The write stuff: Essendon great John Coleman is the subject of a superb new book

MELBOURNE broadcaster and journalist Doug Ackerly spent more than four years researching and writing his book on Essendon great John Coleman.

IT is a glorious image of one of the game’s spectacular high marks.

Essendon full forward John Coleman soars above North Melbourne player Vic Lawrence, his left knee touching the Kangaroo’s back as he wraps his left hand around the ball.

It happened at the Arden St ground in 1953.

Unsurprisingly, Doug Ackerly knows how many photographers snapped the speccie — four — and precisely where they were positioned around the ground.

The image adorns the cover of Ackerly’s painstakingly researched new book on the brilliant Bomber, Coleman, The Untold Story of an AFL Legend.

It was launched two weeks ago, more than four years after the Melbourne broadcaster and journalist began investigating a footballer who, with his prodigious goalkicking and exhilarating marking, was among the most exciting to appear at league level.

The book sprang from an interview Ackerly conducted with North Melbourne doctor John Grant about knee injuries.

“You know John Coleman could have played on, don’t you?’’ Grant said.

>>>MORE: Rare footage of John Coleman uncovered

Ackerly had always understood that a serious knee injury had grounded the dashing Don, forcing him into immediate retirement.

In fact, he had dislocated the knee, not on landing from another big grab, but on accepting a straightforward short pass from Jack Clarke in a match in 1954. He called it quits two years later.

It is one of a few myths that Ackerly fractures about Coleman.

TITLE: The great John Coleman SIZE: 650x366px CAPTION: A tribute to the great John Coleman

Another is that he hailed from Hastings, for whom he fired off 296 goals from 31 matches encompassing the 1947 and ’48 seasons. But Coleman never lived on the Mornington Peninsula; when he played for the Blues he was boarding with a couple at Elwood. He spent his childhood at Port Fairy before the family moved to Flemington.

What about the suggestion that Coleman could have been a world-class high jumper?

“He was a very moderate high jumper,’’ Ackerly says. “He would have been a world-class triple jumper, hop, step and jump, according to Ron Clarke, because he could jump off both legs equally well.’’

And what of the notion that Essendon was slow to twig to the possibility of having Coleman as its key forward?

Ackerly says some journalists had pushed the line the Bombers had ‘”no idea’’ how good he was until they alerted the club.

In fact, Essendon scouts had been watching Coleman at Moonee Ponds Central.

A woman who went to school with Coleman told Acklerly he was called out of class one day — unusual, since his behaviour was exemplary. Other students learned later in the day that Bombers recruiters had wanted to talk to him.

Ackerly says he is much relieved as pleased to have the book published.

Last year he hurriedly released an e-book dealing with Coleman’s playing career to tie in with the unveiling of his statue at the MCG.

“The e-book was always temporary; the full biography includes his coaching, which is terribly important since he has the best win ratio of any coach in the history of the game,’’ he says.

“I reckon I’ll look back with more satisfaction in four or five years. At the moment it’s just a sense of, ‘Oh thank God it’s over’ because it was such a mammoth task.’’

Coleman kicked off his league career in dazzling style, nailing 12 goals for Hawthorn in Round 1 of 1949.

They continued at a furious rate; he kicked 537 goals from only 98 matches.

Ackerly neither saw Coleman play nor met him. But after interviewing 180 people and reading hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, he thinks he came to understand a man who let no time go idle, had a temper, disliked umpires and paid no great attention to the adulation his goalkicking brought him.

“He was so active — he could never sit still — that I can’t imagine John reading his own biography,’’ Ackerly says. “I don’t think he would have bothered to read it all. He’d probably get a little annoyed if there were some facts wrong but then again someone would have to tell him. I don’t think he was a fella who looked back.’’

Coleman died of a heart attack at age 44, having told Noel McMahon he never thought he would make “old bones’’.

“His career was half a career. His life was half a life. But boy did he pack a lot in,’’ Ackerly says.

Coleman, The Untold Story of an AFL Legend, was launched at one of Coleman’s former pubs, the Victoria Hotel in Brunswick.

It is available from book stores and Essendon Football Club.