ON the afternoon of Monday, April 15, 1968 - Brent Crosswell, then 17, followed Ron Barassi down the race and onto Princes Park for the first time. In what was the opening round match of the ’68 season, Campbell Town’s own took to the field in the No.17 vacated by the Brownlow Medallist Gordon Collis.

It would be the first of just 98 games – amongst them the fabled grand-final victories of 1968 (in which he now admits he should never have featured) and ’70 – upon which Tasmania’s ‘Tiger’ would make his indelible mark.

Today, some 50 years after completing his senior debut, Crosswell joins Barassi and the anointed few as the latest inductee to the Carlton Football Club Hall of Fame.

Though ill health has curtailed Crosswell’s public appearances in recent years, this most enigmatic of League footballers was truly honoured to be so acknowledged by the Club who first recognised his precocious talent – and graciously agreed to participate in a rare interview which appears below.

Incredibly, Crosswell’s final game for Carlton coincided with the opening round of 1975 - once again involving Geelong only this time at Kardinia Park – on the day that Mike Fitzpatrick turned out in Dark Navy for the first time. By season’s end Crosswell would earn football immortality at Arden Street, as a member of North Melbourne’s first premiership team – one of two victorious grand finals in which he featured under Barassi’s watch.

This week, on the occasion of his induction into the Hall and the 50^th anniversary reunion of members of the 1968 drought-breaking premiership team, the normally reclusive Crosswell agreed to reflect on his life and times at Princes Park with all its glorious upsides and bitter disappointments - and at the same time lament the state of the game that so radically differs to the one he played with such flair and finesse in his halcyon years at the old Carlton ground.

The following are Brent’s own words, recorded in a telephone interview with him in Hobart.

It’s a fabulous honour to be inducted into the Carlton Hall of Fame, and a little ironic too. I spent six years at Carlton, didn’t particularly want to go, but I had problems with George Harris (the then-Carlton president) who, through those representing him, broke a handshake agreement. I had no choice but to leave and we’re talking about five or six thousand dollars here . . . and when you think about it now what a pittance it was.

They say it was Berkley Cox (the former Carlton footballer) who identified me. I was at Scotch College but no one saw me play for Scotch. I was actually standing watching a game involving City-South (South Launceston) under-19s and they asked me if I wanted to play. I said ‘righto’ so they got me a guernsey and a pair of boots and out I went after half-time. If Berkley Cox was instrumental in getting me across then that would make sense. Maybe he thought I was good enough to play in the seniors at that point.

Carlton was wonderful and I loved Carlton. It was the first club I went to. We played at Princes Park in the most beautiful surroundings you could imagine. That area around the ground was just gorgeous and the ground itself was just about as good as you could get. It was beautifully shaped, it was just exquisite, and because of the ground and its surrounds Princes Park was the premier place to be.

I came across in ’67 as a guest and it was just mesmerising. I was just a young kid. I was immature, my body was immature, but just to come to Carlton - with these guys dressed in their Navy Blue outfits, the smell of the rooms and the atmosphere inside the ground - was extraordinary. There were 40,000 people and I sat with them in the old stand, the Robert Heatley Stand. There was something about that place that surmounts the atmosphere in some of these stadiums now – to me they seem a bit antiseptic.

The first game I saw was a game between North Melbourne and Carlton. It was fascinating just to see these guys, to go into the rooms and see them. Oh, it was a wonderful experience, it really was.

In my first game I think I picked up 15 or 16 kicks. The bloke I played on was a beautiful player, one of the most beautifully balanced players imaginable, Denis Marshall, and he was best on ground. I was just overwhelmed. I was so busy being a spectator that I couldn’t really concentrate on my game. I was so busy looking at those guys you read about – Billy Goggin, (Tony) Polinelli, Doug Wade and a host of other blokes who were in that team. If I wasn’t so overawed I would have done quite well for myself. But I was only a kid then and if I was starting out today I don’t think my body would cope with the relentless tackling you see.

I took a tremendous risk for Carlton in the ’68 grand final really. I should never have played in that game because four weeks before the finals or thereabouts I broke my collarbone very badly – so badly in fact that I couldn’t even bear to have my shoulder taped. But (Ron) Barassi badly wanted me to play. He wanted me to stop the Essendon centreman as I’d done in earlier games. I said ‘Barass’ I can’t, I’ve got a bung shoulder and I can’t bear to be touched’. Barass typically responded ‘You’ll be right’ and on the Thursday before the game he put me through a test on the other side of the ground away from the cameras. He said to me ‘Run in and bump me, I won’t bump you hard’ and I said ‘I can’t even bear that’. By this time the cameramen had gathered, so we did this sham thing. I never got touched and I got picked.

I didn’t know how I was going to last the game. My shoulder was so bad that a bump would have put me in hospital, but I played. I got through.

The wind was very gusty on grand-final day and it was a shocking day for football. The game was tight, the wind was whipping the ball around and it wasn’t good to watch. The ground itself was in shocking condition – it had been overused, there were bumps everywhere, the ball was bouncing every which way and you couldn’t predict anything – and we only just got home, by a fluke in some way.

The 1970 grand final was an amazing game. To half-time we’d played so badly, we couldn’t have played any worse, we’d played like dogs. But in leaving the field at that moment I genuinely noticed (Collingwood ruckman) Len Thompson puffing really badly, he just looked buggered - and I went into the rooms with that thought about him and the Collingwood players, that they were really tired. In the second half we started to take possession. We got our hands on the footy, we started handballing and that was it. It was just extraordinary.

Maybe there were things I did that drew attention and have stuck in people’s minds, but I don’t entirely agree with the assessment (that he was Carlton’s best-performed finals player of the period) and I’m not trying to be falsely modest. I played in eight grand finals, I played great games in the finals on occasions, but I don’t think that I was a great finals player . . .  and I didn’t like the MCG at all.

(Carlton Hall of Fame inductee Brent Crosswell won two premierships with the Blues.)

As for ’72 – and I still can’t believe that it happened -I remember having a kick end-to-end on the Tuesday or Thursday night before the grand final. I remember flying for a mark, treading on a bloke’s boot and going over. I twisted my ankle very badly and that was the end of it – a great disappointment too as we went out and gave Richmond a nice old touch-up. I was bitterly disappointed to miss it.

I was a bit of a bugger actually. I broke my arm twice swinging it around to hit blokes’ heads and broke all the bones in my hand doing the same thing. It was just dumb. When you play like that you end up hurting yourself more than your opponent.

I played with Barassi in ’68. He was just dynamic. He had tremendous willpower, was quick for a big bloke and he always put himself in the right position for the ball. He was a wonderful kick too – he could boot a terrific torpedo. But it was the indomitable will - the drive and the determination - which was extraordinary.

In everything Barass did in sport he had to win. He was obsessed. If it was chess he was obsessed, if he played table tennis he’d play until he was exhausted and though his table tennis style was awkward the ball kept coming back. I was a flashy table tennis player but he’d wear me down.

The game of Australian Rules, as it was played back then, was very dramatic. If you watch a game of football today you go there and you see the ground covered in people before it starts. You see one team practicing their kicking and the other team doing this and that, there’s lots of people with water bottles, and when the game starts there can be 13 other people on the ground at any one time - so the game is littered with people now. Back then no-one was on the ground beforehand. The seconds had finished and people waited for this tremendously dramatic moment when the banners went up, the players ran down the race and that was the first time you saw them. Now if you were an impresario trying to produce this show you would do it like it was in ’68 or ’69 – you wouldn’t do it like it is today – it’s just not dramatic and the mystique, the aura is lost.

What came down the race back then wasn’t just a facsimile of players. You had all these odd bods - ‘Big Nick’ (John Nicholls) crashing through with his massive frame, (Ron) Barassi with his strange movements, Sergio (Silvagni) with his socks down and his bandy legs – a great degree of physical diversity.

Now these players symbolised different things. Today, none of the players symbolise anything.

For me the game back then was full of drama and to me today’s game does not carry the drama the old game had. Even defined parts of the ground are gone. A wingman had a habitat – there was a little guy out there who could be smashed by the half-back coming through. The full-back and the centre half-back all had their habitats, and the forward pocket was usually the grizzling resting ruckman. They’re all gone, because there’s a massive movement of players all over the place and no-one can differentiate one player from another if the light’s bad.

Because I left the Club, perhaps the people at the Club (Carlton) may have been a bit upset with me, which perhaps in part explains the (induction) delay. But I was a volatile player. I got reported a few times and I don’t think that helped me particularly.

Regardless, Carlton was good to me. I loved Carlton, I loved the players and I got on well with them. I’d love to be there for the ’68 reunion to see the blokes I played with, but I’ve got this problem with balance, I can hardly get into a car, and it’s just a great shame I can’t be there to see them and indeed the other players I played with. You get so close to blokes you played with at the time, but this is the story. I’m sorry that I can’t be with them and I’ll never see them again.