Aussie Rules' Grand Final brings back fond memories

The game features the St. Kilda Saints against the Geelong Cats, and should be a ripper, with plenty of hard tackling, long kicking and high marking in front of a sellout crowd of 100,000. They’ll be a fight too, I’ll bet, in the best hockey tradition.

I’ll be rooting (barracking back home) for the Saints, and I’ll tell you why.

The team’s last — and only — Grand Final victory (equivalent of a Super Bowl win) came in 1966, when I played footy for the De La Salle high school team in Melbourne. St. Kilda that year scored a one-point victory over Collingwood, Australia’s best-known Aussie Rules club, at the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the dying seconds of the Grand Final.

Well, the game’s hero turned out to be a tall 17-year-old kid named Barry Breen, who I played along side of at De La Salle up forward.

Breen would play school games on Wednesday, and professional football on Saturdays, which wasn’t uncommon in those days, when teenagers were recruited by league teams.

“Breenie,” as we called him, could kick like Ray Guy and mark (catch) the ball like Lynn Swann did.

You bet he got a great reception when he arrived at school on Monday: he was king of the lunchroom.

Breen went on to play more than 300 games for St. Kilda, and become a legend at the club. I left for America, tried out as a punter for the Cleveland Browns in 1975 and kept on pulling hamstrings.

I’m sure Breenie will be part of the pre-game ceremonies at the Grand Final, and I’ll be looking for him on TV.

Wow – 43 years: seems like just yesterday we gave three rousing cheers for Barry at the school gate.

Go Saints!