THE MOSQUITO FLEET
Carlton won the 1979, 1981 and 1982 premierships with what became known as 'The Mosquito Fleet', a band of pint-sized, highly-skilled and generally pacy midfielders comprising the likes of Wayne Johnston, Jim Buckley, Wayne Harmes, Rod Ashman, Ken Sheldon and Phil Maylin.
Wayne Johnston: "1979 was my first year at Carlton. We had a lot of quality small players and I thought: 'I'll be lucky to get a game here', so I tried to put in for a clearance to Melbourne. But Carlton wouldn't let me go and it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I became part of what was, as a group, some of the finest athletes and footballers that have ever played. We had as strong a four-year period as any club has had in the past 25-30 years. And The Mosquito Fleet drove that success.
"We had players with sensational pace – (Alex) Marcou was a state rep in athletics, Harmes was the Victorian schoolboys' sprint champion, Buckley was the equal of them, and we also had Sheldon. They were speed machines, and they had skill to match their pace – they were great field kicks and goalkickers; just excellent footballers. We were a bit like the Eagles are today with our depth of running players."
David Parkin (Carlton coach): "We were basically a bunch of midgets – very talented, mind you. (Mark) Maclure was probably our biggest key-position player and he was only about a 6'1 1/2'' (187cm)! Our natural response to our lack of talls was to run the ball and use it short to keep possession and avoid the opposition talls. The way we played was personnel-driven."
Johnston: "We were a full-on attacking team – we kicked in excess of 100 points about 20 times in a row. And with 'Jezza' (Alex Jesaulenko) and 'Parko' coaching us in that period, they ensured our fitness levels were high enough to run hard defensively: to chase, harass, tackle, or run to support.
"We had a great balance in our outlook and approach, and we had total faith in each other. Footy was still tough and nasty then too. Sides like Richmond, Essendon and the Pies had a very physical mentality and tried to rough up our little blokes. And although we weren't a physically intimidating side, some of our hardest nuts were actually our smaller players. If we didn't have that steeliness and toughness, we wouldn't have got the results."
THE HUDDLE
In the early '80s, Fitzroy coach Robert Walls invented 'The Huddle', which revolutionised how teams moved the ball from kick-outs.
Robert Walls: "'The Huddle' came about after a number of lengthy discussions between myself and my fitness advisor, Chris Jones, in 1981-82. Chris had a strong international sporting background after working in English soccer and American basketball and he'd question me about things like: 'Why does the full-back kick in even when he might be the worst kick in the team? Why not have a great kick do the job?'
And: 'Why do you kick out long to the half-back flank when everyone knows where's it's going?' In those days, players were simply told to follow their direct opponents, so we thought: 'If we huddle all our players together, what will the opposition do? They'll follow their men like sheep, which will allow us to create all this space for our skilful, running players.' It grew from that. We had a good two years' advantage with it, and we had an 80-90 per cent success rate where we would take the ball from the kick-in into our forward half.
"We had a few variations on the huddle. The most common one was the huddle at centre
half-back to open up the flanks, but we'd also have one close to the kicker to open up the area behind the huddle at centre half-back; or huddle on one flank or in a pocket to open up the other. We mixed it up and we used different players. For instance, if the receiving player was turning on to his left side, we'd use a left-footer like Les Parish and his teammates would block for him.
"But it wasn't like you could just draw diagrams on a blackboard and expect it to work like clockwork, so we did a whole summer of pre-season training on it. We had good kicks like Grant Lawrie and Laurie Serafini, we needed guys who could break, the timing had to be right – there's no point breaking into space if the ball's still in the crowd, which sounds silly but I saw it happen.
"But (then Collingwood coach) Leigh Matthews ruined it all for us one day at Victoria Park."
Leigh Matthews: "No one seemed to know how to counter the huddle. If you went man-on-man, it was easy for them to put on blocks and free up players in space. In the week leading up to the Fitzroy game, I actually positioned cones out on the ground and then got an elevated view from the coach's box just to gain a feel for how much of the ground they would be able to cover. We then put it into practise that Saturday."
Walls: "Collingwood kicked a point and our players went into the huddle formation, except none of the Collingwood players followed them. They had 'outriders', which we'd never seen before."
Matthews: "Gary Pert was Fitzroy's full-back and when he went to kick out, there were Collingwood players spread in such a way that there was no space for his teammates to lead into, like there would have been if we'd been playing traditional man-on-man footy."
Walls: "My players looked up to me in the coach's box as if to say: 'What do we do now?' I thought: 'Buggered if I know; work it out yourselves!' We had to go back to the drawing board."
Matthews: "Gradually, zone defence at kick-ins became almost standard practice."
RUNNING IN NUMBERS – THE HERCULEAN HAWKS
Between 1983 and 1991, Hawthorn appeared in eight Grand Finals and won five premierships, with one of the major features of their play being their ability to run in numbers.
Rodney Eade (four-time Hawthorn premiership player and Western Bulldogs coach): "When 'Parko' (Hawthorn coach David Parkin) started (in 1977), he was a bit revolutionary in terms of his preparation, documentation and review processes, but the game style wasn't very scientific – he didn't want too many handballs; he'd much rather you kick than handball. Then 'Jeansy' came along (at the end of 1980) and tried to get more run and carry from defence, a lot more handballing and overlapping and creating the loose man with handballs over the top, and he was able to do that with quite a few players back there who could run through the lines and use the ball well. We generally used the ball long by foot. At the time, I thought we were hitting targets but I've seen replays and realised there was some average footy played when you compare it to today's game."
Leigh Matthews: "To a greater degree than any other team beforehand, Jeansy had the Hawthorn teams of the early '80s running really hard out of defence in numbers and carrying the ball and surging through the midfield. It was so effective that, in the mid-80s, Essendon started giving away what you'd call 'professional free kicks' and 15-metre penalties to slow down our ball movement."
Allan Jeans (Hawthorn coach): "We wanted to outnumber the opposition. At training, if you have two players against one and throw the ball out and say: 'Bring it back to me,' the law of averages says the two will win nine times out of 10. The theory is that a minimum of two players with complete understanding who are prepared to give full cooperation without thought of favour or reward will normally beat one player. One can shepherd so the other can run off with the ball or they can handball to each other. We tried to apply that scenario all over the ground. It was a matter of getting over to support and create numbers when a teammate was competing with his opponent. Then, if a teammate down the field leads correctly and we pass the ball correctly, we should win that contest too. If the ball comes to ground, we create numbers again. How do we create numbers? As the coach, my training activities were aimed at achieving that; we rehearsed it during the week and tried to replicate it on a Saturday. That's how you create the loose man and get the running game going. Players had to make their own judgement about when to back up, when to support, when to leave their opponent, when to take the risk."
BACK-POCKET ROCKETS
While it must be said that the Bulldogs' 1985 Brownlow Medallist, Brad Hardie was criticised at times for a lack of accountability, the red-headed, perennially long-sleeved West Australian certainly adopted a different approach to defensive play. Traditionally, back-pocket players were basic footballers: close-checking, negating, no-frills, not overly blessed with skill and certainly not matchwinners, but the likes of Hardie have helped change that stereotypical perception.
Brad Hardie: "I remember watching the Nankervis brothers (Ian and Bruce) at Geelong on The Winners (on the ABC) where they showed a bit of dash out of defence, and I was able to take that a bit further and make it a real weapon for the team. I don't think there's a team now that doesn't have an attacking back-pocket player. It just changed the thinking a little because as far as I was concerned, if I had the ball my opponent didn't, which was a good form of defence. It's no good just sitting on a bloke and if he doesn't get a goal then you've done a good job. There's more to it now. That's what I was trying to introduce back then. I kicked 28 goals out of a back-pocket in my two years with Footscray and there are players now who are starting to do that. You quite regularly see a defender race up the ground and get on the end of a pass and kick a goal."
VERSATILITY AND UNPREDICTABILITY – THE GENIUS OF SHEEDY
With Essendon trailing reigning premier Hawthorn by 23 points at three-quarter time of the 1984 Grand Final, Bomber coach Kevin Sheedy shifted several defenders, including Norm Smith Medallist Bill Duckworth, to the forward line and the Dons piled on nine goals to two to win by four goals. Such unpredictability and demands for versatility became Sheedy trademarks. Among the many success stories, he also transformed Gavin Wanganeen into a devastating back-pocket player.
Kevin Sheedy (from The 500 Club, by Kevin Sheedy with Warwick Hadfield, published by the Herald Sun): "When I became a coach, (John) Kennedy, (Tom) Hafey and (Ron) Barassi were the three people who had the biggest influence on the way I went about my job. From Tom Hafey, I got the Richmond philosophy – the principles of discipline, fitness and hard training. They remain a cornerstone of the way Essendon plays football today. From Kennedy, came the knowledge you need to be physical in the way you went about the game. From Barassi, I got the idea that it was okay to try something different – don't die wondering, don't be frightened of doing something just because some people might consider it eccentric."
Gavin Wanganeen: "Moving from the forward line to the back-pocket (in 1992) was the major turning point, and the key, to my career. Who knows whether I would have played as long as I have if that move wasn't made, and full credit must go to 'Sheeds' for that. I owe him an awful lot for having the vision that I could become a defender."
QUALITY TALLS CURE BLUES
Carlton's 1987 premiership coach Robert Walls says his skipper Stephen Kernahan and 'dinosaur' ruckman Justin Madden were pivotal to the Blues' success.
Walls: "Having Kernahan at centre half-forward was a key because it meant that from half-back we could go quick, long and direct – 'Q.L.D.' was actually one of our catchphrases. Another key was having a dominant ruckman in Justin Madden. There are more than 100 ruck contests in a game, so we were able put a lot of set-plays and strategies in place and our on-ballers could be very attacking around the stoppages. That gave us an element of certainty in what is a very unpredictable game."
THE POWER OF HANDBALL – PART 3: GREG WILLIAMS
Greg Williams burst on to the scene in the mid-80s with his unique ability to share the ball and create the loose man with devastating handball, forcing players and coaches alike to rethink the way they moved the ball, especially at stoppages.
Greg Williams (Geelong, Sydney and Carlton champion): "I handballed a lot because I was slow and if I tried to get the ball to my boot I would be more chance of being tackled. Handball is the most dangerous weapon in football. The aim of the game is to create the loose man and handball is the easiest way to do that. Good handball helps you bypass lines, you can beat the flood and put defenders under enormous pressure. If I got the ball at a centre bounce and handballed to (former Sydney teammate) Gerard Healy and he ran 10 metres forward of the centre and kicked it to a dangerous spot in front of goal, we've not only bypassed centre half-forward but we've put the ball exactly where you want it – within only a few seconds. You can't beat it. However, the first option for a lot of players these days is to handball backwards 10 metres, but once you do that you're going to find it hard to get over centre half-forward.
"My first instinct at a stoppage was to handball. You can really set up play with a quick handball or two. Stoppages are the most important part of football; win them and you usually win the game, and the best way to win the stoppages, I found, was to get rid of the ball as quickly and accurately as possible, and it's quicker to handball than kick.
"Some people, when they saw me play, said: "Who's this idiot? Why does he handball so much?" I don't think it's arrogant to say I was unique. The fact was no one else handballed as much as I did. Everyone seemed to be kick-crazy. At the time, (Hawthorn's) Terry Wallace was the best centreman in the League and he'd average 20-odd kicks and hardly any handballs. Over my career, I handballed about 55 per cent of the time. Slowly, players and teams started to handball more at stoppages – even 'Plough' (Wallace) started handballing more."
