Yesterday in The Age, "Two Minute" Tim Lane talked to my favourite sports writer, Brent "Tiger" Crosswell....
Ahhh, the good old days
Former Carlton champion Brent Crosswell reflects on battles with the arch-enemy, the handling of umpires and drugs.
TL: Does the rheumatism flare up in the old war wounds on Carlton-Collingwood match days?
BC: I don't know about the rheumatism flaring up. I used to remember them fondly. They were great games. You got nearly 50,000 people crammed into Princes Park, and they were always pretty fiery affairs.
TL: And you played pretty well in many of them, notably the 1970 grand final. Is it time for a campaign for retrospective Norm Smith Medals?
BC: I'd make a big case for it.
TL: Was that one of your best?
BC: I played pretty well. I played better games, though. I don't suffer from modesty.
TL: You put the Blues in front in time-on in the last quarter after Tuddy got you in that high tackle.
BC: Yes. Jones tapped the ball down, like in slow motion as only Perc could do, and I simply waited hours for the ball to reach me as it left his hand; it came down like a balloon, and I could see Tuddenham coming at me and I thought, at least Jonesy could have hit it down with some force. By the time it got to me, Tuddenham was on me and of course he got me a bit around the neck. I helped him a bit, of course.
TL: A worrying sight, seeing Tuddy coming at you in those days?
BC: I played on Tuddy in my second game and he never really knocked me around. He didn't need to: he was best on the ground, got 25 kicks. It was a bit worrying at that point of time. I thought I might cop something here, and I was fortunate to get away with just a roughish tackle around the neck.
TL: Were the Carlton-Collingwood games particularly vicious within the culture of the time?
BC: They were pretty rough affairs, actually. Collingwood had a pretty tough side in those days and I remember at Carlton we used to play Ricky McLean and no sooner a fight would start than Ricky would come in. There were a few brawls at Carlton one day, I remember. Big Len Thompson punched Vin Waite in the eye, Ricky McLean punched three or four players simultaneously, and Adamson - who was on me - ran about 40 metres and hit someone. They were pretty rugged affairs, actually.
TL: Since when have we become concerned about umpires? It's not a part of our bloody culture, is it?Has the game lost some of its old colour?
BC: I think it has a bit. I like the occasional brawl. I said recently that with a lot of those brawls there was a fair bit of theatre, and I think it's become a bit too sanitised. There's also a lot of interference today that you never got then. You see today a full-forward and a full-back wrestling, and they're just interfering with each other. It's just absurd. They're pulling at each other, they're impeding each other in all kinds of ways. They can push each other away from the ball with both arms and that's OK!
TL: You'd like to see the umpires be a bit more interventionist?
BC: In some respects, but I think it's outrageous that you can't swear at an umpire. For cripes sake, that's an absolute joke. I don't know whether I could have coped under that sort of regime, to be honest with you.
TL: You were reasonably verbose?
BC: I abused umpires to pieces. And half the time they deserved it. I just think that today, the idea that you can't say anything to the umpires, it doesn't make sense. These guys are playing a physical contact game, they're all steamed up. Since when have we become concerned about umpires? It's not a part of our bloody culture, is it? We like to get into umpires, it's part of the fun.
TL: Did they ever come back at you?
BC: In our day, we had some good umpires, like Crouchy and Don Jolley, and they used to defuse situations. But some umpires would confront you, call you an idiot, when you were angry enough as it was. I actually hit an umpire once but it took on the euphemism "an aggravated form of abuse". I got four weeks but I should have got about three years. I was coming off against Richmond at half-time, there'd been an altercation, and I was abusing the umpire. Big Nick used to jump in between me and the umpires to stop me getting reported; he'd jump in and say: "I'll look after him, it's OK, I'll settle him down." That was Big Nick, he's a great bloke. Anyway, this umpire rushed up and called me a bloody idiot, or something like that, and it was the last thing I needed. I was ready to murder someone. I gave him half a back-hander across his chest and he fell to the ground, he was so shocked. On Tuesday, he changed his report to hitting the umpire; it became quite a serious charge. I don't think an umpire should have called me a bloody idiot at that point.
TL: Are you shocked at recent revelations about players, booze, and drugs?
BC: I'm not shocked at all. It happened a long time ago, it's just that the culture's different now. Those sorts of things have always gone on in sporting culture.
TL: Everyone laughed in David Williamson's play, The Club, when Geoff Hayward, the Tassie recruit, saw a strange apparition coming at him one day at Glenferrie. It's much more serious now.
BC: It is, and that's the point, isn't it, the way we might react to that particular character and what that character was doing might be very different today. I don't know. I haven't gone to the play for 20 years or longer. It would be interesting to see the reaction to Geoff Hayward. I think people would perceive him a little differently from how they did in the '70s.
TL: Were you Geoff Hayward?
BC: The character might have been loosely based on certain things that I did.
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