“MCKAY... to the wing position on the Members Stand side . . . 0000HHHHHHHH!! JES-AU-LENKO ... YOU BEAUTY!”

The late HSV7 football commentator Michael Williamson - whose emotion-charged call of Alex Jesaulenko’s famous mark over Collingwood ruckman Graeme Jenkin in the 1970 Grand Final is probably as famous as the mark itself - always took delight in reminding ‘Jezza’ of his [Williamson’s] part in it all.

Williamson, who called footy as he felt it rather than saw it, used to rattle off a none-too-subtle gag at Jesaulenko’s expense whenever the close friends crossed paths - something along the lines of, ‘You were just an unknown ethnic until I made that call ... I made you’.

There was some truth in Williamson’s politically-incorrect but genuinely kind-spirited remark to his long-time friend. To think that Alexander Jesaulenko, the Salzburg-born son of a Ukrainian father and Russian mother, was not yet four years old when he took his first tentative steps onto the weather-beaten sleepers of Station Pier.

It was in late July of 1949 when little Alex followed his father Wasyl, mother Wira, and his older brother Viktor down the gangway at the port of Melbourne, the grateful city that would one day bear witness to the little boy’s genius in its home-grown game of Australian rules. The Jesaulenkos were amongst the 1700 displaced persons aboard the Skaugum who, in the dreadful aftermath of the Second World War, traversed the globe from European cities in Germany, Hungary, Russia and Latvia, in search of life in peace in a land anew.

Jezza’s jump has meant many things to many people. The then Carlton Coach Ron Barassi, perched high in the MCC’s Smoker’s Stand that afternoon, remembered in a previous interview exactly how he felt when Jesaulenko launched himself northward.

Said Barassi: “The best thing about Jezza’s mark was that we kept possession”.

David McKay, whose torpedo punt kick found its way into Jesaulenko’s incredible grasp, said it still amazes him that the catchcry “Jezza” reverberates the school ground when any young kid launches for the elusive ‘specky’ in the schoolground or neighbouring park.

“The famous photograph of the mark was later used to promote the mark of the year, too, which guaranteed the recipient far more materially than it did for Jezza back in 1970,” said McKay.

Or, for that matter, the late Sun News-Pictorial photographer Clive Mackinnon, who captured what is generally accepted the most famous pic of the great grab.

“If you took that picture now you’d make a lot of money, but I don’t think I’ve made a zac out of it,” Mackinnon told this reporter back in 2009.

“Cadbury made wrappers out of the pictures using my image and they did send me a box of chocolates, but the chocolates are gone now and all I’ve got is the empty box.”

Early on the afternoon of Grand Final day – Saturday, September 26, 1970, Mackinnon, who died in May last year at the age of 89, lugged his lens and his tripod to the first tier of the then Western Stand.

This was no easy task for the then second-year photographer, having to haul an 80-pound camera and its support to his precarious vantage point in the front row, high above the half-forward flank by the old Smoker’s Stand at the city end of the MCG.

“You had to put a strap around your neck to take the strain of the weight,” Mackinnon recalled. “The camera was more like a gun, it weighed a fair bit, and if you had a fall carrying it you got seriously hurt.”

With an all-time record football audience of 121,696 people jam-packed into Jolimont’s sardine tin for the Carlton-Collingwood Grand Final, Mackinnon somehow manouvered his way into pole position alongside fellow snappers Bruce Howard of The Herald and Denis Bull of The Age, both of whom were shooting with similar, lumbering beasts.

There they shot whatever they saw below, swinging their lenses left or right of centre in unison, depending on where the frenzied air conveyance flew.

Then, about 27 minutes into the second quarter, when Jesaulenko launched himself onto ‘Jerker’ Jenkin’s shoulders and into football immortality, came Mackinnon’s “Minties moment”.

“Denis Bull was a terrific bloke, and he was a bit of a fang man, too. You wouldn’t have wanted to be standing behind him in the queue for a pie,” Mackinnon explained.

“Now late in the second quarter, when the play had drifted down into to Carlton’s defence, Denis reached into his bag and passed a Mintie to me and Bruce. I wasn’t particularly interested in eating anything because I was too busy shooting, but I hurriedly opened the Mintie.

“All of a sudden I looked up and said ‘Look out, the ball’s coming back. Without thinking, I quickly put the Mintie and the paper in my mouth because Jezza was setting himself and I knew he had his name written on it [the football].

“I sought of gulped when I took the photo and the Mintie went down, but it took a while to go down and I thought I was going to die. For memory, Bruce was in a bit of trouble too because I reckon he got a Mintie jammed in his throat.

“These days you can keep firing with a big mark, back then you couldn’t do it, but we all got the shot – which is why we all stood and shook each other’s hands. All the supporters sitting around us cheered for us too, because they’d seen the mark and knew that we’d got it, but to be truthful we should have been trying to get the shot of Jezza with the ball as he came back to the ground.

“It was one of those times I will always recall taking the picture. I shot with what was then known as a 5x4 piece of Kodak film. I’ve studied that picture time and time again and gee he was up there quick, so much so that none of us would have had time to get a second barrel. There were no such things as motordrives on the cameras we were using back then and whenever I caption that photo I always put ‘Memo amateur photographers – no motordrives in those days.’”

Mackinnon conceded that whenever photographers got together over a convivial ale, debate still raged over who took the best image of the Jesaulenko mark.

Was it The Australian’s snapper Alan “Spider” Funnell, the only photographer to capture Jesaulenko’s mark front-on?

Or the late Rene Ellis, who seized the moment in colour as part of a glorious ground level panorama?

Perhaps it was Howard and Bull, who each caught Jesaulenko with the football in the frame as Carlton’s famed No. 25 commenced his descent?

Mackinnon’s image, which first appeared in The Sun on the Monday after the 1970 Grand Final, depicted Jesaulenko at the highest point of his leap, but with no footy – at least not in the vertical which graced the newspaper’s back page.

“Part of the football does appear on the edge of the original negative, but Dallas Swinstead, the then Sports Editor of The Sun, wouldn’t let me include it,” Mackinnon said.

“The fact that the football wasn’t in the cropped print was what Dallas liked about it. He liked the way that that Jezza’s fingers were spread and he thought of the photo as a terrific instructional tool for kids wanting to take the high mark. He was right too, for even now when I go to watch junior footy, if someone takes a bit of a flyer, Jezza’s name still crops up.

“The sun was directly over Jesaulenko’s head at that moment, and not many people would realise this, but if you look closely to the lower right of the photo, you will see there’s a small shadow to the top of Jenkin’s shadow. That’s the shadow of the footy.”

Mackinnon always rated Jesaulenko’s mark extremely highly in its own right “because I’ve seen it on television so many times and it gets you in . . . but I don’t think it’s the best mark”.

“Bill Ryan took one in a final for Geelong against St Kilda. He came in from behind, launched himself over the pack and ended up head over heels, it’s by far the best mark I’ve seen,” Mackinnon said.

In saying that, Mackinnon believed that the Jesaulenko mark had endured “because Jezza got so high”. “Funny thing, Jezza used to say that there were other instances where he got up higher, and I’m not sure if he was joking,” Mackinnon said.

For the Melbourne-based Consultant Historian Dr Celestina Segazio - herself the daughter of Italian post-war migrants – Jesaulenko’s famous mark always carried a very different, more profound resonance.

“In my view, Jezza’s breathtaking mark in the 1970 Grand Final and Mike Williamson’s comment are iconic in Australian sporting life. I cannot think of a comparable example in Aussie Rules that evokes the same level of recognition, inspiration and admiration, especially for migrants,” Dr Segazio said.

“I can remember the great excitement that my parents and other migrants felt when Carlton, against all odds, overcame a large deficit at half-time to win and what pride they felt that migrants had played a role.

“The Jesaulenko mark was one of the main talking points of the win and symbolized the success of migrants in rising from adversity and being accepted as part of the Australian community. Mike Williamson’s very remark, ‘Jesaulenko, you beauty!’ encapsulate this, is typically Australian and gives a stamp of approval to a man who was born overseas, had an exotic name, and who helped inspire an unlikely Grand Final win. One of the most highly valued cultural experiences for many Australians.

“As a teenager at that time, and as I got older, I reflected on the significance of the soaring mark. It was a symbolic moment when migrants had ‘made it’ in Australian eyes, that ‘If you can succeed at football then you are really one of us’.

“If I had a vote, Jezza’s mark would be one of the iconic moments of my migrant experience.”