Ron Barassi

Barassi was a third-generation Italian Australian whose Swiss Italian ancestors migrated to Victoria during the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s.

They settled areas such as Guildford, Castlemaine and Daylesford.

Barassi unintentionally changed the game before he even took the field.

Ronald Dale Barassi (27 February 1936 – 16 September 2023) was an Australian rules footballer, coach and media personality.

Regarded as one of the greatest and most important figures in the history of the game, Barassi was the first player to be inaugurated into the Australian Football Hall of Fame as a "Legend", and he is one of four Australian rules footballers to be elevated to the same status in the Sport Australia Hall of Fame.

When Barassi was five years old, his father, Melbourne Football Club player Ron Barassi Sr.., died in action at Tobruk during World War II.

Barassi was determined to follow in his father's footsteps at Melbourne, and heavy lobbying by the club to recruit him resulted in the introduction of the father–son rule, still in use by the AFL today.

Barassi subsequently lived with Norm Smith, Melbourne's then-coach and a former teammate of his father.

Under Smith's mentorship, Barassi pioneered the ruck-rover position and appeared in six premiership-winning sides, two of which he captained.

The only child of Ron Barassi, Sr., Barassi was born in the central Victorian town of Castlemaine on 27 February 1936.

The following year, his father moved to Melbourne to play VFL football with the Melbourne Football Club.

A pugnacious rover, Barassi's father was a reserve in the Demons' 1940 premiership team before leaving to serve with the army in North Africa, where he died in the Siege of Tobruk.

The young Barassi spent his early years in Guildford, Victoria.

He was educated at Castlemaine Tech and then at Preston and Footscray techs in Melbourne.

After his father's death at Tobruk in 1941, a group of players and officials at the Melbourne Football Club pledged to support his widow, Elza, and her young son.

As a teenager, Barassi was determined to follow in his father's footsteps at the Demons, but the zoning system of the day required him to play for either Collingwood or Carlton.

To ensure he played with the Demons, Melbourne went to the VFL and successfully lobbied for the creation of a father–son rule to allow clubs preferential recruiting access to the sons of players who have made a major past contribution to the team (50-game minimum at launch).

Melbourne Football Club was the dominant team of the 1950s.

Under the coaching of Norm Smith, Barassi developed quickly.

When the time came for Barassi to be signed, Melbourne picked him from Preston Scouts in 1952 and he became only the second player signed under the new rule (after Harvey Dunn Jr.).

Barassi's first game was against Footscray in 1953 in which he was shirtfronted by Footscray's Charlie Sutton.

Initially unsure as to Barassi's best position, Smith played him as a second ruckman in 1954 despite his lack of size for the position.

Barassi played more as a second rover, and the term "ruck-rover" entered the football lexicon.

Within a few years, most teams imitated this structure, which ultimately paved the way for a new style of quicker on-ball play.

Barassi soon proved himself as an influential footballer, and he was quickly handed leadership responsibilities.

After losing the 1954 Grand Final to a more experienced Footscray football team by 51 points, the Demons dominated the VFL by winning three successive flags in 1955, 1956, and 1957, with the team at the time hailed as the best to ever play the game.

In 1957, he was appointed vice-captain, and he was made captain three years later.

In 1964, in what has been called "the most audacious signing in league history", Barassi left Melbourne for a lucrative contract at Carlton.

Retiring from playing in 1969, he coached Carlton to two premierships, including a record-breaking grand final comeback in 1970 before what remains the largest crowd in football history; Barassi's famous half-time injunction to his men to play on from marks and handball at all costs came to be remembered as "the birth of modern football".

Barassi retired from professional football in 1971, but he was lured back two years later to coach North Melbourne.

He was named a Member of the Order of Australia in 1978, and in 1996 was selected in the AFL's Team of the Century as a ruck-rover.

In 1981, after leading the club to its first two premierships, he returned to an ailing Melbourne, where he initiated the "Irish experiment": the recruitment of Gaelic footballers into Australian rules.

This rule, with some modifications and adapted to the drafting system created in 1986, endures to the present day in the AFL.

The club had gone to great lengths to recruit the young Barassi, and coach Norm Smith took him under his wing after his mother moved to Tasmania.

Smith offered the 16-year-old use of his backyard bungalow.

Looking back on the experience, Barassi believed that living with the man who was voted as the coach of the AFL's Team of the Century had a profound impact on his development.

On his website, Barassi wrote that: "'Norm Smith loved his footy. That suited me fine. His ability with young people, his strength of character, his ethics and values, came into my life at the right time.'"

His stint at Melbourne, followed by another at the Sydney Swans in 1993–95, proved vital in rebuilding those clubs as viable members of the competition.

Barassi's coaching career was both successful and regarded by many as revolutionary.

His clean record and passion for the game―exemplified by his campaigning for the establishment of a national club-level competition―earned him a place as a celebrity and popular culture figure in Australia.