On Thursday night, the esteemed judges of Fox Footy will, after much deliberation, declare their Team of the Century of League football's left footers.
Presumably, Ken Hunter and Wayne Johnston will be amongst them.
But in the meantime, and at rather short notice, here’s a Carlton 22 combining the best of Carlton’s “lefties” – both the old and the new - in the 50 years since John “Ragsy” Goold played his first game in Round 7, 1963 (appropriately enough against the team formerly known as Footscray).
Though the team is bereft of a Brownlow, Coleman and Norm Smith Medalist, no fewer than 12 members of the starting 18 are Carlton Premiership players – Ang Christou, Jon Dorotich, Adrian Gallagher, John Goold, Ken Hunter, Paul Hurst, Wayne Johnston, Brian Kekovich, Justin Madden, Brad Pearce, Shane Robertson and the late Vin Waite.
Brian Kekovich, who booted four of Carlton’s seven goals in a match-winning performance in the 1968 Grand Final, is a no-brainer at full-forward, as is the rover Adrian Gallagher, the three-time Premiership player of 1968, ’70 and ’72.
Justin Madden earns following duties as the No.1 ruckman from Matthew Allan and Robert Warnock, with current Carlton players Kade Simpson and Matthew Watson also featuring.
Watson is of course just 15 games into his senior AFL career – but is he the best kick in the comp?
A sentimental inclusion on interchange is Dandenong’s legendary full-forward Jim “Frosty” Miller. Miller managed just 11 senior appearances for the Blues between 1964 and ’65 at the time Ron Barassi assumed control as Carlton Senior Coach.
Gallagher, who cited contemporaries Jim Pleydell and Ian Nicoll as exponents of the left foot kick, recalled that Miller was one of a number of Carlton players who drifted off the scene at that moment in time.
“‘Frosty’ kicked six against Collingwood out at Victoria Park and about two weeks later he was dropped and gone. In those days you had to conform to what ‘Barass’ (Ron Barassi) said. Barass wanted you to go out there and say ‘I’ll stick it up you’ and if you didn’t conform you cracked the s…s and went home.
“Frosty” went back to the VFA and kicked a thousand goals . . . and who’s to say he wouldn’t have kicked a thousand at League level?”
On the science of kicking left foot, Gallagher, a keen student of the game, rated the practice “an absolute advantage for me”.
“I was a fraction slow, but the ability to turn onto the left to kick gave me half a yard. It’s hard to gauge, but I reckon it gave me a certain amount of time to settle,” Gallagher said.
“Turning onto the left is amazing in that it gives you that little bit of extra time to wind up, and if you look at a bloke like (Ang) Christou he seemed to have time to kick it a mile. You see Christou in Watson now.”
A member of the match committee in Carlton’s last Premiership season of 1995, Gallagher admitted he found it difficult to volunteer which of Hunter or Johnston he’d first name in his team.
“Oh gee, Hunter’s up there, but so is Johnston. That is a very good question,” Gallagher said.
“It’s hard being a selector isn’t it, so for best player that is a toss-up.”
The Carlton Team of “Lefties” of 1963-2013 is as follows;
Backs: Ang Christou, Matthew Watson, Vin Waite
Half-backs: Ken Hunter, John Goold, Paul Hurst
Centres: Shane Robertson, Wayne Johnston, Jim Pleydell
Half-forwards: Luke O'Sullivan, Jon Dorotich, Simon Beaumont
Forwards: Matthew Allan, Brian Kekovich, Brad Pearce
Followers: Justin Madden, Kade Simpson
Rover: Adrian Gallagher
Interchange: Kevin Heath, Robert Warnock, Jim “Frosty” Miller
Sub: Ricky McLean
Emergency “lefties” from: Chris Bryan, Jamie Dunlop, Jeremy Laidler, Michael Mansfield, Corey McGrath, Troy Menzel, Rhys O’Keeffe and Stephen Oliver.
