After 32 years, the 1978 Grand Final secret is out

DON Scott couldn't lift his right arm. He had wrenched it in a Hawthorn practice match. It was days before the 1978 Grand Final.

DON Scott couldn't lift his right arm. He had wrenched it in a Hawthorn practice match. It was days before the 1978 Grand Final.

Scott was tough. He would generally limp or hobble from the field with the scowl of a wounded animal.

But this time he needed cortisone to get on the field. The club doctors wouldn't give it to him.

Scott bailed up his mate, Dr John Tickell, who happened to be North Melbourne's club doctor. For Tickell, treating Scott would mean helping the opposition team for the year's biggest game.

Scott threw in a line about patient ethics. He talked then (and still does) like he played. He was as subtle as a bulldozer.

"Just give me the f------ injection," he told Tickell.

Tickell acquiesced, doomed to be burdened by this guilty secret for 32 years.

A few days later, Scott brooded on the field, as always. He menaced. He skulked. He led Hawthorn's second half resurgence for a three-goal win.

Scott barely remembers the game itself, though he can recall the tone. Pre-planned on-field muggings were not unknown in grand finals. Fair enough, too, he says - winning finals football is what matters.

Yet this year's Grand Final, he regrets to predict, will not feature his Hawks, even though they have made the final eight.

Scott played in three Hawthorn premierships and 302 games. He expresses opinions like he played football - if you can't hurdle a brick wall, blast through it.

And so he says the current Hawthorn team has too many teasers - big talents such as Lance Franklin and plenty of others - who don't shine every week. Then there's the lack of a backline. And the limited rucking options. And the iffy recruiting choices.

History dictates that finishing in the top four is almost a prerequisite for winning the flag. Oh, and the final eight is a joke, Scott says. For the lower four teams, it "rewards mediocrity".

At 62, on the Mornington Peninsula, his hamstrings twinge for weeks after a kick of the footy. Chipped bones mean he can't straighten his right arm.

Scott has been travelling the Queensland showjumping circuit, but he's heard enough to know that Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett's public sprays of his players are "embarrassing". Yet great clubs shoulder adversities. One of Scott's fondest memories of Hawthorn dates to 1996, when the club confronted its future - a proposed merger with Melbourne.

Scott was the public face of Operation Payback, which raised more than $1 million in six weeks. Throughout, he feared the salvage campaign would fall short.

He says documents showed that Hawthorn's salary cap rorting (in an era when such cheating prompted no more than fines) had funded an enduring team of champions. The books explained why some officials thought a merger was the only hope.

Yet "people power" saved Hawthorn. "I don't think there's any other place in the world that could do that," Scott said. "It shows the uniqueness of football in this town."

Tickell and Scott remain friends three decades after their clandestine medical encounter.

A few months ago, Tickell confessed his disloyalty to then North Melbourne coach, Ron Barassi.

Fortunately, Barassi laughed.

This is the first of a series celebrating finals football.