Vale Albert Mantello: How North Melbourne administrator turned Kangaroos into a premiership juggernaut
John Elliott was big at Carlton, but there’s one man who was bigger at North. The Kangaroos are mourning Albert Mantello.
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No greater North Melbourne figure roamed Arden St during the club’s golden era of the 1970s than Albert Mantello.
“I guess there is no question that John Elliott was big at Carlton, but Albert Mantello was bigger at North - and he would have made a better prime minister, too,” legendary Kangaroos administrator Ron Joseph quipped of his old mate this week.
Mantello, who died age 87 last Sunday, played a pivotal role in the transformation of North Melbourne from VFL cellar-dweller to premiership juggernaut.
The first Mantello-inspired masterstroke came in 1972 when the then Kangaroos vice-president caught wind that the great Ron Barassi “was there to be got” as senior coach.
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“About midway through the year Albert came to us and said, ‘I reckon Barassi could be available’,” Joseph said.
“Barassi used to work at a furniture shop in the city and Albert went in there one day and said he wanted a second-hand desk and Barassi said, ‘We don’t have any second-hand desks’ and with that Albert kicked the leg of one of the new desks and said, ‘Well, that’s second-hand now’.
“I don’t know whether he ever bought it or not, but Barassi talked about it for years.
“He had finished coaching at Carlton in 1971 and was having a year in the media. Barassi liked what he was seeing and hearing about North Melbourne and made up his mind very quickly that he was coming.
“Albert set it all up and then we had breakfast with Barassi at the Old Melbourne Motor Inn on Flemington Rd. The deal was really done at that one meeting and Albert scrawled it all down on a serviette, which he kept all his life and tried to sell for the next 25 years as an historical piece.”
The planets aligned for North just a few months later when Mantello found out about a secret VFL plan that would allow star players with 10 years’ service at one club to move to another team without requiring a clearance.
“For months before it happened, Albert kept insisting to us that the 10-year rule was about to break,” Joseph said.
“He knew that the VFL was petrified about the possibility of players taking them to court for restraint of trade, and he said to us, ‘This is our opportunity. We can get off the bottom and get ourselves moving here - but we’ve got to be ready for it’.”
The Kangas duly lured Barry Davis from Essendon, Doug Wade from Geelong and John Rantall from South Melbourne and played off in five consecutive grand finals from 1974-78, including the 1977 draw against Collingwood.
North won its first flags in 1975 and the 1977’replay.
Mantello played 107 games for his beloved Roos from 1954-62 and represented Victoria before he joined the club’s committee in 1963. He was vice-president from 1968-79, president in 1980 and was inducted into the North Melbourne Hall of Fame in 2009.
“As a South Melbourne supporter growing up, I disliked his unnecessary rough antics against the Bloods,” Joseph said of Mantello’s playing days.
“He was hard and tough and delighted in the challenge of an all-in brawl. They were part and parcel of football in those unsanitised days. You could always bet that Albert was in the middle, fists flying.
“North Melbourne-Fitzroy matches were famous for Albert Mantello and Brownlow medallist Kevin Murray circling one another to square off.”
Mantello ran a successful service station in North Melbourne, owned the British Hotel in Arden St (managed by Kangaroos coach Alan Killigrew) and made his fortune in the property game.
He was the club’s delegate on the VFL’s board of directors, helped pioneer the North Melbourne Grand Final Breakfast and was drafted on to the AFL Commission in 1988.
“If he was sitting on the commission today it would be a much better organisation than it’s ever been,” Joseph said.
“He was an extraordinary bloke and I probably haven’t felt as sad since I lost my parents.
“There was something special about Albert. During each finals series there was always a Sunday gathering at his home in South Yarra. Everyone would be invited from the coach to the captain, the committeeman to the boot-studder and the trainer and I don’t know whether Lorraine, his wife, was always that enamored with it but whether it was Barry Davis’s wife or the boot-studder’s wife - they would all go home feeling special, and it was all done in a quiet way.
“Albert’s support of Barassi and (Allen) Aylett and myself was just incredible and his passion for the club never wavered.”
Of all the big names of the era, Joseph puts Mantello on top.
“He was as big as anyone at North,” Joseph said.
“The first premiership of 1975 was always talked of as Allen Aylett, Ron Barassi, the 10-year rule, Doug Wade, Barry Davis and John Rantall and then Barry Cable and Malcolm Blight and the emergence of (Keith) Greig and (David) Dench and all those champions that came out of the club - and I take nothing away from any of them - but Albert’s contribution to everything that happened was probably the biggest.
“A whole lot of people would have been thrilled to see North Melbourne win their first ever flag after 50 years just like last Saturday with Melbourne.
“Albert was just a wonderful man and I can’t imagine that anyone who knew him wouldn’t be feeling so sad that he has left their lives. For all of his hardness and strength, he was an emotional person.
“And when he did ever get the plaudits at any North function, he’d usually finish up in tears.
“He was a thinker and he never sought the limelight. He’d just sit in the background and always had a wise word to say.”
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