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My speech from the 2010 Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott Best and Fairest.

“In the heart of Depression Melbourne, in the early 1930’s, a man by the name of Percy Page was appointed Secretary of the Melbourne Football Club.

He came from Richmond, who, with Collingwood was the power team of that time, tough inner suburban Clubs where playing a game of league footy meant food on the table and a roof over your head for you and your family.

Percy didn’t have far to go - 200 yards across Yarra Park – but in those days it was a massive cultural divide;  from ‘struggle town’ to the bowels of Melbourne establishment in the heart of the Melbourne Cricket Club and the MCG.

Melbourne was struggling in this cutthroat competition made up of desperate men with so much to play for.

He needed a tough mentor to lead the team. He turned to a man he knew well, Tiger champ and Premiership coach Francis ‘Checker’ Hughes, all on a promise of a job at Miller’s rope works. The destiny of a football club was forever changed.

Checker didn’t exactly like what he found at Melbourne - soft attitudes and soft bellies. He cleared out most of the players.

He wasn’t exactly enamoured with the Club’s nickname – the Fuchsias – and implored his team to play like Demons. The Club’s identity was forever changed.

Percy was known as the ‘Prince of Secretaries’, a recruiter with a keen eye for talent and a network to match and an insatiable appetite for the chase.

Every weekend he would get on a train or tram, find himself in a distant country town or suburban street selling the vision for the Melbourne Football Club and the dream of playing on the MCG in September.

Soon Checker had plenty to work with, names like La Fontaine, Baggott, Smith, Truscott, Muellar and Beames. His team immediately started to make progress.

The players responded to his uncompromising and unforgiving methods.  He knew what it would take.

But dark days were looming. Melbourne’s break-out Premiership year of 1939 coincided with the outbreak of war. Less than a generation would be spared the experience of World War

Many of the players enlisted and were based at training bases in far flung places like Finders and Puckapunyal, rarely training as a team and coming together only on match day.

Still the team thrived. Players found comfort in each other and their competitiveness.

From War to Depression to War. Sport became our escape

From Phar Lap to Bradman to your local footy team and local footy heroes. They represented your suburb, they were family and they gave you hope

The deeds of our athletes were reported in prose, the exploits of sportsmen idealised as the journalists and writers painted the picture for the many who were unable to witness the event itself.

The world needed some romance

The players were given matinee idol names. ‘Captain Blood’ Jack Dyer. ‘The Red Fox’ Norm Smith.

In these days of War, heroes transcended from sporting fields to battlefields. Some even took to the skies. Many of them were Demons.

They had one last chance to play together. It would be on the game’s biggest stage, the 1940 Grand Final against Richmond, Checker’s old Club, at their ground, the MCG

Our game is about moments. We seek to capture these, replay them in our mind or by any other means.

I have often said that this current period at Melbourne is not about rebirths; it is about restoring the timelessness of our beautiful Club.

After all, we have willed our way through 152 years. The term rebirth is disrespectful to those who have given their all for their club, for over a century and a half.

We wanted to capture the moment where four of our players who we would soon lose in war, played together for the last time, with some of our greatest ever legends.

We have done it through the artwork of Owen Abrahams, which shines on your screens now.

It is those same players with whom the Best and Fairest Awards are named, taking the field with others who through fate or circumstance survived this time. Some of them are our greatest, members of our Team of the Century.

Competing in the ruck is Jack Mueller, number 12, a giant figure of his era, despite losing two fingers in an accident. Jack came out of retirement to kick 20 goals in the 1948 final series.

Crumbing is Percy Beams, number 24. He was a champion all-round sportsman, playing cricket and football for Victoria and later a famous sportswriter with the Argus.

Standing at Full Forward is Norm Smith, the greatest Demon.

Moving in is Allan La Fontaine, with the movie star name and class to match.

The threat of the fiercest Tiger Captain Blood Jack Dyer looms in the background, capable of inflicting pain on any player who gets in his way.

The sky is dark and foreboding, you can almost smell the mud and the grass. The scoreboard shows the Demons are well on top with not long to go.

The MCG is as old timers would remember it.  True in every detail.

The newspaper article shows another scorecard, the enemy’s casualties in War – Nazi Losses 4,610

In the forward pocket is young ruckman Harold Ball.

Percy Page recruited Harold from Merbein, near Mildura. Percy made the long trip to watch another player and came back with a long skinny ruckman who was given number 11, a jumper would later be worn by a long skinny ruckman from Ireland 40 years later.

Harold played 33 games and kicked 33 goals. He was a rare talent. He was best player in the 1939 Preliminary Final, his first year, and featured in the best players in the 1939 and 1940 Premiership teams.

He was posted to Singapore, where he played footy with his fellow Diggers as they waited for the War to come to them. Soon it did. He was an ambulance driver, but that didn’t stop him being captured by the Japanese with a fellow driver and two doctors. He was found some time later. He had been tortured, his hands tied behind him with a figure eight wire, and executed. The white armband with the red-cross was still on his body. He was 21.

His family later returned his club blazer to the MFC, which is now framed and proudly hangs in my office at the MCG.

Our Best First Year Trophy is named in his honour.

Moving towards the contest is a man with a familiar look, Ron Barassi Senior. He came off the bench that day. This was to be his last game. I am told he played every game as though it was his last.

He was the first league player killed in the War, in Tobruk the following year. He was 27.

We are so proud to have his son Ron with us tonight.

The Third Best and Fairest Trophy is named in his honour.

On the other side of the pack is Syd Anderson, Another talented all-round sportsman. He played three years for three Premierships.

He was a Flying Officer in the RAAF. His plane, a Beaufort Bomber, was shot down in Papua New Guinea. Eight survived the crash. They were twenty metres offshore when they were shot as they made their way towards the beach.

Syd’s daughter Trish Philips is here tonight with Noel McMahen. Trish never met her Dad, born in the August and her father was killed in the May. Please welcome her tonight

The Second Best and Fairest Trophy is named in his honour.

Moving into crumb is Keith “Bluey” Truscott, for whom our Best and Fairest honours.

I have read that Bluey was a great shot once he got the plane into the air, hardly surprising given his sporting prowess as cricketer, baseballer and footballer. He was a hero of the skies in Europe, shooting down at least 15 German planes, his exploits given coverage throughout the world and rewarded with the Distinguished Flying Cross.

He became the hero of a nation, a fighter pilot ace. His loss was felt across the country when killed in a training accident off the coast of Western Australia in 1943, aged 27.

On the boundary across the ground is Checker Hughes, the man who inspired the team and the Premiership victory, but would ultimately mourn the loss of his players

It was his idea and his inspiration that the Best and Fairest awards be named in their honour.

There are 1275 players who have represented this Club. Twenty-one have been lost in War, the most of any Club.  That is why a flame burns on our new emblem, in memory of our saddest loss.

We are determined that the names of our awards also remain timeless. The people they were, not merely names on a trophy

From the day Percy Page and Checker Hughes arrived at the Melbourne Football Club, the Club was destined to win ten Premierships in the next 25 years. 

It was also the time when the Club found itself. One senses we are doing it all over again.

We should be so honoured.

Enjoy your evening.”