Eddie McGuire once said that Ron Barassi was the only man in Australia who didn’t know he was Ron Barassi. For generations of young Australians and newcomers to these shores, the name Barassi was one of first football words you learned. “Three syllables,” Martin Flanagan wrote, “coming off the tongue in a hiss of passion.” “The Barassi line” was coined to delineate the footy-loving southern states from rugby territory to the north. Barassi, who has died aged 87, was chosen because he embodied the sport. In many ways, he still does. Few Australians dominated, influenced and defined their sport quite like him. Few inspired fear, reverence and affection in such equal measure.
His father, Ronald Sr, was killed by a German naval bombardment at Tobruk. He was the first VFL footballer to die in the second world war. He had just played in a Melbourne premiership and young Ronald was just five years old. The telegram announcing his father’s death is his first memory. Decades later, his wife, Cherryl, found him weeping alone. “I miss my father,” he told her.
