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[Caveman]

I have just finished watching the Hall of Fame night dvd.This can be bought at the club shop at 417, which I did around a fortnight ago. Have seen parts of it, but sat down this evening to watch the whole thing from cover to cover.

Some wonderful interviews amongst it- the more inspiring ones were with Charlie Sutton and Neil Sachse.

The video/dvd is of the Hall of Fame night- the club's inaugural Hall of Fame function back in May of this year. A select group of people are nominated for Hall of Hame induction and there are two who are inducted as club legends.

It begins with the club Pioneers- men like the highly successful Premiership winning President John Cuming who was there in the early years of the 1900's. John Cuming died in 1911, It seems weird to label John Cuming as a 'Bulldogs Hall of Famer' as bulldogs was not the club nickname in 1911. He is definitely worthy being in a Footscray Hall of Fame, but the words bulldogs cannot be connected to John Cuming- it is like calling the late Haydn Bunton senior a Brisbane Lions a great 'Lion' when he was never played for the lions especially as Haydn Bunton had died before the lions became the nickname for Fitzroy. Anyway at least John Cuming was there as he should be.

However on the down side, some of the interviews with players could have been done differently. The Kelvin Templeton award went along the wrong path in my view. He was a Footscray champion- my hero as a child, still the best player I have seen. Yet the chat with him descended into paying tribute to one of his (and our) coaches. There are two things that I found wrong with the Kelvin Templeton award

(1) Kelvin Templeton was a champion, but he was a champion before the 1980 season. He was a great player before the 1978 season. During 1976 he kicked 82 goals for the season. He was doing quite well in 1977, but his season ended prematurely through injury. Kelvin Templeton's injury possibly cost us a position in the 1977 finals series. However Kelvin Templeton didn't suddenly become a champion in 1980, you don't kick 118 goals in a season from 21 games in a team that finishes the home and away season second last if your just a handy player. His efforts in winning the competition goalkicking with 91 goals in 1979 is too easily overlooked- it was sandwiched between the 118 (not just an even 100 but 118 goals) and the Brownlow Medal of 1980. Kelvin Templeton doesn't receive the due kudos he deserves for his 1979 season.

(2) That Kelvin Templeton interview was nearly 100% spent on waxing lyrical about Royce Hart our coach in 1980 when Templeton won the Brownlow. Now I am not going to dispute Royce Harts abilty as a player, but the night is about us- not Royce Hart. If this was a Richmond Hall of Fame- then they could talk about Royce Hart as much and as long as they like. Yet the event wasn't a Richmond Hall of Fame - it was a Footscray Hall of Fame. There was more in that 3 minutes about Hart than Templeton. To make a comparison- if St Kilda had a similar event and Robert Harvey was up on the podium, the equivalent would be if the conversation was all about Timmy Watson and what a great player Timmy was and how Timmy had lost none of his ability (like Royce Hart hadn't) at training when he was coaching St Kilda. Ditto for Paul Kelly at the Sydney Swans- if they got Paul Kelly on the stage at a Sydney tribute night and they spent his 3 minute interview(on the dvd) singing the praises of how Gary Buckenara hadn't lost his beautiful kicking touch.

(For those who don't know- Hawthorn great Gary Buckenara coached Sydney for a season and a half- without any success like Royce Hart with us and Timmy Watson at St Kilda)

So in a nutshell sing the praises of Kelvin Templeton during the interview- not one of the 5 men to have coached him at Footscray!

The other thing that wasn't necessary (on this dvd) was two of the three songs from Mike Brady at the end of the video/dvd. Now 'One Day in September' and 'Up there Cazaly' are great songs- love them both, but they are not really relevant to what is an exclusively Footscray event as opposed to a generic VFL/AFL function. If this actual dvd went for 5 hours and it took in the whole event from when the night began to the last person leaving- then fine include it. Yet the dvd runs for around an hour and a half, so to condense it interviews (on the dvd) with relatives of passed on Footscray greats from the actual night were cut short- we didn't get to hear the full interview with what Alison- Norm Ware's daughter had to say about her dad, same with Arthur Olliver's son. However we got those two songs.

The last song (the 3rd of Mike Brady's three) was appropriate for the night, although much to my anger the lyrics were changed to delete the F'word and the mention of 'Scray' That last ballad Mike Brady sung commenced as how his new theme (well new for 1980) song, but the words changed when it got to the part of mentioning Footscray so the deliberately excluding of Footscray was implented (as is seemingly how it should be these days)

Another thing- during the Irene Chatfield interview- why does the name of a current President of another AFL club have to be mentioned? When the story was broken by....... that night of the proposed 1989 merger, why couldn't the narrator say -"when the story broke that night of the proposed 1989 merger". We are Footscray, we stuffed Ross Oakley then, but we don't need to mention one journalist-that story went out on numerous media outlets. The sake of plugging a rival Melbourne club President for whatever reason- is not necessary or appropriate for a night like this.

Nevertheless still well worth buying- I think it was $25? There was a few rare clips eg Jack Collins kicking a goal at the MCG against Melbourne (not the 1954 Grand Final- though some of that is shown) Some action of John Schultz and also a bit of (rarish) footage of Gary Dempsey- one mark Gary Dempsey took is shown from the Geelong v Footscray game at Waverely from Round 21 1977.

So please buy this dvd- heritage events like this about our club must be promoted and patronised. There are so few videos and books about this club so please make the most of the ones that are out there. If no one bothers to buy them, then the laws of supply and demand will be enforced and future ones will not be produced.