Is there a more recognisable face in Australian sport than Ron Barassi’s? Was there ever a more fitting high priest for the hot gospel of Australian Rules? When he was needed, along he came, curled lip, pumping fists, front and centre, leading the charge into the consciousness of non-believers. In fact, the famous 1970 grand final, that Barassi masterpiece, was the first live VFL telecast in NSW.

Has anyone ever been more synonymous with “winner”? The Grand Final experience is something he’s owned, as a coach and a player. He’s won ten of them in both guises, and participated in seventeen.

What about force of will? He radically transformed three clubs, first as a player, then as a coach, and his fourth and fifth tries led to delayed-reaction success for Melbourne and Sydney.

His image has dominated our media for six decades as he’s moved through his various phases: matinee idol footballer, curmudgeonly coach and elder statesman. A little wiser and gentler now, he transcends sport and embodies everything we aspire to be. Ron was never a respecter of natural ability—after all, that’s just what you were given. Nothing to brag about. It’s how hard you work to get the rest of the way that matters, and that philosophy has marked his own career as a coach and player, and his relationships with others.

Ron had a way of playing, coaching and doing just about anything else that made it seem like the world’s future depended on the outcome—but he’s just as famous for his ability to get over it once the outcome is decided. Those of us who saw the CCTV vision of Ron getting a kicking outside a café because he had the guts, at 72, to stand up for a woman who’d been punched, still burn with wrath at the thought of it. Ron laughs it off, dismissing the perpetrators as mere cowards.

His new biography, Barassi, tells the story of a dauntingly driven man. But behind that image, so large, so energetic, so emblematic, one still suspects there’s a boy who lost a father he barely knew, and hasn’t got round to coming to terms with the fact that he misses him. He will though. There’s always something new with Ron Barassi. He talks to Robert Drane.

A lot of people believe your life has been defined by your successes. What’s the most important attribute Ronald Dale Barassi has had that has led to that success?

Conviction? And to use an Aussie word, being fair dinkum about what I’m on about. You’re born with them. I was helped by a mother who was built along the same lines. My family were all solid people. Solid citizens, so to speak. So I didn’t have any bad influences. By the time I was sixteen or seventeen, by which time you’re moulded to a degree, according to the experts, Norm Smith was a fantastic guy to put in charge of me, when mum went to live in Tasmania. He was the man she relied upon. My father was a good team mate of Norm’s. There were very good links to the Melbourne football club. Very, very good people.

I’ve had reasonably good judgement. On the field, but also when you’re a coach and you have time to think it through. I made a few mistakes, but I’ve not known anyone who doesn’t. I’d like to meet the person. I think my enthusiasm too. I have a saying I pinched from somebody: “Work is what you do when you don’t like what you’re doing.”  I hardly ever worked. I made sure I liked what I was doing. If you love it, it’s far easier.

As a kid, before I understood all the stuff about success and failure, I could see that you were very energetic and dynamic. You even seemed like an angry person on the field. I could see you were a bloke who made up his own mind about what happened to a game, regardless of what the other 35 blokes on the field thought. In other words, I saw that you were prodigiously driven. What drove you?

I’ve got the sort of face that, if I’m looking deadly serious, it looks to have a touch of anger in it. That needn’t be the case, but there’s certainly no trace of humour in my serious face. It makes it easy to say, “Ooh, he’s angry” but I hadn’t been. Mind you, I certainly did get angry a few times. Maybe a few hundred times. Some people might say a few thousand.

I remember at Preston Tech, in a cross-country run. I won it the year before, and being a year older, you start back further. I passed this young guy who had a professional trainer with him. Unheard of then. The kid said to his coach, “Barassi’s going like a rocket. What do I do?” And the trainer said “Don’t worry about it. He won’t last the distance.” Well. I can remember even now, I thought “Mmm. You won’t get past me mate.” I had had that natural challenging outlook on life that made it more enjoyable for me. Again, I don’t know where that came from.

I’m into the sayings this morning, but there’s a saying that is ten words, and each word is only two letters, but it’s powerful: “If it is to be, it is up to me.” No matter what you read, or what you’ve been told, what instructions you’ve read, it doesn’t matter. In the end, you have to go and act on it. You have to go and speak. You have to go and use your arms and legs or whatever. You have to go and do it. That makes everyone the most important person in their world. Not the world, their world. I don’t think enough people get hold of that truth.

My mum was struggling to get on with her life without her husband. She took two jobs and still enjoyed life. Never became a hassle to her friends or family. She didn’t lay it on them or anything like that. Fabulous woman.

You’ve seen dynasties come and go. You must have learnt a lot from that.

You’re part of a team, and it depends on the management of the team. The structure, the people in control. It applies to footy clubs. Footy is one of the biggest team games in the world, in size. You’ve got eighteen blokes on the field. Unless the administration’s on the ball, you’ll never have a long run of success. People will say, “Come on Ron, what about the players on Grand Final day?” Well, of course it’s up to them, but who makes them perform? It’s the coaches. Who chooses the coaches? Who chooses the medicos? Who gets the money rolling in so you can afford the extra little things for players? Who runs the group? That’s where success comes from. Wherever there’s a group of people trying to do things, they have to unite, get the best out of each other. All that stuff. Because of the rules today, it’s hard to stay on top, stay strong.

As a football lover, I’d rather it was that way than have a Melbourne dominate like they used to. That sort of thing’s probably impossible now. A club might come along one day with players of gigantic ability who are happy as hell—once or twice every hundred years. But even Geelong, gradually got together an off the field team, a secretary, coach, but the last man in the link these days is the football manager, and they got that bloke from Richmond, Neil Balme. Apparently he’s made a big difference. Now the coach is gone, the president’s gone.

But the other thing is that a Grand Final is bloody hard to win. Things can go wrong on the day.

As a coach you were meticulous about the details. You were hard on skill deficits. Now the game is what you wanted it to become. You don’t have those random elements any more. You’re not going to get a Crosswell, Kekovich or Blight kicking the wrong way occasionally, but being brilliant the rest of the time. It’s affected the game as a spectacle.

Yes, well you have waves of players all doing the right thing now because of drilling, not judgement. There’s not enough high-marking, not much long kicking, not much one-one-one. There’s hardly any duelling, and that’s so interesting: “Who’s gunna win?” It makes a game more interesting.

I’ve always been concerned about the future of our game. When I was 25 or 26, I was talking to a mate, Ian Johnson, who was Secretary of the MCC, and said I was thinking of going full-time into football, because I was worried about the opposition from soccer and that sort of stuff, and he said, “Now Ronnie what you’re talking about may be right, but don’t ruin your life.”

A few years later, Sheeds convinced his club, Richmond, who were sailing along very nicely, to let him go out and promote football at schools and junior levels—you had your own zones in those days—so it was going to reverberate successfully for Richmond. Naturally I thought, “Geez, I would have jumped on that.” He’s a man of vision.

We’re the only country in the world with six types of football, four going well: the two rugbys, Aussie Rules and soccer. Most countries only have one doing well. America has all types of football, but none doing well, except gridiron. It’s a worry. I think in 50 or 100 years, we’ll have two or three doing well. I don’t want us to be the one that drops out. Look, it might be that rugby league and union join back together into a new game. But it mightn’t happen because of that social divide between the two.

You’ve always had enormous self-belief. Do you believe in something outside yourself? Do you believe in God, for example? 

No. I can’t convince myself there is a God. I’m very suspicious of religion. I think about it quite a bit. Where did God come from? The Big Bang theory, I don’t go along with that at all. You can’t have an explosion out of nothing. Where did the first tiny atom of matter come from? Huge questions, those things. I’m not a believer in God, and I certainly don’t believe you go to heaven or hell. But we might get to meet the Great Man, or Great Woman…we don’t know.

You always seemed to have a bit of a scientific and mathematical mind.

One of the best influences I could have had was Norm and Len Smith. I’ll give you one example of Len’s mind. He said, “Ron!” as I was going past his office one day. He was in charge of the engineering department of this big firm.  I said “What’s up Len?” He said, “What’s the quickest goal you think we could kick?” I said “Nine, ten seconds I suppose.” He said, “Let’s go through it. The time starts when the umpire’s bounce hits the deck. It goes up, comes down. What if a guy was hitting it with his hand, and taps it, right along the centre line so we’re not losing distance, and the receiver takes it cleanly at full pace, and as soon as he knows he’s got it cleanly, which is probably a millisecond before he grabs it, he puts all his concentration into kicking the ball long, forward and to the square. The bloke doesn’t take a mark, but taps it to a bloke going past who kicks a goal.”

I’m following this. He said, “I reckon that would take even as low as six seconds.” I said “Yeah, so what?” He said, “That means we could score ten goals a minute!” He laughed of course. He wanted the game to speed up. He was the first man to say, “I don’t want any U-turns. I don’t want blokes going toward defence, having to turn around and kick it back up to the forward line. So I’ve got to have blokes going past for handballs.” So that was a basic rule. No U-turns. It made runners on either side go past, calling for the ball. We used to have quite a few discussions. Norm was pretty intelligent too. They were enquiring, not just the scientific side, but the human side as well.

So is it fair to say that emotionally and spiritually, Norm Smith was an influence, but in terms of football thinking, Len was a greater influence? 

Len never coached a great side himself, but I reckon he’d be a better coach of a poorer side, and Norm would have been a better coach of a better side. The factor that comes in there is that you have to keep their heads under control. But for me to be in the middle of all that, that was just a fluke.

But Melbourne Football Club was always your destiny, from the day your dad joined it.

Melbourne football club were a very good club, off the field as well. They looked after each other. Melbourne became strong when they had a businessman’s group formed with the support of the club, called a coterie. This was the days when jobs were hard to get. They could organise jobs for players. We’d just come out of the depression, and to get a job—gee, that’s what attracted my father down from the bush. He was a gardener with Melbourne Council, but it was a job. That funded the Melbourne footy club with talent. They won premierships in ’39, ‘40 and ’41. If the war hadn’t interfered—and they had six guys killed in the war. They suffered more than anyone—I could imagine they’d have kept on going. That’s what happens when you get a good group together.

Have the attributes a player needs to succeed changed as the game has changed?

Reading a game isn’t as big a factor. But you’ve got to be more of an athlete. You’ve got to like training, because you’re full-time. Occasionally I came across guys who didn’t like training in those days, but that was nothing compared to today. If you’ve read that book of mine, you’d know who they were. Brent Crosswell! Unbelievable! He could have been anything. He was just lazy. But he could play. But a lot of changes have been for the better too. The kicking for goal today, snap shots, the banana kicks, the ground kicking. Amazing.

Your public life defines you for everyone out there, but what defines you more to you? Your public or your private life?

I’ve had a much better football career than I’ve had a personal life. I’ve had a divorce and those sorts of things. Not very nice to go through.

What was harder, player, player-coach or coach?

Probably player-coach is the hardest. It’s not done now, and it probably shouldn’t have been done when I was playing. Very demanding. I did ask some coaches, about eight or nine years ago, what did they enjoy most, playing or coaching. To my surprise, all except one, who was 50-50 anyway, said coaching, including myself. I think it’s because a coach puts in more than a player. Not physically, but it’s almost 24/7. There’s an old saying, the more you put into something, the more you get out of it. It’s a hell of a thrill to coach a premiership side.

Who’s the best player you’ve seen in the last 30 years?  

Leigh Matthews. The Yanks have a great phrase, ‘Most Valuable Player’. Leigh Matthews was that.

Best ever?

Still Matthews. He won Best and Fairest six or seven times at a top club, full of all-time greats.  Wayne Carey had that sort of influence that makes him an all-time great, but in terms of ability, Malcolm Blight was the best I saw at North.

So I guess there’s a distinction between brilliance and that ability to influence a game of football.

Well, Blighty was a terrific player. Once every couple of weeks, from the coach’s box, in which there’d be a thousand games experience in coaching and playing, one of us would say, “How the hell did he do that?” He’d do this brilliant thing, maybe ten times a season.

Often your approach would change a player, and he’d become your work of art. Which work of art would you be most proud of?

Well, one thing that pleases a coach is to have a little scheme or tactic that works. In the 1975 grand Final, we decided to drop Doug Wade. He was told on Thursday night, and half an hour later, there’s a knock on the door. It’s Doug. He wanted to present his case. He was so respected that there were no problems. I said yes. I had to figure out how to best use him, at that stage of his career. He played a forward pocket type role instead of full-forward – and he’d been a great full-forward. It was completely out of character. I virtually wouldn’t let him go for a mark, unless he had to. I said, just go for it on the ground. He kicked four goals and could have had six. It was his first premiership. He’s turning 70, and he’s invited us on a three-week tour around Europe in October.

You’ve always loved success, but you’ve always had the ability to block out setbacks. How have you done that? 

I can’t answer those questions. It’s just me. It’s always a conscious effort, but it occurs naturally. There have been a couple of occasions where I’ve had to fight wrong emotions. But in the main, my natural inclination is to get off the deck and start fighting.

You’ve been asked a million questions in your life. Is there a question you wish people asked you?

What’s the key to the future of the world? The first thing is, stop fighting. I’d go to war like that if the nation was threatened. Other than that I think war’s just—I suppose because my father was lost to war. Even if, say Hitler and the Japanese had won the war, you think they’d have kept the whole world under control after that? There would have been secret movements, all aimed at getting back control of their own country. We’re not up to it yet, as a human race. Whether we’ll ever be up to it, I don’t know.

Published in Inside Sport, January, 2011