The match, attended by 119,165 spectators, was won by Richmond by a margin of 25 points, marking that club's seventh VFL/AFL premiership victory.

These bastards have got us.’. Hal Browne (injured Balmain centre): At training on the Tuesday night, Nosa said, ‘This is what we’re going to do — every time they get a roll-on, one of you go down hurt. But the fact is we weren’t.’ Most insiders recognise that Leo Nosworthy was the brains behind the ploy, and some have even gone as far as admitting that the Tigers used the tactic on other occasions, during and after the ’69 season ….

Ron Coote (Souths lock): The one thing they did that did us in that day was the way in which they slowed the game … taking a dive the way they did … it seemed like it was every couple of minutes that someone sat down injured, and it threw us off our game altogether. They never laid down. The VFL introduced a rule awarding a free kick against a player if he kicked the ball out of bounds on the full. The folklore that exists around the 1969 grand final has done more than anything else to keep the game alive in the consciousness of the rugby league community. Melbourne took the "wooden spoon" in 1969. Get ’em up!’ Keith Page had a look and didn’t know which one to get up because there were five of us down at one stage and there weren’t enough St John ambos to go around. In fact, the ‘correct weight’ flag was raised long ago on the answer, although traditional pockets of silence and stonewalling exist to this day, appropriately in line with the fabled Balmain motto: ‘Smile and Stick.’. David Astbury accepts the David Mandie Community Award. AFL Tables: 1960 Grand Final; The Official statistical history of the AFL 2004; Ross, J. Don't have an account? A player could be substituted for any reason; however, once substituted, a player could not return to the field of play under any circumstances. Slowing them down with stoppages would make it harder for them … it would upset what they wanted to do. To join the conversation, please log in. In ’69, if a player went down hurt, play stopped and an ambulance man ran out on to the field. The idea was to stop them getting their momentum. SOUTHS have always claimed they were cheated out of the game by Tigers’ tactic of laying down ‘injured’, which threw the Rabbitohs’ star players out of their rhythm and gave Balmain’s forwards a breather. Souths knew they were up against it in the grand final.

The understandable protests from John Sattler and his men were for nothing. Peter Boulton caught my attention. I remember one game against Canterbury in the early ’70s when they started to get a bit of momentum and I said to Terry Cross, one of the young blokes in the team, that we needed a rest. There was a hefty two-to-one penalty count in Balmain’s favour, but it was generally agreed that the Tigers’ victory was entirely deserved. Melbourne did not field a team from 1916–18 due to the First World War, Known as the Victorian Football League from 1897–1989; no grand finals were held in 1897 and 1924. This feature is not available right now. Richmond had only qualified for the finals on percentage and were underdogs coming into the game, with Carlton being the reigning premiers.

Beames, P., "Melbourne Proves It Greatness: Already Favored for Next Year", South Australian National Football League, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1960_VFL_Grand_Final&oldid=962574575, All Wikipedia articles written in Australian English, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 14 June 2020, at 21:12. The match, attended despite the conditions by 97,457 spectators, was won by Melbourne by a margin of 48 points, marking that club's 11th premiership victory.

You can find out more about our policy and your choices, including how to opt-out They were carrying him off on a stretcher. He was always telling us to lay down because he needed a rest.

Garry Leo (Balmain prop): Whenever someone went down injured in those days the play was stopped and the ambulanceman ran on. Bob Smithies (Balmain fullback): I don’t believe the stoppages made the difference everybody thought.