Long before Chris Judd was even born, the sight of the No. 5 Carlton guernsey was enough to send Blues fans into raptures. Syd Jackson - the only Aboriginal in the AFL/VFL for much of his career in the late 1960s and '70s - was fast, tough, brilliant and popular. His journey to the highest level, though, was punctuated by incomprehensible tragedy and a never-ending fight for survival and respect, which Jackson waged through the artistry of his football and the power of his personality.

FOR DECADES, Syd Jackson had the perfect party trick.

In pubs and bars, people would approach the Carlton great and ask, "Are you Syd Jackson?"

"No," Jackson would reply. "I'm Lionel Rose."

Jackson would do his best impression of the former world champion boxer by striking a few boxing poses. The ruse never failed to get a laugh.

Unfortunately, Jackson can no longer use this line. Rose - a mate of Jackson's and a co-crusader in Aboriginal affairs - died from heart problems on Sunday, May 8. He was 62, four years Jackson's junior.

Jackson spoke to the AFL Record the day after Rose's death. He was still in shock after receiving the terrible news via a phone call the previous night.

"I can't believe it," Jackson says in his generally quiet, understated way. "I was planning to see him soon. It's a terrible loss."

Jackson "had plenty to do with" Rose, personally and professionally. For many years, they both fought for greater opportunities for indigenous sportspeople as board members of the National Aboriginal Sports Foundation (among many other roles).

"It's very sad, not only for me, but for indigenous people and Australia," says Jackson, who attended the state funeral afforded to Rose last Monday.

Until recent times, Jackson was also mistaken for another Aboriginal legend. A man once asked him for an autograph, adding, "You were a champion, Maurice." Of course, the man believed Jackson to be the now late Richmond star Maurice Rioli, who suffered a fatal heart attack on Christmas Day last year.

(Incidentally, Jackson thinks he looks more like David Unaipon, the famous Aboriginal scientist and inventor whose image appears on the Australian $50 note. Compare for yourself. The likeness is startling.)

Jackson also did a lot of community work with Rioli, who was a long-time politician in the Northern Territory.

"We're losing some of our sporting legends, and our best community leaders and role models, who gave a lot of Aboriginal kids hope and aspirations," Jackson laments.

Jackson is such an individual himself. Touch wood, he has a full bill of health. He's still at his playing weight of 73kg. Very few former footballers at any level could make the same boast. He attributes it to playing regular rounds of golf. His handicap was once as low as three, before steadying at five. ("My motivation was that it was my jumper number.") He now plays off nine.

"I think I've got a few years left in me yet," he says.

Rose, Rioli and Jackson hailed from different corners of Australia: Rose was from Jackson's Track in West Gippsland (south-eastern Victoria), Rioli the far-north Tiwi Islands, and Jackson the south-west of Western Australia. Each ascended to greatness from harsh circumstances. In some ways, Jackson had the toughest upbringing.

Jackson has never forgotten where he comes from, although he could be forgiven for trying to. The older Jackson gets, the more he thinks about his origins.

It's a desperately sad story that Jackson tells plainly.

He was the last of three children born to half-caste Aboriginal Scotty Tulloch and partner Amy near the dusty goldmining town of Leonora (235km north of Kalgoorlie). While his father was away working as a camel trainer, three-year-old Syd was "ripped from mum's back" - stolen - by authorities and taken away, along with older sisters Marjorie and Jean.

The siblings were made wards of the state and separated. Jackson didn't see his sisters or parents until he tracked them down about 30 years later. They met twice, but only briefly. By that stage, all they shared was blood; the relationship was lost.

Tulloch lived for more than 100 years, but knew his son for barely three.

"It was a big part of life that we missed out on," Jackson says.

As a toddler, Jackson briefly stayed with a white Jackson family, and was given their surname, before being sent 980km south-west to Roelands Native Mission, an "assimilation factory" near Bunbury. The boys were used as virtual "slave labour", forced to do three hours of farm work before school and another two hours afterwards. It was a place of strict discipline and occasional violence.
Jackson called the mission home until the age of 15.

Despite the hard life at Roelands, Jackson has many fond memories of his time at the mission. Football was the constant.

"There would be 20 of us fighting for one or two footballs, and if you didn't get in there, you didn't get a kick," he says.

"It was a free-for-all, and that helped me develop my skills.

"It probably opened up opportunities for me that I wouldn't have had if I hadn't been taken away. But I'd much rather have my family."

For the past few years, Jackson has been at the forefront of a campaign by former "mission kids" (as he calls them) to attract enough funding to transform the site of the former mission into a learning and cultural centre capable of accommodating tourists and training programs.

"When I heard the land was up for sale, I was disgusted," he says. "I felt sick about it because it's a place that generations of kids like myself called home. We want to do something positive with it."

The greatest positive in Jackson's early life was the eminent Dr Ern Manea, later a three-time mayor of Bunbury, who was the president of South Bunbury Football Club. Despite rumblings from some locals, Manea took Jackson into his home.

"He was ahead of his time," Jackson says. "They treated me like a son, and I'm still part of the family today."

The Maneas are still alive and well. The day before our interview, Jackson called Beulah Manea to wish her a happy Mother's Day. "They've got two younger sons - I'm the eldest," he says.

By 18, Jackson had won two Hayward Medals as the best player in the South West National Football League.

Dr Manea had a rapport with officials from WAFL club East Perth, and Jackson made his way there in 1963. The teenager made an immediate impact, receiving the equal-most votes in the 1963 Sandover Medal, only to miss out on the honour due to suspension. (East Fremantle star Ray Sorrell was the winner.)

"I hardly did a thing," Jackson says of the suspension. "I was running with the sun in my eyes and put my hand up and made light contact with a guy's head. It was disappointing to miss a medal on that. The older I get, the more important it becomes."

An East Perth teammate who became a friend of Jackson's was the controversial Mal Brown (the father of Hawthorn and Gold Coast player Campbell Brown). The pair's mateship was briefly tested last June when Brown referred to Aboriginal players as "cannibals" at a football function.

"Mal should have known better," Jackson says. "But I'm sure he's learned from it. You just can't joke about things like that."

Jackson was often a target of racism from opponents and opposition fans.

"I was astonished with the way spectators behaved, and what lengths they went to to put you off your game," he says. "I'd hear it but I'd just shut off and try to kick another goal to get them going a bit louder. The louder they were, the better I was playing. But that's all changed for the better."

East Perth was coached by Jack Sheedy, the Mr Football of Western Australia, whom Jackson says provided him with a great grounding for VFL football, particularly in relation to discipline.

When he landed at Carlton, Jackson couldn't have played under a tougher disciplinarian than Ron Barassi.

Dr Manea had initiated the union, striking up a friendship with Barassi when the game's biggest name was on a trip to Perth with Melbourne's 1964 premiership side. Dr Manea trusted Barassi enough to say, "I want Syd to go to whichever club you go to."

Jackson arrived at Carlton late in 1967 (the same year Aboriginals were allowed to vote for the first time), along with fellow West Australian recruit Bert Thornley. However, the WAFL, sick of losing its stars to the VFL, blocked their clearances. The pair stood out of football in 1968 to become Blues.

Jackson was the team runner when Carlton won the premiership. Barassi says they were probably the fastest messages ever delivered. "But knowing Syd," Barassi says, "he would have softened some of the messages for his mates."

Jackson says it was the hardest thing he has ever done - "I never got to sit down - I was absolutely knackered."

Crucially, he "learned a lot about football, and a lot about Barassi's likes and dislikes as well".

Missing out on the premiership was shattering.

"It was terrible trying to be happy when you knew you should have been playing," Jackson says.

That October, Jackson went with the Australian 'Galahs' team on a tour of Ireland. He was lucky to get out of the country.

"When the mission was done with us," Jackson says, "they kicked us out without any paper trail or birth certificate to show that we actually existed."

Which made it difficult for Jackson to get a passport.

Enter - yet again - Dr Manea, who used his influence to fast-track the process with the Federal Government. Jackson, like many others in his predicament, was given the nominal birth date of July 1, 1944. "I feel younger, though," he says.

In 1969, Jackson was the only Aboriginal player in the VFL, and remained so for much of his career.

He also stood out for his genius on a half-forward flank. Much like current Carlton No. 5, skipper Chris Judd, Jackson saw opportunities that few others did, boasted dazzling ball-handling and evasive skills, and did everything at a million miles an hour but with excellence of skill execution.

He actually shaded Judd in goal-sense, high marking ability and kicking.

Regarded as one of the best on-the-run drop kicks in the game, Jackson was the only player Barassi allowed to drop kick in the opening minutes of a match when the ball was pointy and hard.

Jackson admits he still produced the odd clanger, including one he says caused the death of the drop kick. At Geelong one day, he accidentally drilled the man on the mark, Peter Walker, between the eyes and Walker had to be stretchered off.

Meanwhile, Cats star Doug Wade kicked the winning goal. "That was bloody embarrassing - and Barassi banned drop kicks from that day forth."

The flank was known as "the graveyard" and "starvation corner", but Jackson found it "very lively" alongside the likes of Alex Jesaulenko and Robert Walls.

Jackson actually sparked off the long-running feud between Walls and Kevin Sheedy. During a Carlton-Richmond game in the 1970s, Walls heard the sound of knuckles on flesh and saw Sheedy running away from Jackson. Believing Sheedy had belted his teammate, Walls knocked out Sheedy. Jackson later admitted Sheedy had been innocent - Jackson had actually belted him.

"Their blueing goes back to that day - and I'm the cause of it," Jackson says.

"It's quite funny because I'm great mates with both of them."

Walls doesn't blame Jackson, writing in The Age in May 2007, "I'd be surprised if there was ever a more popular player than Syd. The girls loved his good looks, charm, dress and eloquence. He was a man's man and his teammates thought the world of the little fellow with the big smile, who would back you to the hilt when trouble started on the field."

Michael Long, Essendon's great indigenous player, often emphasises the importance of possessing both hardness and tenderness: the ability to be a hard man on the field and a gentleman off it. Jackson mastered this. These qualities are encased in his fleshy hands, which Walls once described as being "like a soft suede leather". Yet former teammates say he could deliver a devastating short right that travelled no more than 15cm.

"Soft hands help with ball handling," Jackson says. "You don't grab at the ball - it's like a baby, you don't drop it."

Adjusting to the football in Melbourne was the easy part; adjusting to the lifestyle and colder climate of Melbourne was the major issue. It took Jackson two years to settle in.

"I was more at home playing in front of 100,000 people against Collingwood than I was sitting in my lounge room," Jackson says. "The bigger the stage, the better I was."

And there was no bigger stage than the 1970 Grand Final, played in front of a record 121,696 fans.

Despite kicking 55 goals and finishing fourth in the best and fairest that year, Jackson was lucky to be there. In the second semi-final, Jackson and Collingwood opponent Lee Adamson were reported for striking each other. Both escaped suspension, with Jackson pleading provocation, falsely claiming Adamson had racially taunted him.

"There's no problem between Lee and I. He's a good bloke. It was the only card we had left to play," he says.

The next week, Jackson played his best game, bagging six goals in a preliminary final win over St Kilda.

When people think of the 1970 Grand Final, they think of blond-haired 'super sub' Ted Hopkins' four second-half goals, 'Jezza's' legendary mark, and Barassi's equally legendary edict to handball that helped the Blues record the greatest comeback in Grand Final history.

Forgotten in it all is Jackson, whom St Kilda great Neil Roberts saw fit to award a vote in The Sporting Globe.

"Neil was being very kind," Jackson says.

"I'm not forgotten - I gave Ted his fourth goal, and that gets replayed a lot."

What should receive more airplay is Jackson's left-foot snap from the boundary during the third-quarter fightback. It was the moment many Blues believed they could actually pull off the impossible. Jackson says it was "a flukey goal", but he did such things regularly.

Two years later, Jackson played in another premiership. There weren't many crumbs that day, though, with Jesaulenko, Walls and captain-coach John Nicholls ("'The General' had the smartest footy brain I've ever known"), but Jackson still managed 13 kicks and 2.1.

The Syd Jackson legend lives on at Carlton where the three brilliant Aboriginals from Western Australia - Eddie Betts, Chris Yarran and Jeff Garlett - refer to him with due deference as 'Uncle' (a show of respect to an Aboriginal elder).

Jackson sees a lot of himself in the trio: the speed, the skills, the cheek, the unpredictability, the excitement …

In round one, Betts passed Jackson's record for the most goals by an indigenous player at Carlton. Jackson was proud to present Betts with a ball in the rooms after the game.

"Sorry about that, Uncle," Betts told Jackson. He needn't have apologised - Jackson was "rapt". He hopes the entire trio surpasses him one day.

He is also proud of his legacy and status as a trailblazer for Aboriginal footballers.

"I'm just so proud that a lot of Aboriginal players who came after me appreciated I'd gone before them and made it a bit easier for them."

This article first appeared in the AFL Record