Violence of the lambs: Why placid men do brutal things on the football fieldBy Jake Niall
The Age
MAY 13, 2022WHEN the genial Neil Balme was coaching Melbourne in the mid-1990s, his second son William, then aged five, discovered the other version of his father on a video of an old Channel Seven footy program, The Sensational Seventies.
What William Balme saw on that video was not the composed and caring man who would later play a key role in six flags at Richmond and Geelong as a popular administrator with high emotional intelligence, but a burly Richmond player, with an unruly mop of longish hair, hitting opponents with considerable force.
“Dad, is that you?” asked the incredulous son.
The question William Balme posed to his father, the man who belted three Carlton defenders in the 1973 grand final, among other acts of brutality over 11 years at Tigerland, hints at two seemingly irreconcilable versions of Neil Balme.
The first one was a talented Richmond player throughout those Sensational ’70s, renowned for both kicking goals and acts of violence, the most notorious of which - a round-arm punch that knocked out Carlton’s champion defender Geoff Southby in the 1973 grand final, forcing him to miss the rest of a game won by Richmond - created long-standing discord between the two power clubs.
Until recently, Carlton players of that era still muttered angrily about what Balme did to Southby.
The other Balme, much better known within football, is one of the most reasonable and decent people to have worked within the tense football departments of AFL clubs. Balme has been a by-word for calm at four clubs: Melbourne, Collingwood (twice), Geelong and Richmond, where he remains employed as a senior adviser.
Balme is the subject of an imminent book centred on his 53 years in the game, written by the novelist Anson Cameron, with a working title of Neil Balme: A tale of two men. In collaborating on his memoirs - written in the third person - he has been compelled to contemplate the divide between the feared footballer and the avuncular football coach-turned successful administrator.
Umpire Ian Robertson speaks to Balme after a clash with Carlton’s Kevin Hall during the 1973 grand final.CREDIT:THE AGE“I look back and I try and make some sense of it,” he said of the two Neil Balmes. “But in general I never played angry and I did what I thought I needed to do for my team.”
Balme, 70, is far from the only former player whose on-field deeds - or misdeeds - contradict what we know of them outside the white lines.
Leigh Matthews was a Hawthorn champion who played, by his admission, in a “ruthless and callous” way. “Lethal Leigh” cleaned up many opponents illegally throughout his 17 years at the pinnacle of the code, but the nadir of his unmatched career as a player (four flags) and coach (four flags) came during his final season, when the slowing Matthews was charged by police for a blow that broke the jaw of Geelong’s Neville Bruns.
As with Balme, however, Matthews is a completely opposite person to the fearsome figure who took the field, a clear-thinking, low-key and sober man who describes himself as “placid”.
As one club official who knows Matthews and Balme relatively well put it, they’re “probably the most rational and sensible people in the game.”
Matthews, like Balme, confirmed to The Age that he had never been in a fight.
“I’ve never got into a physical altercation my whole life, even in my childhood,” said Matthews, who booted 915 goals during his 332-game career for Hawthorn, before going on to coach Collingwood and Brisbane (where he is still a board member).
In addition to thousands of kicks and hundreds of goals, Matthews clobbered Bruns and numerous others, via dangerous bumps, forceful forearms or head-high blows.
He explains the transformation of a placid man into an on-field enforcer thus: “In my time and playing era, it was a different world. It was like going to war. It was as simple as that. It was kill or be killed. So, that was why, that was the persona I would’ve played with.”
Revealingly, “kill or be killed” were the precise words used by Richmond’s most influential figure of the ’70s and ’80s, their Godfather Graeme Richmond, to capture the club’s credo during that era, when the Tigers thrived on their outlaw image.
Today’s AFL does not permit the kind of violence that was rampant in the time of Balme and Matthews in the more lawless VFL.
But if there has been a player of recent years who has consistently played “on the edge” and managed to hurt opponents, it is the 100-kilogram-plus Shane Mumford, who shares with Balme and Matthews the same conflicting personas of a brutal player who is a fundamentally peaceful soul.
“I’m the complete opposite off the field,” said Mumford, who retired from playing last season but remains on Greater Western Sydney’s coaching staff and COVID “top-up” list. “I’m king of the kids ... People get a bit shocked when they see me running around looking after everyone else’s kids.”
Balme, Matthews and Mumford’s examples pose a broader question of why thoughtful and well-adjusted men - who aren’t angry or heat-seeking by nature - crossed the line so readily on the field. John Worsfold, the mild-mannered chemist who took up the cudgels as West Coast’s ruthless “smiling assassin”, is another case study. Like Balme and Matthews, he was sufficiently self-controlled to be an AFL senior coach.
How do these former players - and performance psychologists - explain the violence of the lambs?
Playing your roleBalme attributes much of his transformation on the field to the fact that he was playing a role for his team. It is evident, too, that the Tigers’ team culture was one in which a measure of brutality was expected in some players’ minds.
″I thought I was doing what my team needed me to do. It was a genuine feeling that we had to play aggressively, our best way of winning was to make it difficult for the other team to play well and one of the ways of doing that was to put physical pressure on them.
Balme flies for a mark in 1971.CREDIT:THE AGE.“We were probably able to get away with a bit more in those days. And I probably was a bit over the top. But I didn’t feel that [then]. I just felt I was doing my job.”
Given that he played for Richmond, whose most influential backroom official, Graeme Richmond (“GR”) espoused a win-at-all costs mentality, it’s natural to ask if Balme, as a self-identified enforcer, was asked to floor opponents, such as in the 1973 grand final, during which he hit Carlton’s Southby, the late Vin Waite and Kevin Hall, yet remarkably, was not reported.
“Never, they virtually never did [ask him to hit opponents].”
What about Graeme Richmond? “Not even him. He said a couple of times. I remember we were walking out of one of the meetings at his pub, one Thursday night, he said to KM (teammate Kevin Morris) and I, as we walked by, ‘Well, boys if blood’s going to be spilled, blood’s going to be spilled. Good luck.’
“The implication was - get into it ... But it was never specifically. It was never someone specifically saying, go and whack this bloke.”
Balme had never been reported during his junior career in Western Australia (the family moved to Melbourne when he was 17).
He agreed that Richmond projected a touch of the outlaw. “There was a bit of that and I think we enjoyed it. And we accepted that with that there’s a bit of negativity.”
Sports psychologist Jeff Bond, who was a long-time senior performance psychologist at the AIS and worked for Richmond (2008-9), Sydney and St Kilda, explained that within teams in contact sports, one common role is that of “the enforcer, the protector, the hitman, I suppose.
“They’ve got to play that role, to survive ... and they’ve got to do it in spite of what their personality would predict.”
There’s a sense that Balme was playing a part, as if he was an actor, not simply for his team, but to intimidate. His projection of a dangerous madman was evident in an incident with his Hawthorn opponent, the eccentric Don Scott.
“I’ve tackled him [Scott] and I’ve bit him, through the jumper ... I don’t know why I did it, it was just impulsive, because you’re going to impose yourself on him,” Balme said.
“He jumps up and says, ‘you’re f---ing mad.’ And I said, ‘Don’t you f---ing forget it.’”
Mumford’s enforcer role and mindset were similar to Balme’s. He liked to “take the edge off” opponents. Unlike Balme and Matthews, however, the less settled pre-AFL version of Mumford “used to get into the odd blue at the pub”.
Mumford hated losing. “I was more than happy if I had to run through someone ... Anything to win really.”
Unlike Balme, who seems to have adopted his persona at Richmond to conform with perceived expectations, Mumford always played with vigorous intent.
“I never had the best skills ... That’s the way I played footy since I was 12 years old: see ball, get ball, if someone was in the way, knock them out of the way ...
“I think it was more that I thought it was expected of me.”
Mumford jested that he had “played in the wrong era” given that the AFL has progressively moved the line of acceptable conduct in the direction of player safety; in playing “on the edge” of the line, he had been forced to change his penchant for bumping and then for tackles that dumped opponents.
“I used to roll my body and drop the body weight, so that would slam them into the ground ... I had to adapt and evolve.”
Matthews, who applauds the eradication of the most egregious violence, says of the contemporary game: “It’s more brutal and more dangerous now than it was when I played. It’s all accidental violence now, accidental rough stuff....the deliberate rough stuff has largely disappeared.”
It’s like warMatthews’ explanation for his on-field outbreaks of brutality (which did not stop him from becoming his era’s most accomplished footballer) - that he was going to war - is consistent with the psychologists’ view that contact sports contained a military mindset.
“I think for the players of that era, it is like war,” said Bond, who felt that that enforcers in other walks of life were “mostly consistent with the base personality” we would expect.
“But, in the contact sports you can get this divide.” Matthews observed: “I think you’re a different person in the middle of a physical combat sport.”
Another sports pyschologist, Anthony Klarica, author of the upcoming The Performance Mindset who worked with Hawthorn for their four premierships under Alastair Clarkson, added: “People work to the rules. There are a lot of very placid soldiers ... players themselves can draw that line and threshold.”
Matthews suggested that his war-zone psyche was “part of a package” that made him successful and without that attitude, he wouldn’t have prospered as a player, given his physical limitations.
“I was strong ... but I couldn’t run that well. I mean I was not tall. You could say I had some ground-level power and strength - you could say that [attitude] was my competitive edge, that’s what I had to use.
“My aggressive spirit got me into trouble on the field sometimes. But it was also I think, without that competitive spirit, I wouldn’t have been able to play very well either.”
That competitive drive was “callous and brutal if it had to be, and when I look back at it, yeah it was probably part of the package.”
Fallout and regretsBalme’s rampage in the 1973 grand final incensed Carlton. According to players of that time, there was a period when the Blues wouldn’t drink with the Tigers in the organised post-game sessions. But as the genial version of Balme emerged, once-hostile or frosty relations between combatants thawed.
That said, I recall a conversation several years ago with a Carlton great who still nursed a grudge against Richmond and Balme, who plainly felt the enmity between clubs was simply about competition, the Blues having upset the Tigers in the 1972 grand final before the payback of ’73. “We were very much serious opponents to Carlton ... we weren’t their friends at all.”
Balme did ABC radio alongside David “Swan” McKay after his retirement and the pair became friendly. Balme had broken the jaw of McKay, a four-time premiership star with Carlton, in the 1972 grand final with an off-the-ball blow for which Balme was suspended.
Balme says he doesn’t carry enormous regrets from those incidents. “Every now and again, you felt, ‘oh poo.’ But no. But, particularly from a personal point of view, if you ran into Geoff Southby or David McKay, they were fine.”
On punching McKay, he conceded: “Probably shouldn’t have done that.”
Matthews has repeatedly expressed remorse for the Bruns assault, which he suggests was the by-product of a “grumpy old bugger” in his final year. He felt “incredible shame” for the 1985 assault - for which he received a 12-month good behaviour bond and a four-game suspension. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that that was in my 17th year.”
The impact of Balme’s brutality was evident when, as Kevin Bartlett has recounted, Carlton’s ruckman Peter “Percy” Jones and Adrian “Gags” Gallagher would sledge Richmond’s first ruck, Michael Green, a gentlemanly lawyer.
It was a different reaction when Green swapped with Balme.
“KB says ... Greeny’s in the ruck and they’re telling him they’re going to kill him. If I’m in the ruck, no one says anything,” Balme said.
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/violence-of-the-lambs-why-placid-men-do-brutal-things-on-the-football-field-20220512-p5akp4.html
