show you how miserable Hawthorn are,’’ says commentator Robert Walls.
Then the inexplicable — Roughead is dragged from the hole in front of Fevola by runner/fitness guru Andrew Russell.
Nick Stevens sharks the ruck tap, Matthew Kreuzer kicks long, and Fevola has his moment. As he rises for the ball, sandwiched between Brent Guerra and Croad, the whistle blows.
The crowd gasps as Hayden Kennedy pays the free kick against Fevola.
“Late in the game Brendan tried his best to get a free kick, pretending he got blocked or held,” Kennedy tells the Herald Sun.
“It was almost as if you felt like, ‘Wouldn’t be good for him to get it (his 100th)’, but there was the integrity around it all.”
All these years on Fevola admits he probably pushed Guerra.
“’Goo’ (Guerra) kicked the ball out from the next point, and I said, ‘If you kick it straight to me I will give you five grand’. And he said back to me, ‘You are such a f---wit’. We laughed about it afterwards.”
THE AFTERMATH
Fevola’s mind quickly turned to the aftermatch festivities, desperate for a beer and a chinwag to toast a long season.
“In those days I was a bit keen for Mad Monday and I was just worried about going out to drink froths with the boys,” he says.
“I was standing outside Eve nightclub (at 2am) and one of the boys said, ‘You could have kicked 100 tonight’, and it just hit me. I said, ‘I really could have’. And then I said, ‘Oh well, let’s go get another drink’.”
Shane Crawford, who did not play in the game, would never forget Clarko’s Monday review.
“Clarko got us together and congratulated Buddy on an amazing achievement,” says Crawford. “Then he said: ‘Now, we don’t want you to ever kick 100 goals again’.”
Originally published as The night Brendan Fevola was left stranded on 99 goals when Clarko made sure he spoiled the party