“My Dad always said to me ‘I always knew you were going to be a footballer’, because from the time you’d get up in the morning you’d get that ball and go out in the back whether it was summer or winter, cold, in your bare feet just kicking this ball around.”

The speaker is Alex Marcou, Carlton’s three-time premiership player and a key component of football’s fabled “Mosquito Fleet”.

That the little man in the No.34 guernsey managed to play the game at all, let alone at League level, is something of a minor miracle given the incredible challenges he faced as the son of new Australians who settled in Thomastown.

And yet it was “right place, right time” for the 134-game member of the 1979, ’81 and ’82 Grand Finals and Carlton Hall of Famer, whose talent was identified by the Grand Old Man of Princes Park, the late Newton Chandler.

In this podcast, exclusively for carltonfc.com.au, Marcou talks candidly about a whole range of issues including;

•         his Greek Macedonian heritage and the harsh realities of war for his father and mother;

•         difficulties with language in his early years;

•         Sergio Silvagni’s intervention to thwart his transfer to Essendon

•         his hand in each of Carlton’s three Grand Final triumphs;

•         his hilarious take on what was happening to him when the streaker invaded the MCG turf on that one day in September 1982;

•         which member of the ‘Mosquito Fleet’ he’d first name in his team – Ashman, Buckley, Harmes, Johnston or Sheldon;

•         his greatest regret in football; and

•         what Carlton means to him.

To listen to Alex Marcou, click here.