It’s that time of the year again…

Nigel Dawe

Just before season 2025 gets underway, instead of rambling on with your wishful, one-eyed run-of-the-mill hypothetical blurb (though I will say, to emphasize a wonderful omen of sorts – there was a four-year gap between our previous two premierships of 1960 and 1964).

I thought I’d whet our red and blue appetite with a half-a-century old blast from the coach of the century himself – Norm Smith. During the off-season I got hold of an original (long lost) 1965 newspaper article that featured our master coach’s views on what he considered to be the complete player, among countless other fascinating, albeit highly insightful, footy related things. In the very least, it is a reminder of what not only drew, but drove, and subsequently made the Melbourne Demons of the 1950s and 60s the most successful side our game has ever known.

The Complete Player… By Norm Smith (The Sun, Monday, August 2, 1965)

It is not easy to pinpoint the qualities that make a man the complete footballer because footballers, thank goodness, don’t come from the same mould. Footballers have different ways of performing their skills, and any coach who tries to make his players conform to one set method is being foolish.

One of the reasons for our success at Melbourne is that we allow players to be individualists. We allow them to play in their own styles so long as they incorporate their efforts into our overall strategy. Barassi, Tunbridge, Vagg, Mithen, Mann come from different moulds and we didn’t attempt to change them.

In most sports, certainly in tennis and cricket, as well as football, I think it’s probably best for young players, after learning the fundamentals, to develop naturally without being over-coached. All I have shown my son, for instance, is how to hold a ball, how to keep his eye on it, how to drop it.

What every League player must have is courage. Every man’s a squib at heart, and I like to tell my players that courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the mastery of it.

Sometimes you can help a youngster to find courage. You build up his confidence in subtle ways until he surprises himself. But if you have the most brilliant recruit of all time and you can’t help him to gain confidence it is better to unload him.

Ken Melville is my No.1 player for courage. He was our vice-captain in 1955-56 and although he lacked physical strength – he was 11.5 st, and 5ft. 10 – he did more courageous things on the ground than any other player I have seen. I don’t mean he went round knocking blokes down. Ken inspired his mates by taking marks while running into difficult positions.
Courage was something he taught himself, and yet he was such a gentle man, and, as you know, became a Presbyterian minister.

These days people are surprised why so many good players in the Reserves never quite reach the first team. The fact is that physical attributes count for a lot in Australian football. A man can be an outstanding rover in the seconds, but lack just that fraction of pace or strength to be able to cope with the greater tempo in League football.

Players who come to Melbourne are thrown into a melting pot. They are told they will have to accept direction and take their chances when they come, irrespective of their personal preferences. I remember Roy Dowsing came to us in 1939 after he had kicked 160 goals in the Caulfield-Oakleigh League. Melbourne took one look at him and thought what an excellent rover and wing man he’d make. And he did.

Alan La Fontaine kicked 180 goals in the amateurs and became a wonderful centreman, and Jack Mueller, who was a centre half-back, became a ruckman and forward pocket.

Even Ron Barassi went through a stage where we didn’t know what to do with him. He wasn’t a success at full-forward or on a half-forward flank, and it wasn’t until Peter Marquis was out injured that we put Barassi on the ball – and saw the start of a legend.

When we are recruiting, we look for basic potential – whether a player has speed, marking and kicking ability and so on. But I tend to study more closely those who are not outstanding in their skills, because I reckon if they’ve been recommended to me they must have some other hidden qualities, such as strength and courage…

One of the questions often put to me is whether the players of today compare favourably with those of the past. I think they do. Some people make the mistake of comparing champions like Nash, Bunton and Reynolds with the average players of today. It is more reasonable to compare the average players.

Certainly, many players of the 30s wouldn’t have measured up to the pace we have today, although I concede that with intensive training they would have been just as fast. Because of the pace, our fellows today have not perfected the skills of the old-timers. Yet often on training nights, when the pressure is off, you see players make beautiful stab kicks and high marks.

For quite a while one of my contentions has been the rules must be modified to bring these skills back into the game. There is too much negative, frustrating play in football today. We, at Melbourne, are as guilty as anyone else, I suppose. We kick wide because it is realistic to do this. And we drive the ball down the ground unscientifically simply to make ground. Too many Rugby features are coming into our game.

I think for a start we should award a free kick when the ball is kicked out of bounds in the vicinity of the goal. It might be said that this would be unfair on the attacking team, but there are 21 yards of space to shoot at – the biggest scoring area in the world – and players who miss don’t deserve much sympathy.

To conclude, I’d like to touch on our six premierships over the past decade and suggestions that we are lucky by playing the finals on our own ground. The only time I had much doubt about any of those premierships was in 1957. At the end of 1956 we had farewelled Cordner, McMahon, Melville, Spencer, McGivern and Lane. We lost the first semi-final, but we still took the flag – our third in a row. It was one of my greatest thills.

Last year we were said to be fortunate, although I maintained we were as good as Geelong and we knew that we had beaten Geelong about 12 times over the past 15 or 16 games. The critics who claim we have a big advantage playing the finals on the MCG should remember that the ground to us is merely a place where we do hard work. The other sides must get a greater lift than we do in playing in the MCG atmosphere. This has been one of the factors helping Richmond. As for the crowd it is usually anti-Melbourne round most of the outer.

I am supposed to know all about the wind pockets at the MCG, but I don’t think anyone does. Kevin Murray once asked me which way he should kick when he was captaining an interstate team on the MCG and I told him: “I wouldn’t have any idea.” The winds at the MCG are unpredictable.

There are several good reasons why Melbourne has won six premierships since 1955, but I don’t think our familiarity with the ground could be included as one of them.

THE END