Legendary North Melbourne powerbroker Ron Joseph dies

Ron Joseph transformed North Melbourne into a powerhouse and helped bring Sydney back from the brink with the signing of Tony Lockett. He’s been remembered as “one of a kind”.

North Melbourne Football Club Shinboners cocktail function. Ron Joseph.

Ron Joseph was one of footy’s most innovative and aggressive game-changers.

Across almost half a century in the game he loved, he was a successful off-field powerbroker who helped to transform North Melbourne from perennial cellar dwellers into premiers, and in the process became one of the most influential figures in the club’s history.

He also helped to give the ailing Sydney Swans some desperately-needed relevance in footy’s toughest market during the bleak mid-1990s.

As the Kangaroos president Dr Sonja Hood said of Joseph, who died at 77 on Tuesday night after a battle with lung cancer, he was “one of a kind.”

Ron Joesph as North Melbourne secretary in 1972

Football executive player manager Ron Joseph Apr 1998 in front of Sydney Swans logo. p/

“Ron was the architect of our success in the 1970s, one of the great defenders of our club in 2007 and unflinching in his love for North, holding successive boards and administrations to account, from within or outside of the organisation, always with a view to make the club better,” Dr Hood said.

Joseph was never afraid to upset the status quo if he thought it needed shaking, and was happy to be a disruptor if something stood between him, his footy club and an objective.

In his roles at North Melbourne and later Sydney, as well as a player manager of almost 100 players at his peak, he never liked to take no for an answer.

He fought to make things happen, which included playing a key role in the appointment of Ron Barassi as Kangaroos coach, the recruitment of some of North Melbourne’s most revered players including Keith Greig, Wayne Schimmelbusch, David Dench, Malcolm Blight, Ross Glendinning and the Krakouer brothers, and coaxing an initially reluctant Tony Lockett to Sydney.

Footy was in Joseph’s blood from the outset.

His idol as a kid was South Melbourne champion Bob Skilton. When Skilton won the Brownlow Medal in 1963 - the second of his three wins - Joseph was so thrilled that he went around to the Swans’ star’s house that night with an unusual request.

Skilton’s wife Marion answered the door and Joseph asked her if he could borrow her husband’s famed No.14 jumper so he could wear it to school.

Skilton appeared at the doorstep and handed him the jumper, which Joseph proudly wore to Trinity Grammar the next day.

It earned him a Saturday morning detention, but swore until his dying day that it was worth it.

A year later, fresh out of school, Joseph told the battling North Melbourne Football Club in 1964 he was older than he was when applying for the assistant secretary’s role.

The late Dr Allen Aylett told the Herald Sun years later: “He (Joseph) came to North Melbourne as an 18-year-old but said he was 21 - we all fell for it.”

Ron Barrassi, Ron Joseph (seated), Albert Mantello and Allen Aylett standing

Within 18 months, he had been promoted to secretary and alongside president Aylett and vice-president Albert Mantello set out to turn the VFL easybeats into an off-field force.

Barassi was in their sights as a coach as they looked to the 1973 season.

As Joseph recounted in his interview with Mike Sheahan on Open Mike: “Barass had gone into the media after coaching Carlton … he was ripe for the picking and Albert (Mantello) recognised it and we pounced.”

The deal was hammered out on the back of a napkin at the Old Melbourne Motor Inn.

Joseph and the Kangaroos also took advantage of the short-lived 10-year rule, an early form of free agency where players of ten years’ service could move clubs.

He famously took “brown paper bags” containing $10,000 in cash to the homes of Barry Davis, Doug Wade and John Rantall to convince them to move to the Kangaroos.

All three would go on to play key roles in the club’s historic first flag in 1975.

Joseph recruited 19 of North Melbourne’s 20 players who played in the club’s first flag in 1975. But he wasn’t there at the time to enjoy the success.

Ron Joseph became an influential player manager with Anthony Stevens and Glenn Archer on his books.

In a move that he would later term “the worst call I have made in my life”, he briefly moved to South Melbourne, partly because of the fallout from Barassi’s brutal reaction following the Kangaroos’ 1974 grand final loss to Richmond.

He then joined Collingwood - but it lasted less than 10 hours.

“Having been at North (Melbourne) where Aylett and Mantello and others would just sit down and make a decision, and then explain it two weeks later at a committee meeting, it was hard. At Collingwood, it was like parliament - you ring the bells,” he said.

“The ‘yes’ vote went to the right and the ‘no’ to the left.

“I wasn’t going to be able to survive. I took the job at night about 10.30, and I resigned at six the next morning.”

He returned to North Melbourne in 1977, the year the Kangaroos drew the grand final with the Magpies, before winning the replay.

Barassi had told him after the drawn grand final he was going to drop Blight for the replay, but swore Joseph to secrecy.

As Joseph explained on Open Mike: “Barass stormed into my office and said: ‘I am going to drop Blight … shut your mouth and don’t tell anyone.’

“Off he stormed. Lloyd Holyoak was the president. I rang Lloyd and said: ‘We’ve got a problem here…

“On Monday night, Barass stormed into my office and said: ‘That’s it, I told you something in confidence, I will never trust you again’.’

Barassi relented.

Kangaroos directors Denis Pagan and Ron Joseph (right) at training.

Blight was selected and went on to be one of the Kangaroos’ best contributors in their 27-point replay win over the Magpies.

Joseph was general manager of the Kangaroos through until 1986, and then again from 1988-89.

His footy nous was needed in a short stint as Sydney chief executive as Ron Barassi and co tried to save the club from extinction.

He helped to convince goal-kicking machine Tony Lockett to move north.

“I was driving back down Dandenong Rd and we didn’t have his (Lockett’s) signature. The forms had to be back at the AFL by 12,” he said.

“I was going past Springvale Crematorium and (Swans recruiter) Laurie (Dwyer) said ‘Why not turn around and have one more crack (at getting him)?”

Joseph turned the car around and headed back towards Devon Meadows, where Lockett was living, and offered him another big dollar incentive.

To his great relief, “Plugger took the pen and signed it.”

Fittingly, Joseph returned to North Melbourne when the club needed him, as he and James Brayshaw, among others, fought to stop an AFL push to send the club to the Gold Coast.

He was a director on the club’s board from 2007 to 2010, and even though he fell out with the Kangaroos’ board at the time, he retained his passion for the club until his last days.

One of his last public acts came when North Melbourne won the race late last year to secure Alastair Clarkson as coach, beating Essendon to his signature.

He couldn’t resist one last swipe at the Bombers, saying: “Essendon never frightened me … I never thought Clarko would follow the drug money to Tullamarine.”

It was typical Joseph, candid and caustic and never afraid to ruffle feathers when something stood in the way of his club.