A lot has changed since the champion centre half-forward skippered the Blues from 1952-57. Today’s unveiling of Australian Football Hall of Fame inductees’ photographs at the National Sports Museum saw him reflect on the evolution of the game over the last 50 years.
Hands has donated his 1945 ‘Bloodbath’ Grand Final medallion to the museum, to take pride of place alongside memorabilia from the eight 2009 inductees including Paul Salmon’s football boots and Essendon guernsey.
He has little memory of most of the ’45 Bloodbath – when he was famously knocked down, inciting a near riot – except for a forewarning from South Melbourne half-back Jack Williams that he wouldn’t be finishing the game.
“I kicked a goal shortly after, but I don’t remember anything until 10 minutes before the finish,” Hands said.
He concedes modern players are better athletes than their predecessors, but laments the increased stoppages and handballs producing a game he describes as “basketball by foot”.
“I still think the game that Geelong played when they won their [2007] premiership, coming out of their backline with long kicks into the forward line... they lessened the chance of making a mistake,” he said.
“I’d like to see some [teams] come out and kick long and have a contest.”
Former VFL CEO Ross Oakley described his induction as an administrator into the Hall of Fame as “the ultimate honour”.
Oakley, who played 62 games for St Kilda in the 1960s, said the award gave him the chance to reflect on the immense change the League has seen over the past 20 years.
“We used to run around grounds with mud up to our ankles. Today, they play on magnificent stadiums – and rightly so,” he said.
Oakley – who was a driving force behind the establishment of a Hall of Fame at the end of his 10-year tenure in 1996 – said the game had experienced a staggering turnaround to become what it is today.
He said at the time of his appointment the debt of the League represented half its annual turnover – $150 million in today’s terms.
“The television rights were $3 million the year I came in. Today you’re talking, we guess, $150-odd million. Crowds were three million, they’re now seven-and-a-half million. Club memberships were 70, 000. They’re now over 600,000,” Oakley said.
“The game’s changed enormously. It had to, to survive. Now it thrives.”
