Mick McLean was settling the pre-match nerves with a palate cleanser when the call came through from Carlton Football Manager Shane O’Sullivan.
“I was over the pub when the phonecall came,” Mick said. “Shane asked me to come down to the rooms to have a talk, so I raced across.”
On an historic weekend for the football club, and on a night in which the coach readied for game No.700, Mick (McLean that is) was asked to acknowledge son Brock’s 150th game, and the dark Navy Blue baton handed down from Mick’s father Roderick to his brother “Ricky” and of course his boy.
“I just said to Brock ‘Congratulations on 150 - the third generation McLean to play for the Carlton Football Club. Well done, you’ve done the McLean name proud’,” Mick said in the Carlton rooms afterwards.
“But that’s you and now it’s all about Carlton - go out there and win the game.”
That the milestone should occur on the eve of the club’s landmark 150th anniversary celebrations was not lost on Peter either.
“For a football club to be celebrating 150 years is huge - and when you consider that my Dad played 130-odd games, played in two Grand Finals and then my brother got to play, albeit not a lot of games in the seniors under (Ron) Barassi . . . Barassi and Ricky didn’t seen eye to eye, both were forceful personalities, two bucking bulls.
“For Brock to then come here and play and do what he’s done, is, I think, a great effort. He had a lean patch there for 18 months where he wasn’t getting a game, but he never spat the dummy - he just kept working away and all credit to him. Fantastic.”
Mick was adamant that his old man would have been looking down on Brock, “just as he had done for every other one of Brock’s games . . . that’s what I believe”.
“And one thing I’m proud about with the McLeans is that we never give up on anything - we keep going to the end,” Mick said.
Carlton’s McLean clan
Rod McLean
October 22, 1915 - September 14, 1979
128 matches, 32 goals Carlton, 1935-’42 & 1944-’46
Guernsey No. 14
Carlton Premiership player 1938, ’45
Roderick “Ricky” McLean
November 8, 1947 -
19 matches, 35 goals Carlton, 1966-’71
39 matches, 58 goals Richmond, 1972-’76
Guernsey No. 14
Brock McLean
March 11, 1986 -
150 matches (94 Melbourne, 56 Carlton), 2004-
Guernsey No. 7 (2010), No.14 (2011 - )
