The last kick
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A blur of black and yellow and ‘Hungry’ Billy Wilson burst from the pack. In a flash he had the ball dropping to his boot. It flew at me like a bullet from 40 yards away. The leather slapped against my chest and my arms wrapped safely around it. The crowd of 30,000 roared but I couldn’t hear them for the blood roaring in my ears. An electric shock charged through me and I was scared I was going to break down in front of them all.
My stomach churned as I walked back to take the kick for goal. It was 45 yards on an angle. ‘You want this one, Jack, as you’ve never wanted one before,’ I told myself.
A look at the goal and I started my run, my eye didn’t leave the ball as it dropped truly to my boot. The drop-punt was on the way and I followed its flight. A Geelong pack soared into the air, but I let out a yell as it flew well above their heads and through the big posts for a goal. I tingled all over.
It’s strange that kick should stand out above all others in my memory. A premiership didn’t depend on it, not even the match. There was really nothing at stake. But it was the most agonizing moment of my 19 years as a Richmond player. It was my last mark and kick in League football in Victoria. It was worth a lot to me to kick that goal, but I’d have paid 10 times as much to have kicked it against Collingwood. A club I hated then and still hate.
They say a drowning man’s life passes before him as it ebbs away, and I believe it. As my football life ebbed away that day, I thought of the great years that had passed. The bad days, the days of exhilaration, the dangerous days. I thought of the times I was stoned from fields, running from riots, being carried unconscious into the dressing-rooms and even being forced to draw a pistol to fight my way through an angry mob—a mob that wanted blood. Mine. The memories of the greats of football, the drama and the comedy.
Football has been more than a sport to me, it has been my way of life.
I'd come a long way from that November day in 1913 when I was born at Oakleigh and my parents decided to take their belongings, baby and all, to the timber district of Yarra Junction about 48 miles from Melbourne.
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