Sacked: Tony Jewell recalls Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson setting fire to Lindsay Fox’s pants

Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson was the most difficult player that Tony Jewell coached. And a dangerous prank on the wealthy St Kilda president proved just that.

Tony Jewell and Kevin Bartlett.

Former St Kilda coach Tony Jewell has revealed details about the bizarre moment enigmatic forward Mark “Jacko” Jackson “set fire” to Saints president Lindsay Fox’s tracksuit pants at a 1983 players’ fundraiser.

Jewell rated the controversial crew-cut forward as the most difficult player out of the hundreds he coached.

But it was Jackson’s antics at a Moorabbin “Pleasant Sunday Morning” almost 40 years ago – to raise money for the players’ end-of-season trip – that stands out in Jewell’s memory, for all the wrong reasons.

“I remember Jacko setting fire to Lindsay Fox,” Jewell told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast.

“Trevor Barker had organised a Sunday morning (drinks) to raise money for the footy trip away and Lindsay turned up.

“Jacko kept walking up to (Fox) and flipping (the elastic) in his tracksuit pants and letting them go from behind. He did it a half a dozen times and Lindsay just ignored him.

“That was to his peril as Jacko went back the next time and dropped a big roll of toilet paper in the back of (Fox’s) pants and then set fire to the toilet paper.

“The flames just took off and Lindsay was jumping around with these flames ... then (Jacko) was dropping cigarette butts in his pocket.”

Fox was one of Australia’s biggest businessmen with his personal wealth said to be more than $25 million in the mid-1980s, with Linfox turning over $75 million at the time.

Linfox is now valued at more than $4 billion dollars.

But that didn’t stop Jackson, who played 82 games in stints at four clubs – Richmond, Melbourne, St Kilda and Geelong – from making Fox an unwitting butt of one of his infamous pranks.

Jewell said Jackson was “a nightmare” to coach – at Richmond and St Kilda – both on and off the field.

He failed to play a senior game at Punt Road, but Jewell said Jacko used unorthodox practises to win selection.

Lindsay Fox was the victim of one of Mark ‘Jacko’ Jackson’s infamous pranks.

“Jacko was a handful. If ever we had simulated match practice or one-on-one drills, he always headed towards ‘Disco’ (star Richmond forward Michael Roach) and he would have (tried) to knock his block off or maim him just to get a game,” Jewell said.

“Then I finished up at St Kilda with Jacko.”

Jackson booted 41 goals from 10 matches in his only season at St Kilda in 1983 – including 10.4 against Sydney – but Jewell said he cost them almost as many with his alarming lack of defence.

“We sacked him because full-backs and opposition defenders were running off him,” Jewell said. “He was kicking a goal a quarter but they were probably creating eight or nine goals by running off him.”

Jackson would later go on to fame as an actor, entertainer and singer, capitalising on his footy notoriety.

How Pies chose Jewell over future flag hero

Richmond’s 1980 premiership coach Tony Jewell has detailed the extraordinary sliding doors moment that saw him briefly anointed as Bob Rose’s heir apparent at Collingwood ahead of an untried Leigh Matthews.

Jewell told News Corp’s Sacked podcast he had verbally agreed to join the Magpies – the club he had beaten as coach in the 1980 grand final – after being approached by Rose at the end of the 1985 season.

But on the same morning he told Rose he would accept the Magpies role, a shock phone call from the Tigers caused Jewell to change his mind – and ultimately it changed the course of football history.

“Bobby Rose rang and told me David Cloke and Geoff Raines had given me a (good) rap,” Jewell told Sacked. “He said, ‘Look, I don’t want to coach anymore. When I’ve had enough, I think you know enough about the club and the players, you will come in to replace me as coach’.

“He (Rose) had already told me: ‘I have been talking to Leigh Matthews but we are not keen to go with Leigh as he has never coached before. We don’t want an inexperienced coach.’”

1980. Grand Final. Richmond coach Tony Jewell and his wife Marg with his victorious players and wives. Premiership Cup. David Cloke. Jim Jess. Emmett Dunne. Michael Roach.

But after agreeing to Collingwood’s offer Jewell took a call from Richmond pleading with him to return as senior coach in 1986, despite the fact the club had sacked him at the end of the 1981 season.

Club loyalty got the better of Jewell. He knocked back the Magpies and chose to take on the Tigers role, a position from which he would be sacked after two more seasons.

Matthews instead took on the Collingwood job and was elevated into the senior role early in the 1986 season. He went on to be enshrined in Collingwood history in 1990 by coaching the club to its first premiership in 32 years.

Collingwood aptain Tony Shaw and coach Leigh Matthews hold the premiership cup.

“On this Sunday morning he (Rose) rang me and said he had spoken to the board and that, ‘We have agreed you will be the next Collingwood coach’,” Jewell said. “I said: ‘That’s fantastic’.

“On the same morning (Richmond board member) John Robertson rang me and said: ‘We have just had a meeting and Paul Sproule has been sacked and the committee wants you to coach them’.

“I said: ‘Robbo, mate, this is what has happened (with the Collingwood offer).

“He said: ‘Don’t move.’

“So half a dozen Richmond officials came down to my house and they said: ‘Mate, you are a Richmond person, you shouldn’t have been sacked in the first place.’

Collingwood football coach Bob Rose and assistant coach Leigh Matthews in 1986.

“I rang Bobby Rose and he said, ‘Look, we understand you are a Richmond man’, so they (Collingwood) let me off the hook. They appointed Leigh Matthews. I went back to Richmond and they were a cot case, and Leigh went on to coach Collingwood to a premiership.”

Matthews coached Collingwood in 224 games – the fourth most in the Magpies’ history – from 1986-95, with the club’s 1990 premiership win over Essendon ending the dreaded “Colliwobbles”.