Since Belter Brogan retired as a suburban football legend (20 years, 97 games, over 250 weeks of enforced holidays before Acquired Knuckle Injury forced him out of the game) he’s been something of a consulting ideas man. Belter copped as good as he gave as a player, but with medication he still has a few marbles rattling around the attic, as he’d say. Recently, Belter delivered (via video linkup) the inaugural Wacko Jacko  Oration on the State of the Game. Robert Drane was there.

“G’day. Back in the day when footballers would distract the coach by collectively pointing to an unspecified object in the distance and, when his back was turned, nick down the milk bar for a Four ‘n’ Twenty, discipline wasn’t an issue (if the word was used at all, it normally appeared somewhere near the word “bondage”).

These were men! Hard, loyal, always willing to back their teammates – especially if they could get good odds from a friendly bookie.

They weren’t tough because they were disciplined! Everyone and his mother was tough. These blokes didn’t do ten laps dragging tractor tyres attached to each testicle with piano wire because they were disciplined! They did it for fun! Once training started, it was a different story. That’s when the pie eating began.

Nutrition? Spare me! Modern footballers terminate interviews when their bloody nutritionist bursts in to firmly remind them they’re forty seconds late for their banana and caraway seed – and I mean one of each – washed down with glacier water, just before their Acai berry facial.

Back then, if you wanted to know all about carbs and proteins, you’d talk to a bloody chemist! If you couldn’t get ‘em wrapped in pastry, they probably weren’t worth eating. Unless it was in fish-and-chips. Seafood was called “fish” then, see, and you’d find it deep inside an ocean of batter.

Pies, fish-and-chips, a golden coldie – there’s your food groups, all sorted! Not to mention your drink groups. There were probably other groups – who knows?  Spags like Catoggio and Silvagni ate fancy stuff the rest of us hadn’t heard of. Now I yield to no man in my distaste for cultural stereotyping, but we’d cross the street rather than walk past one of their smelly dellies, with those fat spotty snag things hanging from bits of string. What was that all about?

Anyway, this isn’t about eating, it’s about footy – what I’m saying is that back in the day we’d find a way to combine the two activities. Footy was more of a semi-organised melee. Half of ‘em would be punching on, the other half munching on, and one pillow-muncher umpy’s-pet who took the show way too seriously would kick more goals than anyone else, but only because he stood closer to the bloody sticks. He was the full-forward.

Some very astute coach one day came up with an ingenious tactic for full-fairies who got ahead of themselves, and, as they did in those golden days of the philosopher coaches, imparted his method with great eloquence. “Render him unconscious”, he decreed. Brilliant.

Hence, thanks to St Kilda’s legendary “Cowboy” Neale, Hudson couldn’t for the life of him get that one lousy extra sausage to beat Pratt’s 150-goal season record. Cowboy facially resembled Auntie Jack, but he was more “mother” – know what I mean? He got that knock-kneed goal nicker a bewdy. Hudson spent the rest of the match not knowing if it was Easter, Glenferrie Road or Mardi Gras. Kicked one into the man on the mark, and later ran into an open goal, threw the ball onto the end of his leg hoping his foot would still be thereabouts and out it went on the full. Funny stuff. Fair, too. It was a Grand Final, after all.

Melbourne’s Ray Biffin used to scare McKenna half to death with threats he was more than able to carry out, and occasionally did just for fun. In the end he only had to jump around before the opening siren looking ropable and grinding those gums (an old Sheedy technique), and maybe mention McKenna’s address and something about his family.

The old-style madman was so commonplace, he wasn’t considered mad. The lunatics had been in charge forever. Every team had a few homicidal types. Sport’s always borrowing from the military, and the cold war taught everyone all about good, sensible ideas like “balance of terror” and “mutually-assured destruction”.

Men who played honest – I guess what we’d call a “modern brand” of football – like Greig (compacted by Ray Card), Jesaulenko (slaughtered by Magro) or Flower (if they ever, just once, got their hands on that skinny bastard…) were unique.

Nah, they weren’t really mad back then. They did what they needed to. Later, over a Four ‘n’ Twenty smothered in Rosella and some cleansing coldies, all was forgiven. What happened out on the field stayed – well, it stayed in the same city, anyway. Generally all would be forgiven. Unless it wasn’t.

Once everyone got well-and-truly cleansed, Saturday night’s carousing would be a boon for business, especially for ambos or glaziers, as many a fourteen-stone meat meteor would be launched at the double-glazed panels advertising a cheap pie and pot dinner and wind up on the pavement surrounded by glass and lumps of his own flesh, which he’d try to reattach before the coach found out.

But mainly it was left out on the field. Or in the pub. Unless negotiations broke down completely, in which case they’d take the next step to mediation – a boxing referee. Three rounds of agricultural swinging, a la Rotten Ronnie and “Jacko” Jackson, and they’d be mates until next time their teams met – unless they were on the same team.

Okay, so some of them were slightly unzipped. Today’s game could do with a few of them though. Where’s the ghost in today’s predictable AFL machine? They’re skilful, but is there a place for the traditional mental case? Heaven knows, Bazza Hall tried! He was a heroic, lone psycho in search of a nuthouse. Sadly, the AFL gives no sanctuary to asylum-seekers.

Loudmouths, nigglers, jumper-punchers, stirrers, and various noisome clingers have become the norm, yet at the same time, in this heavily-regulated world, we’re supposed to look to them as the wacky entertainers. In times of enforced conformity, being different is a revolutionary act, my friends, not being protected.

Where’s the eccentric, the random? AFL needs a dramatic dose – something we can all see, not some little urban melodrama: “oooh that Alan Didak gets tetchy! You should have heard what he said…”

It’s all about the way we define normal. Today’s normal bloke is the one who shits everybody. Oh how we laugh when Milne, Ballantyne, Didak “give it” to opposing fans! How we thrill to Steve Johnson’s theatrical bids for a free! How we admire Raines, Picken or Crowley for their ability to prevent another man from playing bloody football!

There’s nothing wrong with their existence, it’s just that every Judy needs a Punch; every Bob Brown needs a Katter.

This is the era of the mischievous imp. The mouthy “minority groups” hide behind the skirts of authorities with no angry bastards to fix ‘em up. Because one species of nutter is gone, another has become commonplace. Footy needs an introduced species!

But you can bet London to a brick that the monolith of “normality” casts its shadow of the abnormal. Hence, footballers recently got on air and social media giving vent to an apparently universal desire to spiflicate Hayden Ballantyne. Ablett Twittered denunciation of Crowley’s tagging. Dissent had to come. Commentators were indignant but Ablett was uncontrite, saying their reaction was why players never speak their minds.

These days we have media gags, laws committees, match review panels. We have umpire’s boss Jeff Gieschen talking hippie crap about “really dangerous practices” and “duty of care”, when a bloke like Adam Goodes innocently slides into a contest on his knees! There’s one for the Biffs and Brawls highlight reel! What a loony! If we wanted to expose our kids to that sort of irresponsible craziness, we’d take them to a slinky convention. If Goodes does it again, he gets counselling. I reckon he might as well just let one go on the way through and be done with it if he’s gunna get suspended anyway!

Let’s face it, there’s a tribunal somewhere in the world that would label Guy Sebastian “reckless”!

I personally hope Goodes is embarrassed. He might have a proud record – all Australians, Brownlows, Premierships, games records – but if he thinks that sliding behaviour earns him a spot alongside tribunal legends like Brereton, Rhys-Jones and  Muir, he’s got delusions of grandeur!

And we get bloody commentators doing the AFL’s police work! Joel Selwood got off for a love tap behind play recently, and the propellerheads couldn’t stop going on about how he “should have” racked up three “activation points” for high contact and two for off-the-ball – or some crap. What are they? Bloody prefects? No activation points for being a smartarse though, I see!

Now what I’ve found is that when the Establishment creates too many rules, they’ll find plenty who break them, especially in this electronic age. That’s why the average driver now commits more misdemeanours than Chopper Reid.

So the real modern madman isn’t a Peabody like Goodes, or a loudmouth protected species. He’s the heretic. The one who upsets the system: the “inappropriate”, “unprofessional”, “reckless” bloke, according to the AFL witch-hunter’s handbook, The AFL Laws, and their Manual of Mental Disorders, the Code of Conduct.

Yep! We’re witnessing the manufacture of a new kind of madness.

Campbell Brown plays hard at the man, but the maddest thing he did was deny to the tribunal that Chris Judd inserted his fingers into his eyes (he did). Adherence to personal codes of honour is the act of a dangerous dissident, and it was received as such by media and authorities. As was Matthew Scarlett’s punch on Ballantyne. The public, on the other hand, loved it!

By sticking it up the Establishment, Brown took a leaf out of his old man Mal’s book, but if he wants to be dubbed an old-style nutter, he could be doing a lot better, frankly. Campbell’s considered a screwloose because he plays “unsociable” football. Hilarious, though I once saw him slap a bloke – on the arm!

It’s not as though he didn’t come from good stock. Mal showed us what a footballer could be – passionate without being unhinged.

The only time Mal completely forgot about football was when he was out on the field. Barely recognising his surroundings or his teammates once he crossed the lime line, Mal would run around taking swings at anything that moved: humans, umpires, seagulls, you name it. Nah, actually Mal was unhinged. Bad example. Bloody great to watch though.

Mal, who probably missed his best career opportunity by being born without a hump on his back, once flattened Carlton. The team, not the suburb. Though I must say the one-sided brawl did resemble this movie scene where a massive monkey wrecks a city. Mal was pissed off! What was a bloke to do? What would he do these days?

Not, apparently, what Scarlett did to Ballantyne. Now that was a nice left hook – first AFL punch since Bazza starched Brent Saker. Scarlett did time. We can expect more from Ballantyne’s kind. Apparently, big mouths are entertainers, because they polarise people. Eeeuuw! They polarise people! Well I’ll be entertained when they get poleaxed by people, every week! Otherwise, what good are they? There’s already a career path for mummy’s little no-touchy mouthy sooks. They’re called umpires.

Polarise people! So every team needs a bloody Kyle Sandilands now, does it?

Credit to Campbell Brown, he occasionally gets that thousand-yard stare and needs sedating at the final siren. But you see, these days a bloke’s not allowed to get angry. Back then, they played angry.

Carlton’s Jarred Waite is considered a modern maniac. There’s bottled-up fury there, no worries! The AFL must be licking its lips at his penalty potential, like some local Mayor installing sensored parking spaces with five-minute time limits! Jarred learned from his old man Vin, a Carlton legend as loopy as Oscar Wilde’s signature – though not as poofy, obviously. Goes without saying.

Vin Waite once levelled David Parkin with malice aforethought. Kelvin Matthews, larger brother of Leigh, evened up later and Vin woke up next to Parkin in hospital. It was like that. A match could have all the intrigue of a forest shared by one too many axe murderers.

See, even if Jarred lived up to dad’s proud reputation for brutal sniping, he’d be lonely as Lee Oswald. No friends. No “I understand mate. Bastard deserved it the second he put on that Collingwood jumper.” Nup. On his lonesome, under the fierce cyclopean glare of ten TV cameras, Dimitriou’s four eyes and an AFL press that makes up half of every bloody footy crowd.

Notice I mentioned “unsociable football”. Yes, some squib has gone and invented the term. You’d be dense as a box of Lethal Leigh’s thighbones not to see what’s going on here. The bastards have eliminated biffers – next step, label anyone who targets the body, tackles tough, plays “tempo” football, with “unsociable”. Legal, yet, apparently, unfriendly.

If that idea takes hold – and it might now they’ve concocted a label for it – the soccer mums will be well pleased.

Aaah.

Look, I understand them judging the old knucklers harshly, but believe me, the blokes on the receiving end got their revenge. They became administrators.

Take Dimitriou. Little Andy was blithely pursuing an opponent one Saturday, thinking how lovely it is to play chasey and get paid for it. He was about to say “you’re it!” when that nasty Leigh Matthews rudely interrupted his slow-motion pastoral idyll with a high-speed hit that made 9-11 look like Swan Lake. Andrew’s excruciating welcome to the dirty low down was Dermott Brereton’s first game. Even Derm couldn’t believe the sound of the impact – sort of like a sackful of plumber’s fittings, mincemeat and glass thumping the ground at terminal velocity.

Dimitriou rose from the nest of his own limbs like a phoenix with a white collar and plotted revenge. Today, he presides over a conspiracy to reinstate chasey. And, irony of ironies, he’s got Matthews on the rules committee. You know that old Mafia saying about keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer!

So anyway, today’s officially-sanctioned “lunatic” is not so much a mad mongrel as a mattoid metrosexual. The bounds of acceptable madness have narrowed. Even a bloke like Goodes can be made to look decidedly Baddes!

But if you really want bad – and mad – wait till Ballantyne crosses paths with GWS’s Dean Brogan – a very angry big bloke who’d cut him in half just for the fun of beating him up twice.

Trouble is, the more the Brogans get sucked in, the more of them will disappear because they’ll cost clubs, and the more they cost clubs, the fewer of those “types” will be recruited, and the fewer of those “types” are recruited, the closer Andy and the mums will be to their weekly game of chasey.

Too much suppression! We need radical solutions. So AFL, take note. Here’s Belter’s 12-point plan:

1. An “all-in” round. We pay earnest enough homage to indigenous people, women and soldiers one round every year. No doubt we’ll be “celebrating” everyone’s sexual preferences with an LGBT round within a decade.

So why not have a weekend of anything goes? Let’s pay tribute to the knuckledraggers who made our sport great for 150-odd years. Release the inner thug for a weekend. International Rules has proved what our boys can do without restrictions – they make stew out of those poor Irish and you get more coathangers than I’ve seen since Dallas Donnelly was charging around (pardon the rugby league reference). And make sure all those loudmouth pests play! Hooooooey! We going huntin’! Bet they’d pull their heads in the rest of the year if they knew that was coming!

Part of the “all-in” concept should be all-in commentary, just to show how intellectually underrated the old knuckledraggers are. Never short of a word, they can declaim on any number of topics: World affairs (bombing un-Australian countries), sexual preferences, race relations, you name it.

2. Have at least one non-human on every team. Controversial, I know. But why not? Show me where the rule book says footy has to be played by people! Now, I’ve searched the animal kingdom and it seems primates are best suited. I mean, you couldn’t have horses for example. Intelligent though horses are, hooves are impractical, and the sight of the screen going up at the first sign of a hammie or ACL might traumatise the kiddies.

And anyway, it’s time someone pointed out the obvious, entrenched apeism of the AFL. Okay they don’t all have opposable thumbs, but at least the tree-swingers have hands, they can even grasp a ball with their feet, and I’m pretty sure the higher functioning ones are smarter than some of the blokes I’ve mentioned. And a few banana peels strewn about the field might add that much-needed touch of the random.

Imagine the shitfight when Carlton’s baboon meets Collingwood’s orang-utan! Port Adelaide might appreciate a strong, sturdy, high-leaping gorilla in their ruck division. Who needs height? Can’t ruck without arms, and the sight of a gorilla pulling one off and beating its owner over the head with the wet end might be good for a cack!

3. Get rid of Mad Monday and institute Silly Season. Look, the AFL has this weird “look away” attitude to celebrations the Monday after a season of stifling bureaucracy. Suddenly the streets are flooded with boofheads wielding dildos, engaging in gangbangs and incommoding members of the public, and no-one’s using words like “disrepute”, “dignity” and “inappropriate” – a good thing. There was a time when players didn’t need Mad Monday to be tossers. I can understand this family focus clubs have – after all, who better to extract money from adults for signed memorabilia than the kiddies? But I think it’s time for clubs to reinstate regular blokes-only pie and porn nights.
4. Allow a bit of physical interaction with the crowd. After all, smartarses are a problem there too, you know. Flying bottles are a bit of a danger, admittedly, but nothing a player wouldn’t once have encountered in his own dressing room.

I cite the great Robbie Muir, who went after a mouthy spectator during that legendary last game before his lifetime ban. When those wild eyes fixed on you, you might as well’ve dug your grave, sat on the edge and hoped Muir would be gentle with the interment.

This fan mouthed off at Muir, who turned that savage visage his way, made a move, and the bloke was that terrified, he involuntarily warped into some other part of the world and no-one ever saw him again. That’s entertainment!

I often engaged in a bit of banter and badinage with the crowds myself and it’s a bit of fun, soon forgotten. I recall once, this bloke in a Ferntree Gully jumper standing on the fence was abusing me. Seeing red, I theatrically whipped the offending guernsey onto the turf and stomped it into the mud. In the state I was in, how was I to know the bloke was still wearing it? Anyway, all was forgiven. The bloke never said a word about it, even years later when the speech therapy kicked in and he was able to utter a few syllables again.

5. Take a leaf out of WWE’s book. Allow foreign objects and mongrels who know how to use them, like Magnificent Don Muraco (he of the legendary donut-eating interview), or Rowdy Roddy Piper. A couple of Aussie Rules players made the easy transition to grappling in the old days, notably Collingwood champion Murray Weideman. It’s time for the grunt ‘n’ groaners to give something back: brainbusters, concealed weapons, figure four leg locks. Hey! What about the good old sleeper hold? Get the Hulkster out here to show ‘em how it’s done! Picture it: Judd bursts through a pack only to come to a sudden, dramatic halt – legs fling out, head’s encased in a pair of the big ol’ “twenty-four-inch pythons”. Umpire lifts the arm once, twice, third time – no reaction. He’s out! Free kick for a perfectly executed kip grip! Anyway Judd started it, with his Stephen Segal death hold or whatever that was supposed to be. Maybe we could combine this point with our all-in round.
6. Bring back capital punishment just for smartarses…is all this a bit too much change at once, you think? I can never tell once the ideas get flowing. Anyway, bell’s gone and I’ve got a team meeting to attend.

So… yeah nah yeah. If you want to join me in my crusade to restore some insanity to footy, get onto my Twitter account, Barry_the_belter, or like my Belter page on My Face (I get onto my fancy heavily-upholstered, bolted down computer once a day) or write to me. Just address it, ‘Belter, Ward Three, Fairfield Sanatorium for the Confounded, Sportsman’s wing’. Or call. Just don’t be put off by the funny voice message: “Home for the confused. Who am I?” That’s just me mate Masher being serious. Thanks for listening.”

Published in Inside Sport, August 2012