Remember the days of the old NTFL when full forwards kicked goals and the fans loved it

The days of the prolific forwards in the NTFL are long gone, but can the game’s rulers bring them back?

Damian Cupido kicked 140 goals for Southern Districts in the 2012-13 NTFL season, a league record.

IF Australian football was built on entertainment, Territory football and all it embraces would dominate theatres and broadway stages around the world.

The late and sadly missed Waratah ruckman-forward and later coach Arch Wilkey told me exactly that 25 years ago and the more I watch the Top End game, the more I’m convinced he was on the money.

While the midfielders and rovers have grabbed most of the limelight in the 40 years this writer has watched the game evolve from the press box and the old beer stall at Gardens Oval, it is the forwards that put bums on seats.

Midfielders and defenders will always have their day in the sun, particularly when individual awards are handed out, but the big marking, goal hungry forwards are the fans’ favourites.

Arch Wilkey loved Territory football and the people who made it, but his allegiances sat very firmly with the red and white jumpers of Waratah and the old players “Donga’’ at their former Fannie Bay ground.

The 1980s and 90s were strange times in the evolution of the NTFL, an era dominated by John Taylor’s St Mary’s side and great forwards like Dennis Dunn and Brian “Broady’’ Stanislaus.

Those two kicked close to 1600 goals between them, ignited by a seemingly endless supply of football from the likes of Cyril “Junior” Rioli, John Long, Damien and Marty Christensen, “Jack’’ Perry and John Lidgerwood.

Dunn kicked 817 goals in a glorious 204-game career, highlighted by a century of goals (128) in 1985-86 and again two years later when the Green Machine swallowed every opposition side who dared to get in their road.

Rewind to the end of the 1970s and a prolific goalkicker named Trevor Sutton roamed the goalsquare at Nightcliff with his supply coming from clever Tigers like Mark Motlop and Joe Daby.

Sutton’s name will always be linked with Territory football as the first player to kick 100 goals in a season (103 in 1979-80), though he insists he “reached the ton’’ three years later when a goal umpire signalled a behind instead of a goal late in the ‘82-83 season.

The best goal tally from a full forward is held by Southern Districts talisman Damian Cupido, who steered the football through the goals 140 times in 2012-13 in a golden season for the former AFL Lion and Bomber.

Something in the water at Fred’s Pass produces century goalkickers.

The smooth moving, deadly accurate finisher Ashley Wedding kicked 117 goals in the Crocodiles’ 2006-7 premiership season.

And springheeled West Australian spearhead Will Farrer booted 112 goals nine years later in between winning a host of league goalkicking awards.

Then there were the greats of the past. Darwin Buffalo Norm Hagen still holds the NTFL match record of 24 goals kicked on a Saturday afternoon in 1973 against league newcomers North Darwin and Doug Kelly thrilled the masses at Gardens Oval with his goalkicking feats.

Even Hagen’s enormous was swallowed by the Buffaloes’ 56 goals that day, 48 years ago next January.

My good friend Steve “Bully’’ Abala remembers Hagen’s teammates kicking sideways and backwards to the Centralian star in an era when it was the law to go forward at all times.

Dunn and Palmerston’s eccentric spearhead Peter Shepherd both kicked 20 goals in a match, both of bags against a hapless Waratah on top of several accounts of players kicking 15, 16, 17 and 18 majors in four quarters of footballers.

They are the showmen of Australian football, an era that ended when fast, play-on football was introduced by coaches and players were instructed to go backwards and sideways as part of patient build-ups to kicking goals.

But what a time it was when full forwards ruled the print media and the airwaves and names like Hagen, Sutton, Dunn, Kelly, Munro, Stanislaus, Cupido, Nordhausen, Shepherd, Wedding and Chilcott were the talk of the town.