Deadline: Footy great Barry Round’s stolen identity at boozy lunch

As a Brownlow medallist, the late Barry Round dominated on and off the field, even on one occasion while using the ID of the state’s top cop.

Barry Round with Jarrad McVeigh at the SCG museum.

Mark Buttler and Andrew Rule with the latest scallywag scuttlebutt.

Barry Round’s night as top cop

Everyone liked Barry Round, the former footy great who loved a beer, good company and a laugh.

The Brownlow Medallist’s keen sense of humour even extended to taking advantage of the state’s top cop, as youth worker Les Twentyman recalled this week.

Twentyman told how he and the big Swans ruckman were at a boozy Victorian Football Association lunch in the 1990s.

There was a big table out front covered in name tags and, on the way out, Round noticed one designated for former Chief Commissioner Neil Comrie had not been collected.

Round swiped the Comrie ID and pinned it on his jacket.

As was customary with Round, things didn’t end with lunch and he led a ragged band into the afternoon.

“Let’s get out there and protect the people of Victoria,” Round proclaimed to his followers.

Barry Round won the 1981 Brownlow Medal.

Round cuts an impressive figure during an arm wrestle in his heyday

They caught taxis to a posh Bastille Day function at the South Yarra Tennis Club where some of the guests were unaware that Round — by then referred to as “Chief” — was not actually Neil Comrie.

The visitors overcame limited French-speaking ability by talking the international language of fancy cocktails for several hours, not that it really mattered.

“Barry had a real aura about him. People just gravitated around him,” Mr Twentyman said.

There was much mirth later on when Round wore the police identification with others around the St Kilda area.

It’s fair to say they explored the kind of late-night adults-only venues which might not ordinarily be associated with the very upright Mr Comrie.

Round died on December 24, aged 72.

Murphy’s law

There were also fond farewells last week for Brendan Murphy KC, coincidentally a big Swans and Barry Round fan.

Judges, legal luminaries, police, underworld figures and Australia’s best cartoonist united in tribute to Mr Murphy after his death on Boxing Day, aged 80.

Ramon Lopez who joined the bar in 1970, one year before Mr Murphy, told Deadline his mate was a brilliant man not afraid to speak his mind to anyone.

Mr Murphy, he said, was once charged with contempt of court and fined $10,000 after some strong open court comments directed at a judge.

“He called him an imbecile to his face. Some of the barristers today are afraid of judges,” Mr Lopez said.

Herald Sun cartoonist Mark Knight, a former neighbour of Mr Murphy and fellow Swans fan, never forgot the 2012 AFL Grand Final when he could not get a seat for his young son.

“Brendan said he can come and sit with us,” Knight recalled.

Brendan Murphy KC is remembered as brilliant man not afraid to speak his mind.

They shared testing times as bushfires menaced their country homes on Black Saturday, Knight laughing about Murphy phoning him that morning.

“He said, ‘how are we going to prosecute this, Mark? I’m f...ing scared’.”

“He was magnificent. He was one of those great Melbourne people who knew everyone. He didn’t look down a narrow pathway.”

Law legend Robert Richter said he and Mr Murphy joined the bar a couple of months apart.

“I spent many years appreciating his razor sharp mind, his ability to prick a pompous balloon, to get to the heart by slicing and dicing it with wit and irrepressible courage. We shall not see the likes of him again,” Mr Richter said.

“Short in stature, he nevertheless filled a courtroom with a presence reminding me of the late Jack Lazarus, or McPhee at their best.

“Alas he is no more as we all count down to an end reminding us that life is but a terminal sexually transmitted disease. While we count down, we shall not forget his decency, fearlessness in combat, quest for justice and sheer innate talent and wisdom.”

Heated scenes over dog act

Dogs love a walk to the pub but they hate being left in hot cars while their masters hit the booze.

One such owner got his just desserts last week at Hampton when he got on the grog while his canine companion stayed in the car.

Passers-by later noticed the unfortunate animal gasping for breath on Hampton St in bitumen-melting summer heat.

They questioned the owner, from Sandringham, about his actions but he had the hide to turn nasty and abuse them.

Police were called in to deal with the matter and intercepted the 53-year-old not far away.

His licence was immediately suspended when he blew a blood-alcohol reading of .246, almost five times the legal limit.

The dog should be grateful the car was impounded and its owner charged with leaving an animal in a vehicle on an extreme weather day.

Dynamite dingo driver hits a snag

Racing’s long list of scamps and scallywags isn’t going to shrink in the new year.

The latest addition might be a former star junior harness racing driver who has dragged the family name back into the spotlight by allegedly purloining a valuable speedboat on a recent dark night in Yarrawonga.

Young reinsman Nathan Weightman, then based at Mildura, was licensed to drive in races at 16 and by age 20 was Victoria’s concession drivers champion. That was in 2016. A bit has happened since those days.

Nathan and his uncles Ian and Rod Weightman have hit a few hurdles both on and off the track.

Nathan caught the stewards’ eye with an unenthusiastic drive of a horse named Dynamite Dingo at Mildura in September 2018.

Apart from failing to “take all reasonable and permissible measures during the course of a race to ensure that the horse driven by that driver is given full opportunity to win”, there was Weightman’s erratic conduct in the parade ring after the race.

Nathan Weightman rides Kurahaupo Gambler to a win in 2015. Picture: Stuart McCormick

Now Dynamite Dingo’s one-time driver, his girlfriend and two male associates stand accused of pinching the $100,000 boat last week. Sadly for them, the boat’s outraged owners immediately enlisted friends and contacts to trace the alleged thieves’ zigzag course to Ballarat, including a stop-off at Lake Burrumbeet, where police believe the travelling rocket scientists took it for a spin.

The theft was allegedly part of a spree around regional Victoria by Weightman and his mate Sheldon Jeans.

Weightman, 26, is alleged to have pinched seven new cars worth $340,000 from dealerships in Shepparton, Cobram, Orrvale, Wangaratta, and Wodonga, as well as fuel from multiple petrol stations.

Jeans, 27, was charged with stealing two utes from the same Horsham dealership in one day, together worth more than $155,000, plus parts and equipment worth thousands more. Not to mention, oddly, two heart defibrillators.

The outbreak is reminiscent of Nathan Weightman’s other uncle, one-time controversial harness figure Rod “Blue Magic” Weightman.

A family dispute over the alleged theft of uncle Rod’s tools and welding equipment led to him (Rod Weightman) having to serve a mandatory 12 months for breach of parole in 2021, an encore to the lengthy sentence he did for serious drug offences.

The aggrieved older Weightman has told friends all he did was “slap the kid on the ear” — only to be dobbed in immediately by said nephew, which must have made Christmas dinner interesting.

Meanwhile, in Perth, a daughter of legendary dual-code trainer Fred Kersley sen. — trainer of champion galloper Northerly — is in more strife than a tortoise crossing the freeway in peak hour.

Kellie Leanne Kersley, once one of harness racing’s best women drivers, was picked up with north of $200,000 cash wrapped in Christmas paper at the same time as her associate, Rebel bikie figure Aaron Karl Labrook, was grabbed with a similar amount wrapped in the same pattern paper. Allegedly.

The Christmas parcel trick is well out of date. Rogue Victorian detectives used to wrap sticks of gelignite in gift paper before placing the present in unlucky crooks’ houses to set them up for possession of explosives.

Really unlucky customers, such as the late armed robbery “wheel man” Joey Hamilton, got their front doors blown up. Merry Christmas, indeed.

None of the above are in as much trouble as former gallops trainer John Nikolic, unless the recent election result in Fiji means he can now find friends in high places who can improve his dire legal position.

Nikolic, big brother of banned jockey Danny, is behind bars for a very long time after being sprung sailing a yacht into Fiji with enough cocaine to buy his own island.

Racetrack gossip suggests that little brother Danny is now the man to go to as a money lender of last resort. The family’s entrepreneurial spirit lives on.

Natalie’s car adorned with dog poo. Picture: Supplied

Getting square in Poowoomba

It’s hard to know what’s most weird about the Toowoomba woman who covered a car with faeces last week.

Is it that she would be so bent out of shape about someone parking in front of her property, or that she had hoarded such an enormous amount of dog poo to dump on her victim’s vehicle?

Neuro-linguistic programming coach Natalie Mayers was walking back to her car when she found the woman allegedly tipping boiling water over it.

As though that wasn’t bad enough for the duco, the woman had deposited many barker’s eggs over the roof and around the windscreen wipers, as though she was some kind of collector of dog waste.

Ms Mayers approached the woman who, after an initial denial, came clean in the face of the still-steaming evidence.

Thirsty newsman hits the road

He’s a reporter with a special interest in transport and a man also quite partial to a cool drink on a hot day.

But when he recently combined his passions by leaving a boozy session on a rented electric Lime Scooter, our man in the fancy suit came off second-best.

The result was some nasty bandaging and a facial injury after he came a gutser somewhere north of the CBD.