Aside from his brilliant footballing ability as a player and coach, Ronald Dale Barassi played a role in several of the key changes in Australian football. The game owes him a debt of thanks, writes Andrew McGarry.
Named AFL Legend, 1996Ronald Dale Barassi was definitively one of those people.
But while Whitten's larger-than-life persona grabbed the headlines and drew the emotions of fans of football in Victoria and elsewhere, Barassi's overall impact on the game was even bigger across Australia as a whole. Imagine a game without Gary Ablett Senior and Junior playing for Geelong, the Daicoses for Collingwood, the Watsons for Essendon, the Silvagnis for Carlton or the Hudsons for Hawthorn.The numbers of Barassi's career are striking — 17 grand finals for 10 premierships as a player and coach, a total of 768 games of league football.
Barassi had the ability to look beyond the obvious. In the 1980s, he cast his eyes further afield than Australia, looking to Ireland's Gaelic football as a source of potential players to change the game. By the time the experiment bore fruit, Barassi was no longer at Melbourne — but in Stynes, the Dees found a player who would go on to be the best and fairest in the league in a game that was not his own.
Ron Barassi had an unenviable task as coach of the struggling Swans in 1993 — he kick-started their turnaround and helped to save the game in Sydney.
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