Carlton’s 1995 Premiership player Fraser Brown is to present the matchday ball to the officiating field umpires prior to the first bounce in Saturday’s Round 3 match against Essendon at the MCG.
Brown will also be inducted into Carlton’s newly-established Ring of Honour which appears via LED signage on matchdays at all Carlton home games at the venue. Brendan Fevola, who presented the matchday ball to the umpires in the season opener against Richmond, is the first Carlton cult hero represented on the signage.
Recruited to the club from Lilydale in the Yarra Valley, Brown is a revered hardnut who played for keeps through 177 senior matches in 12 seasons for the Blues. He is of course best remembered for the match-winning tackle laid on Dean Wallis in the closing seconds of the 1999 Preliminary Final.
In a previous interview, Fraser gloriously articulated his feelings about that very special moment.
“All I can remember is the elation. I’ve never felt that elation ever in sport. Ever. And that’s Grand Finals included. I’ve never felt the way I felt at the end of that game. We were the underdogs and when you win like that … Christ almighty,” Brown said in typical forthright command of the Queen’s english.
“You might have seen that photo on siren time. I was screaming at the sky. I don’t think I was saying much. Only screaming. That was fair dinkum elation. To feel that way was amazing. That was the day [Jeff] Kennett got the arse too.
“Whenever you play Essendon or Collingwood, and to a lesser degree Richmond, you lift another cog. Anyone who’s played for Carlton should know that. And when you lift another cog, anything can happen.”
Brown’s involvement in one of the last dramatic plays of the prelim will be talked about for as long as they’re talking footy, the tackle on Wallis having been laid with half a minute left on the clock.
VIDEO: Watch Brown's famous one-percenter in the dying stages of the '99 prelim
“I remember seeing him [Wallis] taking the mark and coming at me,” Brown recalled. “Nothing against him or anything, but I saw him take someone on before, so I anticipated which way he would dodge. And I anticipated the right way, locked him in . . .
“I was airborne when I tackled him, and I was confident as I could be of holding him in. In my brain I was thinking ‘I’ll get him, I’ll get him, I’ll get him’, don’t worry about that. You wouldn’t be playing otherwise, would you? If someone’s running at you, are you going to say ‘I don’t know whether I’m going to hold him or not?’ It’s ‘I’ll f…ing hold him or I won’t be here next week’.
“It was almost as if I’d seen a replay before I grabbed him. I just knew which way he was going to go.”
When the final siren brought to a stunning conclusion one of the greatest of all Carlton victories - 16.8 (104) to 14.19 (103) – Justin Murphy famously hoisted the football heavenward.
Within seven days, Murphy would be gone, having wrecked his knee in a losing Grand Final, but he too will be remembered for as long as those frenetic final moments of the ’99 prelim are replayed and replayed and replayed.
As for the man who affected football’s most famous one-percenter, Brown’s still dining out on it.
“I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked by people, whether in business, in sport, or at the pub, about that moment,” Brown said. “The majority of them are Essendon supporters who say ‘You bastard. You cost us the 1999 Grand Final’, and it’s still lingering.
“They thought they were home and hosed to go all the way of course, and they would have beaten North (in the Grand Final) for sure. I’m going to say that now, aren’t I?
“You then go and ask a few true Carlton supporters who have been through the run of the mill, and I know that while there isn’t as much elation as in winning a Grand Final, seeing that game from start to finish still blows them away.”
