THE COLOURS AND THE GUERNSEY

from AFL Record Round 9 2023

Blastfrom thepast

u Many of the new clubs leaned on their heritage. The Bears had plenty of maroon (with a mash-up of a koala and a map of Queensland as the logo designed into a BB). The Eagles had plenty of West Australian gold. Port Adelaide had as much black and white as Collingwood would allow but made teal a primary colour as well. The Suns adopted red and gold as a tribute to the life-saving clubs up and down the Gold Coast.

The Lesson

u Apart from a brief dalliance by the Dockers for their first away strip, the green just hasn’t figured anywhere. It’s as if the existing clubs were holding off, knowing that green was synonymous with one team still to join the competition. That will change from 2028 when Tassie takes to the ground in colours and a guernsey that will be unique and reflect what the various state teams have worn forever.

That guernsey, with its green background, yellow map of the state and the dark red ‘T’, is already iconic and should not change one bit. And it even works as an away strip.

The Song

u The Crows players made up the first version of their club song (Here we go Camry Crows, here we go…) in the joyous moments after their first win. The Bears handed out photocopied sheets on the paper with the words to their song after their upset win over North Melbourne in their opening game in 1987.

The other expansion clubs took more considered approaches, but none were particularly catchy or became instant favourites until the Giants released the catchy Big Big Sound, a club song that broke the mould with its big band, eastern European influence. You could barely escape it in the lead-up to the 2019 Grand Final.

The Lesson

u Tasmania’s thriving arts community can surely band together (pun intended) and create a piece of music that will create a rousing atmosphere at games, stand the test of time and become an anthem to reflect the hopes and aspirations of an entire state.

Taking The Bear Minimum

The Brisbane Bears were hardly showered with draft gifts when they joined the League as an expansion club in 1987.

PETER BLUCHER reflects on the hurdles placed in front of what became the “Bad News Bears”.

You can buy a second-hand lawnmower these days for $150 and a half-decent used car for $5000, but what’s the asking price for eight used and unwanted VFL footballers?

In 1986, when the Brisbane Bears joined the League, they paid a $4m licence fee for what amounted to eight cast-offs from opposition clubs via a Foundation Draft, to which each of the 12 existing clubs had to offer three players.

They had to have played a minimum of one senior game in 1986 or in the reserves finals that year.

The Bears took just eight of them and got a combined 114 games, 33 wins and three Brownlow Medal votes, with an average output of 17.2 possessions and 0.32 goals a game.

On 2023 values, $4m in 1986 is worth $11.2m in 2023.

That’s $96,632 a game, $333,818 a win, $5609 a possession and $282,461 a goal.

Richmond’s Phillip Walsh, the inaugural Bears club champion, was the standout success story.

He played 60 games in four years, while Essendon’s Chris Waterson played 35 games in two years.

The other six – Gary Shaw (Collingwood), Chris Stacey (Fitzroy), Rod Macpherson (Footscray), Darryl Cox (Melbourne), Rick Norman (North Melbourne) and Robert Mace (St Kilda) – played a combined 19 games for five wins, 201 possessions and 13 goals.

In the Foundation Draft, Carlton offered retired 32-year-old 119-gamer Bruce Reid, one-gamer Michael Aitken, who hadn’t played since 1985, and 11-gamer Peter Kenny, who, like soon-to-be doctor Aitken, was heading overseas.

Macpherson, uncle of Gold Coast player Darcy Macpherson, had blown his knee out in the reserves finals and was about to have a knee reconstruction using an experimental synthetic fibre.

He was one the Bears took.

That it was a total mockery was confirmed years later when Robert Walls, Carlton coach at the time, admitted the Blues’ attitude was “give them nothing”.

But there were some well-known names among the 28 players rejected by the Bears, including future Melbourne coach Dean Bailey, then at Essendon, and current Sydney recruiting manager Simon Dalrymple, then at Hawthorn.

Reid, originally from Footscray, is the father of Sydney and Collingwood premiership players Sam and Ben, Cox is the father of Essendon player Nik and Sean Ralphsmith is the father of Richmond’s Hugo.

Rene Kink, going on 30 and looking for a fourth club after time at Collingwood, Essendon and St Kilda, was one of the 28 rejects and one of 21 who never played again.

The other seven played 154 more games – Bailey and Nick Walsh stayed at Essendon to play 50 and 10 games respectively, Footscray’s Graeme Cordy went to Sydney with brother Neil and played 21 games, and Ralphsmith, yet to play at Hawthorn, joined St Kilda to play 34 games.

North’s Doug Koop joined Melbourne to play 24 games, Melbourne’s Darren Louttit played two games at Fitzroy, and after 120 games at Richmond, Graeme Landy, 32, went back to Geelong to add 13 games to the 41 he’d played there from 1975-78.