GARRY "Buddha" Hocking was just 20 years old when he played for Geelong in the 1989 grand final. He went on to accumulate a load of football honours, but ask him the best game he ever played in and he says, without hesitation, the '89 grand final. Why? "Because it was so intense."
Football was always his passion. As a kid in Cobram, he and his great mate, John Barnes (Essendon and Geelong), made up their own football games, like riding their bikes no-hands down the main street, bouncing a footy as they went. Or kicking the ball through car windows and into bins. His early competitive footy was played against his two older brothers who were bigger and stronger than him. "We just smashed each other," he says. "It was fun."
Buddha Hocking wasn't big. In fact, on the stage that is the MCG, he looked small. He was 182 centimetres and around 80 kilograms. He had an urchin's face and corkscrew curls cut into a mullet. But he had something else, a ferocious courage, that made him loom large. Maybe he got it from his father, Les, who told him early to learn to play with injuries. In the 1994 grand final, Buddha got corked in the right thigh in the opening minutes by one of his sparring partners, West Coast's John Worsfold. At half-time, when there was talk of him coming off, his father told him, "You can kick with your left foot." And, for the entire second half, he did, playing better than he had in the first in what was, nonetheless, another disappointing grand final defeat for Geelong.
The one that followed, against Carlton in '95, was even worse. "We felt the best going into the '95 grand final that we'd felt since '89," says Buddha. "But Carlton were like Geelong are now â a complete team."
Geelong and its supporters were humiliated. The dream that started in '89 and revolved around Gary Ablett snr died that day. It was over. It had delivered four grand finals but not a single flag. A generation of great Geelong players would go unrecorded in the history book that remembers players solely for premierships won.
Buddha was one of those Geelong players. In fact, Ablett aside, he was the best of them. Buddha was the last man who shared that dream to surrender. Or that's how it appeared to those of us who followed Geelong's fortunes during those years â and a lot of people did. Because if you saw the '89 grand final you saw something special, something without repeat. Most people say that something was Gary Ablett. Buddha says, no. He says three players deserve to be remembered â Ablett, Brereton and DiPierdomenico.
I ask him if he attended the meeting of Geelong players at which it was decided to take out Dermott Brereton. Yes, he did. Brereton had been coming off the line at centre bounces. Some of the players he collected were knocked out, no less than Brent Staker was earlier this year by Sydney's Barry Hall. Brereton, says Buddha, was "a very intimidating figure in those days".
Geelong centreman Paul Couch had won the Brownlow Medal in 1989. Geelong thought Brereton would target him. They didn't give him the chance, Mark Yeates collected Dermie at the first bounce just as he was beginning his charge. Legend has it that Brereton pissed blood at half-time, yet played on, kicking three goals. When he went back to kick the first of these after having been held by trainers while he vomited, Buddha thought, "If he gets this, we're in trouble". Because you don't get to see an effort of that magnitude very often on the football field, despite it being a place where physical courage is the norm.
Hawthorn won. Just. They were six points ahead with Geelong closing at a gallop when the final siren sounded. A number of debates have followed the '89 grand final down the years. One is whether Geelong lost it because it played the man too early and started too late to play the ball. Buddha mentions this idea a couple of times, like he's still thinking about it.
Buddha, now 39, coaches the Geelong Falcons. He'd like to coach in the AFL. Start him talking footy and you can't stop him. The passion is as pure as it was when he and Barnesie did a paper round together and people in Cobram knew the paper had been delivered because they heard a football bouncing up the drive.
It's usually said of the '89 grand final that, had it been a draw, Geelong would have won the replay because Hawthorn had more men in hospital. But that is not the whole story of the '89 grand final â merely the backdrop. For in the middle of what might fairly be called a battle, an individual took the game to another level. His name was Gary Ablett. He remains as elusive to the general public now as he was then, but Buddha liked him. "Gazza was different. He had his own ideas and opinions but I thought he was a terrific bloke." They often roomed together. "I wanted to be a footballer like he was. Strong and hard and skilful."
Talking about Gazza, Buddha becomes animated. His eyes light up as he explains what it was like to play in the Geelong midfield on the days when "Gazza was on fire and kicking the ball over the grandstand". Like the day Ablett kicked 14 goals against Essendon at the MCG and Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy sent the message out to his team: "All we have to do is outscore him."
Buddha's other nomination for football immortality from the '89 grand final is Robert "Dipper" DiPierdomenico. Early in the match, Dipper dropped back into the space where Ablett was leading â like Luke Hodge is expected to do on Saturday with Cameron Mooney. Ablett had bulk, strength and was as quick as anyone in the game. He collected Dipper from behind, breaking several ribs. Dipper played on.
In the wild first quarter, Hawthorn rover John Platten, a Brownlow medallist, was knocked out and took no further part in the game. When that story is told, it is usually said that Platten was knocked out by Buddha Hocking. Buddha's version of that incident is: "We both went hard for the footy. I survived."
This, apparently, was not Dipper's view. He caught up with Buddha in the third quarter on the members' wing. It was, Buddha recalls, like being hit by a train. When they next met, at the tribunal on the following Monday night, Buddha said to Dipper; "I'll do what I can to get you off, but I'm wearing a lot of evidence on my face." He meant the nine stitches. Dipper was philosophical. "Just do what you can, son." The tribunal gave Dipper five weeks.
But Buddha did not leave the field after Dipper collected him. He played on. He calls it the defining moment of his career. He even took his kick. He was on the boundary line and kicked to a leading player. The kick drifted out on the full. Coach Malcolm Blight later said it was a moment when Buddha should have steeled himself and done better. The following year, when he was collected by Collingwood's Craig Kelly, he remembered these words, got to his feet and goaled from 35 metres. "I've got no regrets," says Buddha of his career. "I've got lots of memories."
I went to Buddha's last game at Geelong in 2001. One of his knees took "five or six" pain-killing injections in the course of the match. It was known that he wanted to play on.
At the end, everyone stayed and he circled the ground on foot with his kids, thanking and being thanked by the crowd.
Gary Ablett was a brilliant footballer who earned a category all his own in the '89 grand final. Buddha Hocking was something else, something old-fashioned and durable. He was a champion. He won four club best-and- fairests, was four times All-Australian and repeatedly polled well in the Brownlow. If Gary Ablett was the hope of Geelong during those years, its pride was Buddha Hocking.
Buddha says the '89 grand final was a match in which one team produced what he calls two "specials" â the performances of Brereton and DiPierdomenico â against Geelong's one. Ablett. But it's also true that Buddha Hocking made his name that day as I had reason to recall during the 2000 Sydney Olympics when I saw an exhibition of art from the Olympics of antiquity, sent by the Greek Government.
There was a painting of three runners in flight, arms flung high, fingers apart, thighs lifting. I recognised these figures. A small figurine from 480BC showed a runner leaning forward the moment before a start. I knew him, too. A clay seal from the third century BC was of two boxers. The character of the contests can be guessed at by the following epitaph on a boxer's gravestone near Olympia: "Here he died, boxing in the stadium, having prayed to Zeus for either the wreath or death. Aged 35. Farewell."
From the Olympic city at the time, I wrote: "There is a simple truthfulness about the art that makes it compelling. There is a bust of a young boxer who has won a wreath. A cauliflower ear suggests the price he has paid for the honour. It's the face of one who has travelled way beyond his years but is still little more than a youth. Again, I know him. Buddha Hocking after the '89 grand final."Buddha's other nomination for football immortality from the '89 grand final is Robert "Dipper" DiPierdomenico. Early in the match, Dipper dropped back into the space where Ablett was leading â like Luke Hodge is expected to do on Saturday with Cameron Mooney. Ablett had bulk, strength and was as quick as anyone in the game. He collected Dipper from behind, breaking several ribs. Dipper played on.
Taken from The Age newspaper - 25 September 2008
www.theage.com.au
Last Modified on 15/04/2009 08:47