Mullets, moustaches and short shorts

Updated

AFL grand final players are taller, fitter and more likely to come from an Indigenous background than ever before.

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On September 21, 1957, the Australian rules football grand final was beamed into lounge rooms around the country for the first time.

It was a very different game from the one AFL fans will watch this weekend.

For starters, the black and white broadcast was entirely white: there were no Indigenous players or players born overseas. And the sportsmen were younger, shorter, less toned and less experienced.

When I first started, you could go out and have a few beers. Actually, a lot of beers. Robert 'Dipper' DiPierdomenico

But as the decades passed, the players evolved. Since the 1950s, the players who compete in grand finals are on average:

six centimetres taller;

seven kilograms heavier;

three years older; and

twice as experienced.

They are the product of sport scientists on the quest for the perfect player and the perfect team.

"It would be wrong if people think we see them as guinea pigs," says Professor David Bishop, a sport scientist at Victoria University.

"We look at their sleep, their physical activity, their diet, their nutrition, their recovery. It has changed massively and Australia has probably led the way there."

Discos and drink cards

Hawthorn champion Robert 'Dipper' DiPierdomenico's career spanned three decades and many of the game's biggest changes.

"When I first started, you could go out and have a few beers," he says. "Actually, a lot of beers. There were discos ... and drink cards."

Enter one of the league's pioneering dieticians, Karen Inge.

"My biggest challenge was really to stop the players drinking alcohol," she says.

Next she banned their pre-game fry-up of steak, bacon and eggs and started work on their regular diets.

"Some of the players had eaten canned spaghetti but had never eaten pasta and as far as identifying different vegetables, they had no idea."

Dipper and two other players formed the "fat club" in a bid to lose weight.

"[In the early 1980s] we went from eating steaks and fish and chips and pasties on a Friday night to eating bananas and muffins. We were meaner and leaner," he says.

But not all players were so cooperative; Karen Inge remembers players hiding deep-fried food in their pockets.

"I knew the fried dim sim was burning a hole in their pocket," she laughs.

Her other challenge was negotiating the male-dominated world of football.

On her first day at Collingwood, Inge remembers Coach Tommy Hafey ordering the players to wear towels in the dressing room when she was around.

"Everyone started snickering, I looked up and there in the corner were three players naked except for towels as turbans around their heads. I didn't know where to look."

Race relations

The sun was shining on September 27, 1969, when 119,165 fans watched Carlton take on Richmond in the VFL decider.

It was Syd Jackson's first grand final appearance and he was the only Indigenous player on the field.

He says during his career, the opposition's fans would openly hurl racial abuse at him.

"They would say you're a black bastard, go back to the bush, go back to the desert.

"I would kick two or three more goals - it motivated me to get back at the opposition that way."

Nearly half a century later, one in seven grand final players is Indigenous but the treatment of Swans star Adam Goodes shows racism persists.

In 1978, 'Dipper' was one of the first Australian-Italian players to make a grand final appearance.

"When I was playing I got a little bit of racism, yeah for sure. It is fantastic now that people can stand up and say enough is enough."

Grand final football is still mostly an all-Australian affair though: only 2 per cent of grand final players this decade were born overseas.

Big bucks

In the late 1970s, Jim Jess was earning $10,000 a year playing for the Richmond Tigers until he asked his cousin Peter Jess to join him for a salary negotiation.

Peter Jess is now one of the league's best-known player agents but started by playing the Tigers off against Carlton for the rights to his cousin.

"The president said, 'right, I'll tell you what we'll do, we'll pay Jimmy $100,000 a year on the proviso you never come back here again!'"

He secured a 900 per cent pay rise but Peter Jess never quite managed to stick to his end of the deal.

The league's players now share in more than $180 million each year but Peter Jess says they're still underpaid.

"The gross value of what football makes is probably about $4 billion, so the players get a paltry sum of that."

But compared to decades past, footballers now have it easy.

"Richmond players were doctors, optometrists, car salesmen, plumbers, builders, you had the full gamut," Peter Jess says.

Syd Jackson juggled his work as a tradesman and footballer.

"I thought the training was pretty intense at the time, it was three full days a week. Monday a light run, Tuesday flat-out training, Wednesday another light run and some skill work."

While today's players don't have to hold down jobs, they do play a lot more football. Those who appear in a grand final have typically turned out for more than 130 matches beforehand.

Mullets and moccasins

Over the years, the hallowed turf of the Melbourne Cricket Ground has hosted the fashion-forward and some fashion faux pas.

In the 1970s and 80s, shorts crept shorter, hair grew longer and Dipper grew his iconic moustache.

"There was a show called Miami Vice. I thought that's a pretty good look, the Don Johnson look.

"It took me half an hour to take all my gold chains off, I had my mullet going, I thought I was pretty cool back in the day!"

And then there were the slippers.

"Jeans and moccasins were the big thing," he says.

On the field, woollen jerseys became synthetic and later turned high-tech.

Sleeves were lost and collars replaced with lace-up necks, which were eventually banned. Fashion now favours the V neck.

The 1950s saw the introduction of lower-cut boots with plastic stops and soles and metal caps - but they were heavy. In the 1970s, soft-toed boots became the norm.

These days, full-sleeve tattoos and hipster beards are not an uncommon sight - both on the field and off.

But the crowds pouring into the MCG this weekend to see the Hawks and the Eagles will be there for the football more than the fashion. Grand final attendance numbers are back on the rise. The current stadium capacity is 100,024, short of the crowds they packed in during the 1970s before any caps on standing tickets were introduced.

Notes

Data was provided by the AFL and analysed by the ABC.

Data relates to VFL grand finals prior to 1990 and AFL grand finals after that.

The team uniform shown each decade is the most dominant team.

For the purposes of this interactive, a decade is defined as running from year 1 to year 0 (eg: 2001 - 2010).

Credits

Topics: australian-football-league, victorian-football-league-vfl, melbourne-3000

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