Bay131973

I am intrigued to read that Robbie went into business with Arnold Briedis. Arnold went to Lalor High School, where I was teaching at the time. While he was 18 years old, in Grade 12, Arnold played at centre half forward for North and kicked 5 goals in the Grand Final. Arnold had a magnificent physique, and was an all-round nice bloke. At the end of the year some of the teachers went up to the Epping pub for a counterlunch and Arnold was behind the bar pulling beers. His teachers came in, and he was really shy. A bit like Robbie, maybe, it occurs to me. At the time it was incomprehensible that a superstar like him should be so humble, and treat scruffy schoolteachers with such deference. Life intends us to come to humility, I think, and these guys had it from the beginning. Their achievements on the football field made no difference to their self-image - like a game of football was just a puzzle or a challenge that they tackled, and only ever partially satisfied. Robbie always said he felt he was overpaid for what he did. So, I wonder at the connection, and the conversations, that led Robbie and Arnold to end up in partnership. Barassi coached both of them eventually. They'd have compared notes on that. But then life continued to work on Ron too - in his later years he was much milder. After the St Kilda nightclub incident he clearly became less assertive - age mellowing him perhaps; or illness. My son got me a soft-spoken birthday greeting from an elderly former Mr Football. My daughter was working at a function Ron was at, not long before he died, and as he worked his way through the people mobbing him she saw he'd dropped his wallet. "Mr Barassi, I think this is yours?" she said, and she told me he had tears in his eyes and the gentlest voice as he thanked her and gave her a hug. Time tries to bring us to where we ought to be; some people are there from the start. Arrogance wins, in the AFL, and power. But for people who see things in other terms, for them people like Robbie Flower are the true gentlemen of the world - showing the way, right through the middle of the Maynards and Cornes' and the harmlessly thick BT's. People like Robbie Flower elevate sport to absolute heroism. It is said that off field, Robbie was a practical joker. Reminds me, the Dalai Lama said one of the most spiritual things you can do is kidding around. As people, focused on relationships not self, on task not achievement, some reach higher and inspire more than any of the simply clever and gifted but self-glorying ever can or will. And when they are gone, what's remembered goes on inspiring and shining the way forward. Robbie was as good as it gets, on every level.

From upstairs on the wing in the outer, you would see him closing in the ball and the roar was like nothing - "Robbiiiiieeeee!" People leaping out of their seats to see what was down the ground, because he opened the game up, he would put it on the chest of a team-mate - a couple of bounces and a bullet pass, and half the ground was wiped when he swooped into play. I watched his first game from directly above him. By half time we were rapt - Geelong could not get the ball off him. A year or two later, his impact spread further as he controlled where he took the ball - and his team-mates had come to expect it. In interstate games, it's true - surrounded by really good players he only looked better. He was a team player - brought others to life around him. So thin, So humble, but dedicated to the game. He transcended everything. If you think of Pendlebury who never wastes a possession, always chooses the best option - Robbie Flower had that and more, and his skill and speed would have made Pendlebury look like a draft horse. The thing was, there have always been musclebound thugs who play the game. And administrate it now. Corporates rule. In Robbie's day, there were thugs on the field tried to put him out of business. He did get injured. Dipierdomenico, RhysJones, etc. But one out, he was unbeatable. In fact one of the great players of that era famously said if you could beat Robbie Flower you could retire - there'd be nothing left to achieve. So, with MFC so bad through nearly his whole career, Robbie Flower was like some magical pure essence of football, way beyond winning or losing. To see him do his thing was off the show, not just in his individual brilliance but in his being so absolutely embedded in the team. He'd get on ABC radio to talk football every Friday afternoon and with great earnestness explain to Barbara Horn why the Demons had a real chance this week. We'd get slaughtered again, but we'd go home re-living the impossible blind-turn, the huge sticky-fingered mark he'd taken, and so on.. My brother was a died-in-the-wool Essendon supporter, and one miserable wet Saturday at Windy Hill in the mud he saw an absolute slog of a game. He told me about it - "it was dreadful conditions, and the game - apart from Flower who was in a class of his own". He surely was. Still is. If you think of the story of Bradman with a wicket and a corrugated rainwater tank, Robbie's thing as a boy was kicking the footy high enough in the front yard to be able to race down the drive and mark it in the back yard. Too skinny to be considered, they let him run as a boundary umpire for a year. The gateman wouldn't let him in the players' gate for his first senior game so he bought a GA ticket to get in. The man was an utter legend, a total freak, and no ego whatsoever. He said he lacked character when he started. Football didn't deserve such a man. Petracca in Perth was pretty good, but Robbie was way beyond that, a mystical unearthly magician, week after week. There is no way you can adequately explain what he brought to his beloved Demons.