Before a crowd of 25,270, Simon Beasley booted a lazy 11.4 in the Bulldogs’ 39-point victory over the Tigers – 18.14 (122) to 11.17 (83) - to send Mick off on his winning way.
Jim Edmond, the Footscray captain of 1984 and a younger brother of Carlton’s 10-game player and later Australia’s dual Commonwealth Games weightlifter Bob, remembered Malthouse’s maiden season as Senior Coach, “having crossed swords” in the preceding years when Malthouse was chasing the leather for Richmond.
“(Ian) ‘Bluey’ Hampshire was the coach prior to Mick and we all loved ‘Bluey’,” Edmond recalled this week.
“There was a little bit of ill-feeling that ‘Bluey’ hadn’t been appointed again, but mick came in and wiped it all away. There was no animosity towards mick because that wasn’t his decision, but it was something he had to deal with and he did.
“Pre-season Mick called me up to his office and we had a bit of a yak and a laugh – and then we got down to work. We knew we had a good team, that we were coming out of the doldrums into a good period, we recruited well . . . and away we went.”
Edmond remembered Malthouse as a young coach from a successful side who was “pretty straight forward”. ”Mick was pretty easy to get along with. There was no bulls..t about him and he was on the players’ side.”
Asked how he best described his working relationship with the then Footscray coach, Edmond, speaking from a mobile phone aboard a sailing vessel somewhere off the coast of northern New South Wales, considered it strictly professional.
“We had a good coach-captain relationship, but I wouldn’t say we were close – and as coach there has to be a bit of separation – you’re not there as people’s best mates, you’re there as coach.”
Edmond, who spends his life on the water these days and rarely frequents an AFL venue, was asked whether he found it surprising Malthouse was still committed to the coaching craft.
“It’s a surprise that anyone would want to do it that long,” came the dry response. “Is he still sane? Clearly he loves coaching and good on him.”
