Former AFL footy great Ron Barassi might be 80 but ‘keeping his body and mind fit and active’ is key
BEFORE his North Melbourne protege Sam Kekovich delivers the guest speech at an 80th birthday lunch for Ron Barassi, the guest of honour will likely have completed a workout and sudoku puzzle.
Today in History
Don't miss out on the headlines from Today in History. Followed categories will be added to My News.
BEFORE his North Melbourne protege Sam Kekovich delivers the guest speech at an 80th birthday lunch for Aussie rules superhero Ron Barassi, the guest of honour will likely have completed a workout and sudoku puzzle.
Days before his birthday, Barassi told Melbourne Herald Sun journalist Jon Anderson he pays little attention to “people’s age, including my own. Most of us don’t act our age anyway”.
True to his word, 21 years after he left the Sydney Swans to retire from coaching, Barassi still plays tennis, golf, table tennis and does weekly gym classes for his physical health. He plays sudoku and backgammon for his mind.
Displaying characteristic discipline, Barassi explained, “Staying fit and active with body and mind is the best thing we can do for ourselves at any age.”
Named a “Legend of Australian Sport” in 2006 for his contribution to AFL, Barassi is revered as an outstanding player, revolutionary coach and popular, enduring media personality. His playing career from 1953 to 1969 comprised 254 games, 330 goals and 17 grand finals to win 10 premierships. He then coached more than 500 games.
As one of the most influential people in AFL for 50 years, in 2012 he became the hero of Barassi, The Stage Show, and last year helped rocker Tex Perkins compose a centenary tribute to Gallipoli, One Minute’s Silence, with all proceeds paid to Legacy.
Barassi’s apparently gilded life had a less auspicious start after his birth at Castlemaine on February 27, 1936. His father, descended from Swiss-Italian migrants, was Melbourne Football Club rover Ron Barassi, a reserve in the Demons’ 1940 premiership team before leaving for army service. Barassi senior was killed at 27 on July 31, 1941, in Tobruk, Libya.
“The last memory, really the only memory I have of my father is his visit to mum and I up on the little farm in Guildford near Castlemaine, on his way back to the boat to go overseas during the war,” Barassi said after visiting Libya in 2011.
Along with support from Legacy, Melbourne Demons players and officials helped Barassi’s widow Elza and “Little Ronnie”, who as a teen was determined to follow his father to the Demons. Melbourne coach Norm Smith, who had played with his father, helped Barassi find work at Miller’s Rope Works in Brunswick, and moved 16-year-old Barassi into a backyard cottage when Elza moved to Tasmania in 1951.
“Norm Smith loved his footy. That suited me fine,” Barassi recalled. “His ability with young people, his strength of character, his ethics and values, came into my life at the right time.”
When a zoning system required him to join Collingwood or Carlton, the Demons successfully lobbied for a father-son rule to allow him to sign up from Preston in 1952. By 1957, when he married co-worker Nancy Kellett and played ruck-rover for Melbourne, Barassi was appointed vice-captain and captain three years later, earning £199 for the season.
As he helped Melbourne to six premierships, including two as captain, and won best-and-fairest in 1961 and 1964, he also, from 1962, joined a children’s television show on Channel 7.
Barassi again rocked the VFL establishment in 1965 to take up an offer from new Carlton president George Harris, whose desperation was evident in a lucrative £9000 contract. Keen to test his coaching skills away from Smith, Barassi knew the wage could educate his children Susan, Ron and Richard.
His departure for the Blues, in a time when players rarely changed clubs and earned meagre payments, left children in tears as they ditched Melbourne No. 31 jumpers. Fellow player Richmond’s Jack Dyer noted, “Barassi was so much Melbourne that we all believed it wasn’t a guernsey he wore, (it was) just the colour of his skin.”
It was no easy decision for Barassi, who admitted Melbourne had dominated his life.
“It was my family as much as anything. I changed my mind a few times about the move. It was tough, but it turned out to be the best football decision I ever made.”
His enthusiastic coaching style, complete with “Italian gestures” and emotive facial expressions, left Carlton playing “as though you were scared of getting bruised on Sunday”.
Barassi instituted another game-changer while coaching North Melbourne in 1975, when he secured passes to the old MCG Smokers’ Stand.
“The view was great but I had to be able to get messages to our runner without screaming from the stand, so walkie-talkies were obvious,” he later wrote. “They worked well for the first quarter until this bloke with an Italian accent came on giving me coaching tips. ‘Move Crosswell, move Blight’, that sort of stuff.
“And he was argumentative ... he questioned my ability to coach. I asked him who he was and he explained he was a taxi driver sitting in his cab outside the Hilton. I had to move back to the boundary to get rid of him.”
Later the first coach to use video analysis, in 1993 Barassi took up his first fulltime football stint as coach of the Sydney Swans, an appointment he was eager to fill.
Originally published as Former AFL footy great Ron Barassi might be 80 but ‘keeping his body and mind fit and active’ is key
Gallipoli to D-Day: Aussie’s epic war story
George Dixon went ashore with the original Anzacs at Gallipoli, aged just 15 – and was shot. Three decades later he was fighting again, at history’s other most famous wartime landing.
Love story behind escape tragedy
An Australian murdered in the infamous wartime Great Escape died after swapping places with another man. And his story is still unfolding, 80 years on.