Hall of Fame Legend and Hawthorn icon John Kennedy Sr passes away
On the same day his grandfather John Kennedy passed away, Josh Kennedy played his 250th AFL game because “That’s what granddad would have wanted". AFL figures - including the target of his epic 'Don't think, do!' speech - have remembered Australian Football Hall of Fame Legend.
AFL News
Don't miss out on the headlines from AFL News. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Hawthorn great John Kennedy Sr has been remembered as a “giant” of the game who was the epitome of inspiration.
Kennedy Sr — who was only weeks ago elevated to Legend status into the Australian football Hall of Fame — passed away peacefully on Thursday morning, aged 91.
The former Hawthorn player and coach, who led the Hawks to three premierships before a shift to North Melbourne, was honoured for his contribution to the game that is said will live on forever.
His words have become part of football folklore. And the target of what is arguably football’s greatest speech has recalled what he described as one of football’s most passionate and “tremendous” people.
On an emotional day for the family, grandson Josh Kennedy told coach John Longmire he would be playing his 250th match on Thursday night, despite only just digesting news of his legendary grandfather's death, saying: “That’s what granddad would have wanted. Get on with the job.”
His parents also made the nine-hour drive from Melbourne to Sydney to watch the inspirational Sydney skipper's milestone.
Kennedy finished with a fitting goal and 19 disposals in the 28-point loss to the Western Bulldogs, before teammates formed a guard of honour and clapped him off the field.
Longmire said Kennedy’s courage on such an emotion-charged day, summed up the resilience of his veteran skipper, who is one of the game’s best modern-day players.
“Josh found out (yesterday) morning and I spoke to him a couple of hours afterwards and just got the attitude, ‘hat’s what grand dad would have wanted. Get on with the job.,’” said Longmire.
“Josh has an amazing ability to do that and you’d imagine now he probably takes a deep breath and takes it in a bit more. He was very close to John.”
Kayo is your ticket to the 2020 Toyota AFL Premiership Season. Watch every match of every round Live & On-Demand. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly
In the 1975 Grand Final with Hawthorn trailing by 20 points, Kennedy barrelled his players with an exhortation for the ages.“Do. Don’t think, Mick, don’t hope. Do!,” he demanded of his players.
That “Mick” was Michael Moncrieff, Hawthorn goalkicker, who admits the famed speech hadn’t followed him as it had Kennedy.
“I sort of stayed in the background because they kept on wondering which Mick it was,” he recalled on Thursday.
"(With John) it always was passion. He was always passionate. He just was an incredible speaker — not just as a football coach, but as anyone that I’ve ever heard. He just chose his words very well, and really inspired people in the way he spoke. With anyone he came across, he just had a tremendous way of communicating with people.”
Moncrieff’s first year at Hawthorn was 1970, when Kennedy ordered a “short run” for his players, which the then-coach joined. It turned out to be a lazy 30-odd kilometres from the Sidney Myer Music Bowl to Eastland.
“He ran it too … he finished second that day,” Moncrieff said.
“What he was famous for was doing stuff himself. He’d actually do things himself.
“As a coach, his desire was just tremendous. He just had a tremendous way to express things. He just led by example, really."
Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett paid tribute to the club's greatest-ever figure, and said that Kennedy’s legacy “will live on within the Hawthorn Football Club forever”.
“He set and lived the standards that are the culture of the family club,” Kennett said. “So much of what Hawthorn is today, is because of the foundations John laid in yesteryears.
“His booming voice will forever echo in the corridors of the football club and the legend of the man in the brown overcoat, with a heart of gold, will be passed down from generation to generation of the Hawthorn family.”
League chairman Richard Goyder said Kennedy "gave everything he possibly could to both Hawthorn and North Melbourne in the pursuit of success, but his approach to life, and how it should be lived, was imparted upon all who moved within his circle, be that as a player, a coach, a mentor to emerging leaders within the game or the head of the game itself when he was chair of the AFL Commission. He was rightly named a Legend of the Game earlier this year and, on behalf of the wider game, we are delighted that he was able to receive this honour and be celebrated for his contribution. Our sincere condolences are with children Maureen, John, Bernard and Patrick and their families.”
Fellow Australian football Hall of Fame Legend Kevin Bartlett said “to be in his company was uplifting”.“A giant of the game,” he said.“A life well lived.”
Longmire was coached by Kennedy when he first arrived at North Melbourne and reflected on his own memories spent in the presence of an AFL icon.
“Kanga came up to recruit me as a 16-year-old kid up to the country. It was a Tuesday in the middle of the season at the Corowa Chinese restaurant,” said Longmire.
“And I couldn’t believe he took the time to come up and see me. I was lucky enough to spend a couple of years under him as an impressionable 16-year-old from the farm.
“And I couldn’t have had a better first coach. He’s just a really quality person, who had amazing values. I’ve never seen a person command a room without saying anything as much as John Kennedy Sr."
MOVING LEGACY OF FOOTY'S MOST FAMOUS SPEECH
Mark Robinson wrote this story about John Kennedy Sr when he was elevated to Legend status in the Australian Football Hall of Fame three weeks ago
Firstly, it's best to close your eyes and listen before coming back and reading this.
Go on, go to YouTube and type in: “John Kennedy Snr Don't Think, Do”.
Now listen. Did you close your eyes?
In a kind of football wonderland, did you supplant yourself to the rooms at halftime of the 1975 Grand Final, where the Hawks were down by 20 points to North Melbourne, and where Kennedy, you could imagine, is pacing and pleading, his eyes darting to player after player, as he delivers one of the all-time great speeches.
“At least DO SOMETHING! DO! Don't think, don't hope, do! At least you can come off and say ‘I did this, or I shepherded, or I played on. At least I did something’.”
It is more than folklore that speech, it's football treasure.
The Hawks lost that day, but it's not about that.
St Kilda great Lenny Hayes inducted into the Australian football Hall of Fame
It's about the pressure of that moment, down on Grand Final day, and the clarity and urgency of Kennedy's words, which, they say, separates the good coaches from the great.
And that voice.
People like to say Kennedy had a booming voice. But that undersells it.
Kennedy's was altogether authoritative and distinctive and punctuated by confidence and intelligence. Master storyteller Martin Flanagan once described it as “the bellow of an old stag trapped in a forest of despair, refusing to surrender”.
That old stag is the 29th Legend of the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
That speech is a treasure, yet as time has paced, it has become a sense of amusement for the Kennedy clan, mostly for Kennedy's six grandkids and maybe for some of his six great-great grandchildren.
“It's had a funny elevation of status,” John Kennedy Jr says.
“The grandkids, they raise it. They say to Dad, you used to say, ‘don't think, do’, but the kids would say sometimes you've got to think before you do and don’t do stupid things just because someone tells you do it. It makes him scratch his head sometimes.”
Even Junior has adopted it. Dad is 91 and his health is failing.
“I’ve said to him, ‘don’t think, just do. Just walk around the block on his frame, don’t think about doing it, just do it’.”
Still, that voice was never for the home in Camberwell. Junior says dad might’ve once or twice raised his voice when the kids didn't eat their food at the dining table.
“He was generally very mild and even tempered at home,” he said.
“It was fair to say when I went down to the footy club, as I got into my teens and saw how he was roaring at the players, it was quite an eye-opener for me. I hadn't seen him like that before. It was like I had a Jekyll and Hyde dad. I saw him as placid, but he was very vocal when he got to the football arena.
“I guess as I got older I came to appreciate what he was saying. He wasn't yelling nonsensical stuff and I came to appreciate it. He was a hard-task master, but the irony of all that was whatever he asked them to do, he did it himself. If it was a 12km run to Ringwood, he'd be doing it himself.”
Unquestionably, Kennedy — also known as “Kanga’’ — wasn't fond of soft footballers.
“If you're going to advertise to the world that your father's raised a son who is a little bit timid, then go and play tennis, play another game,” he once said.
THE GODFATHER
Young Kennedy grew up in Camberwell.
His dad, Jack, died when he was 15, and Jack's brothers and his mum's family – the Cochranes – supported the family, mainly through the work at the market gardens in Bentleigh.
There was mum Margaret and the three kids – Leo, John and Margaret, who died of cancer aged 29.
“He didn’t have it easy,” Junior says.
“They were pretty tough times for him.”
Still, there was a sense of adventure and independence early. He and a mate once rode their bikes to Tocumwal from Melbourne as teenagers.
“No breaks. freewheeling, no gears,” Junior said.
“He said to his dad, I'm going up to see uncle so-so and he did.”
A Collingwood supporter, Kennedy attended De La Salle College, where he played footy and cricket. Footy would win his heart.
Of course, Kennedy's legacy bounds past a halftime speech in a losing Grand Final.
He arrived at Hawthorn from Camberwell YCW in 1950 and won the best-and-fairest in his first season, a bittersweet reward because the team did not win a game.
A determined ruckman, all arms and legs, it was said, he played 164 games all up and won four best-and-fairest.
The first game, Kennedy Sr says, was an “exciting time”. Told he was playing, he ran home from Glenferrie Oval, to deliver the news to mum and to friends, a Mr and Mrs Luttgens, who were playing euchre at the time.
“I ran home along Bowen St, Camberwell, came in the back door … they were playing euchre, I didn't even say good evening, or hello to Mr Luttgens, I just yelled out ‘I'm in’ and went straight to bed.”
Junior has seen one piece of footage of his old man playing.
“He was running along the boundary line and he kicked it out on the full,” he said with a laugh.
Kennedy evolved into a titan. so much the Hawks had a statue made of him.
He was a player, captain and a four-time best-and-fairest winner and a three-time Hawks premiership coach.
He coached North Melbourne and, in his official final act of devotion to Australian rules, was the Commission chairman from 1993-1997.
He was also a Victorian player and coach and in 2001 was named the coach of Hawthorn's Team of the Century.
More than all of that, he is, according to Alastair Clarkson, the Godfather of Hawthorn, which is a compliment about a man's character as much as his deeds.
“He was the initiator of all our culture and our initial success, and set the pattern for what has been a really strong footy club over a long period of time,” Clarkson when he passed Kennedy's coaching record.
“The discipline of our club and its compliance to a set of values that have been indoctrinated consistently since they were pioneered in the Kennedy era of the late 50s, has resulted in our club not having to compete with itself.
“We’ve had our moments where we’ve lost our way momentarily over the past fifty years, but 12 premiership flags in that time is due recognition of a stable and disciplined organisation built on some basic and earthly values.”
Hawks great Leigh Matthews agreed.
“The general persona, attitude and roles that John Kennedy filled and the team-first attitude that seemed to be the central figure at Hawthorn in the '60s and '70s has probably lasted through the generations,” he once said.
KENNEDY'S COMMANDOS
The man synonymous with the gabardine coat first coached the Hawks in 1957 while playing and, after retiring, from 1960-63 and 1967-76.
A teacher, his career was sidetracked after the '63 season when he was posted to Stawell, where he also coached.
Kennedy's philosophies would define him.
“I had a plan, I had the desire,” he said.
“I feel I had something to give in the way of the direction of the play, the way we should play, the importance of the team winning, and the not so importance of individual success.”
He introduced a rigorous training regimen, come to be known as the Kennedy Commandos. He would train the players at 6am at the Yarra in Bulleen in a type of Tough Mudder environment.
That would define his football teams. Tough and disciplined.
They won flags in 1961 – the club's first premiership in Kennedy's second year of coaching – 1971 and 1976.
An inspiring orator, Kennedy spoke with a general-like demeanour.
“Words are words and actions and actions and he expected the players not to just say things but to do things,” Junior said.
“Those words like bravery and honesty and integrity, he expected that from his players on the ground.”
Junior grew up knowing a father and then admiring the person.
''He was my father and I guess he was tied up with the footy a lot and as time went I became almost in awe of him, the way people talked about him,'' he said.
“Once I started to listen a bit more about what he said, the way he treated people, the way they respected him. I grew to admire him perhaps as much as the other people as both a father and a footy person.
“Football gave him the opportunity to be among men and lead men, and help them to strive to be the best they wanted to be.
“What he loved about it, and I remember him talking about this, once they got over the white line, it didn't matter if you were lawyer, or doctor or a garbo, or a boot studder, if you're on the ground, you're all equal and you're all striving for the same goal.”
Hawks premiership captain and coach David Parkin once said of Kennedy: “He is the single most respected person I've ever had the pleasure to know and to work with.''
FAMILY MAN
A teacher by trade – he taught at Stawell Tech, Coburg Tech and for a short time at Shepparton – Kennedy never stopped teaching in football retirement.
When his grandchildren were young, which included Sydney's Josh, he would set tasks for them.
He'd send a letter to 10-year-old Josh with several equations to be answered.
He would sign the letter, Pythagoras (Greece). To Josh's brother Ben, it would be signed Archimedes (Greece).
The boys would solve the problems and Junior's wife Bernadette would mail them back.
Junior: “A week later, another letter would arrive with five dollars in the envelope and with another set of questions. He loved doing that. That was that teaching and learning capacity he had and he wanted to teach the kids.”
He also loved taking the grandkids to the farm at Silvan, where he grew spuds and blueberries.
“He had all the grandkids picking up spuds which didn’t please them all that much but they did get a small earn out of it,” Junior said.
“He never had a phone up there. Was totally uncontactable and out of reach. It was his happy place, as they say. Born out of his upbringing as a kid around market gardens with his Cochrane uncles and aunts I suspect.”
Kennedy also loved classical music, Beethoven and Bach were his favourites. And he also had the kids – John, Leo and Margaret – learn the piano.
“He ran the music program like a well-oiled machine. Half an hour practise each morning, starting at 6.30, then 7am, then 7.30.”
In April, 2017, Kennedy lost his beloved wife Dulcie.
''Since mum died, it's been a battle for him,'' Junior said.
Of course, she would've loved to have shared this occasion.
“We are very proud of him and it's sad to see where he is at the moment,” Junior said.
“He was really happy to receive the award. He understood what was happening and you could see his eyes light up and contrary to what I said before about it being a team game, I think deep down he really liked the idea of being acknowledged for the all work he's done over the years.”
Asked to describe his father to those who never met him, he said: “I'd say he's very honest, very humble and … (long pause) and a wonderful leader. People ask me if it was difficult for me to be a footballer under the banner of John Kennedy Sr, but it was never a cross for me to carry.”
“He was always my father and I was very proud of him as my father, as I was of him as a sports person and coach. He was a great leader of men.”