VFL/AFL legend Ron Barassi passes away aged 87

One of the AFL’s all-time greats Ron Barassi has died at the age of 87.

Glenn McFarlane

@MaccaHeraldSun

3 min read

September 16, 2023 - 7:46PM

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Ron Barassi, one of Australian football’s most revered and respected figures, has died, at the age of 87.

Just a day after his beloved Melbourne Football Club bowed out of the 2023 finals race, the football legend, champion player and master coach passed away after a short illness.

He told this masthead only days ago that he would be supporting the Demons in their semi-final against Carlton on Friday night, insisting: “I’m Melbourne and always will be … it runs through my veins.”

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Ron Barassi with Melbourne’s premiership cup from 2021. Picture: David Caird

Barassi was one of the most significant figures in Australian football history, towering over the game like few people before or since.

But he was more than that. He was also an icon that transcended the sport that he mastered and was for a time one of the most recognisable faces in Australia.

Barassi’s family will be offered a state funeral.

“The word legend is used a lot,” Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said.

“But nobody deserves it quite like Ron Barassi.

“He didn’t just play the game - he reshaped it.

“And how fitting that last night’s game was a cliffhanger between the Dees and the Blues.”

Barassi changed Australian football on countless occasions - first as a player whose grit and determination willed him to become a superstar with the Demons and later Carlton, and later as a four-time premiership coach with the Blues and North Melbourne as well as later stints at Melbourne and Sydney.

He was one of the original Australian Football Hall of Fame Legends in 1996, and was made an OAM (Member of the Order of Australia) in 1978.

So much of what took place in his adult years were formed by his experiences as a child when his father, Ron Sr., also a Melbourne premiership player, was killed at Tobruk in 1941 when he was only five years old.

His dad had played in Melbourne’s 1940 premiership side just 10 months earlier.

He famously twice made a pilgrimage to his father’s grave.

Peter Moore and Ron Barassi in 1983.

The Demons’ coterie group made a pledge after Barassi Sr’s death that they would “at all times … regard the material welfare of (his mother Elza) and Ron our sacred duty.”

That led Barassi to be recruited to Melbourne as a teenager where he came under the wing of his father’s former teammate and friend Norm Smith.

He would go on to play 204 games with the Demons, winning six premierships as a player and stamping himself as one of the greatest footballers of any age.

Barassi pictured at the MCG in 2022. Picture: David Caird

After leading Melbourne to the 1964 premiership, he transferred to Carlton as captain-coach in a move that shook the foundations of the game and forever changed the way player movement was conducted.

He played 50 games for the Blues, and took them to premierships as a coach in 1968 and 1970, with the later being one of his greatest triumphs. Trailing Collingwood by 44 points at half time, he instructed the Blues to “handball, handball, handball” in a masterstroke that set the scene for modern football.

They stormed over the top of the Magpies and went on to win one of football’s most extraordinary premierships.

Ron Barassi and North Melbourne president Lloyd Holyoak with the 1977 premiership cup.

He then went to North Melbourne as coach where he lifted the team from the doldrums to secure its first ever premiership in 1975, and they followed it up two years later after overcoming Collingwood in a grand final replay after a thrilling draw.

Ron Barassi and Ray Gabelich after the 1964 Grand Final.

Barassi went back to his old club Melbourne in 1981 but couldn’t conjure the same sort of success in five seasons.

The AFL seconded him to Sydney when the Swans were almost bankrupt on and off the field and he helped to reshape the club to where it stands today.

He was also a hero on and off the field, once pulling a man from a burning car in the 1960s and going to the aid of a woman being assaulted on the streets in St Kilda in 2009, which earned him a bravery award.