This is the final extract.
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Mike Fitzpatrick and Wayne Johnston were of course central figures in the back-to-back triumphs of 1981-’82 as indeed they were in ’79. But how did the ’81-’82 successes stack up against the 1995 victory of which Parkin was again such an integral part?
“Back-to-backs are hard to beat when you think of the history, but looking at it from a selfish David Parkin perspective rather than the club, ’81 and ’82 were built on the backs of a sensational group of players who had already succeeded in ’79 and could have in ’80. I just put a few finishing touches in a team sense to that team, it was lovely to be a part of it all, and those players remain close to me . . . but I can’t claim much,” said Parkin.
“In ’83 we were hanging on to the belief that we were still there and it happened a bit at the end of the 90s as well. We made some fairly ordinary decisions with recruiting drop outs and cast offs and grabbing blokes from other places when we should have been turning them over and rebuilding our youth, so I have to take a bit of criticism for the way we didn’t go about it after two very strong eras.
“But ’95 came after what was really the only time in my life that we had to build. We were pretty ordinary when I came back in 1991, we finished well out of it and we had to put that one together.”
Parkin also contended that while the 1995 outfit comprised “some massively good players, it wasn’t nearly as talented in my mind as the ’79 through ’82 team”.
“But this team as a team worked harder in a more committed way. With the great assistance of the psychologist Anthony Stewart they took ownership like no other I’ve ever coached,” Parkin said.
“After the massive disappointment of ’93 and the bigger disappointment of ’94, the players were able to hold themselves together and produce one sensational year to win that premiership in the most defining way. There was never any doubt in any stage after round 11 that we weren’t going to bolt it in. I could sense it, smell it, feel it on a daily basis. It was going to take a combined opposition from all other teams to actually take it away.”
And yet, when Carlton exited the ’94 series following the disastrous semi against Geelong at VFL Park, and Parkin drowned in his diet cokes at the nearby Village Green Hotel in Mulgrave, the coach truly feared the worst.
Did he believe then that the moment had passed for the playing group? “Well I thought it was gone for me selfishly. I thought I’d be given the arse,” came the reply.
“I didn’t know whether it was true at the time but [Dermott] Brereton, Garry Lyon and Gerard Healy were sounded out by Jack and basically offered the job if they wanted it. None of them were, at that stage as they have been since, interested in going down that road, so I held on to my job by default,” Parkin said.
“To be honest, the most defining thing that happened [in 1995], after one of the more difficult processes, was to get Greg Williams and ‘Browny’ [Fraser Brown] to work together. They were causing me terrible havoc in that they were both small midfielders, we couldn’t have two of a kind in there at the same time with Ratten, Bradley and company, and even after my reappointment, it took me a long time to get those two to agree to share that role.
“In my opinion, the most defining thing about that team was that Browny and Greg became great mates, and they hadn’t been, and they shared the role from midfield to forward pocket. One of the wonderful stories is that Browny played with an ankle injury, probably shouldn’t have, but played fairly competently, and that Greg, having given up his central role, played midfield and forward, kicked five goals, and was the most defining player on the field and won the medal.
“To me that’s one of the magic moments in my coaching career given the events of eight or nine months before, and the struggle I had to get them to reach some sort of agreement to share that load. And yet when I turned on the telly on the Sunday morning and he appeared on that footy show he said something like ‘I hope Parkin has the good sense to put me back in the middle next year’ (laughs).
Of 1995 in total, Parkin doubts that he gleaned more from any other season in his time in the game.
“It [the 1995 season] was a great education for me. It was probably the greatest education I’ve had in life or footy - the understanding that if you’ve got a very committed, experienced and confident group then you as a leader have just got to give it over to them and trust them to do the job,” he said.
“They picked the team, they debriefed eachother and they did all the things which are commonplace in football today - and they were the first to do it. I can’t take any kudos other than appointing Anthony Stewart and delegating responsibility to allow him to do it. It was a very exciting time, and the best education I think I’ve had in life or footy.”
Of the nine Carlton premiership coaches in League history, five of them - Jack Worrall, Brighton Diggins, Perc Bentley, Ron Barassi and Parkin - all drew on the experiences which defined them as successful footballers at rival VFA/VFL teams.
A keen student of football history, Parkin knew that Bentley parted ways with his former club in trying circumstances, having fallen out with his successor as Richmond captain-coach, the late Jack Dyer, “and Perc Bentley told me that himself”. The Dyer-coached Richmond outfit would later take out the 1943 flag, while the Bentley-coached Carlton teams landed the two famous Grand Final victories of 1945 and ’47.
Parkin’s transition from Hawthorn to Carlton was no less traumatic either, but again there’s a happy ending.
“I was a Hawthorn person born and bred, we’d won a premiership two years prior to that, so I was terribly disappointed that it happened,” Parkin observed.
“But the important thing is that for both clubs, and for me as a person, it was just the perfect moment for me to go to Carlton because that was the right role for me. Hawthorn then made up it mind that Peter Hudson wasn’t the right bloke for lots of reasons, and it ended up with Allan Jeans, who started a dynasty at Hawthorn almost second to none in the competition.
“So you can say that Hawthorn’s courage to make the decision and Carlton’s confidence to give me the job when I didn’t know that I necessarily had the credentials to do it, for me as an individual, for Carlton as a club, for Hawthorn as a club and for Allan Jeans as an individual, those decisions became fundamentally fulfilling for all parties.
“I’ve only been in three footy clubs. Fitzroy’s very much like Hawthorn, and Hawthorn was almost the antithesis of Carlton. The one thing Hawthorn’s been able to do is stay attached to their past but not live in it - whereas Carlton has always been for the now, but more for the future all the time. And I don’t have a problem with that. It was the culture that was there - you were expected to produce, you weren’t there to muck around, you were a paid professional and you were there to get on and do the best possible job that you can, and when your time is over, move on.”
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