He has kissed his opponents, stomped on their heads, run through the middle of an opposition huddle and was involved in one of the most famous grand final shirt-fronts in Australian football history.
He is, of course, Dermott Brereton — a five time premiership player, AFL Hall of Famer and member of the Hawthorn Team of the Century.
There is no lack of subject matter for the 59-year-old Hawthorn football legend to talk about when he becomes the latest big name to appear at the Tongala pub on February 23.
The date is fitting given Brereton carried the number 23 in 189 games for the Hawks and kicked 427 goals.
He took over the jumper from another former Hawthorn enforcer, ruckman Don Scott, and it would later be worn by none other than Lance “Buddy” Franklin.
Brereton’s appearance follows hot on the heels of last year’s sold out evening with Kerry “Skull” O’Keeffe and will undoubtedly have the sports fans that attend the event equally entertained.
Rayden Tallis, despite playing 163 games for Hawthorn, is probably most famous for being the player whose head was stomped on by Brereton in a pre-season game.
He earned a seven-match ban for that indiscretion and that was matched by another seven-game holiday when he broke the jaw of Richmond’s Tony Free with an alleged “karate chop”.
Both those incidents were post his Hawthorn glory days, in what turned out to be an ill-fated seven-game, one-season experiment with a Ron Barassi-coached Sydney team.
Despite the bad boy status he is not the most suspended player.
Brereton was reported seven times, found guilty on every occasion and served 30 matches on the sidelines.
David Rhys-Jones was reported 29 times, was found guilty 10 times and spent a total of 22 games on the sidelines. The player who missed the most games in his career is Greg Williams, charged 19 times, guilty 12 times, missed 34 games.
Brereton’s enforcer status in the competition had Collingwood offer him one last shot at resurrecting his career the following year and he sat alongside a 21-year-old Sav Rocca — supposedly in a protection capacity.
It worked, Rocca had by far his best season (93 goals) and won the Copeland Trophy.
Brereton played 15 games and kicked 30 goals himself.
Perhaps the most famous incident, in possibly the greatest grand final (in my time at least, 1989), was Brereton coming face to face at the first bounce of the match with Geelong’s Mark Yeates.
Brereton finished with broken ribs, three goals and a premiership medal, in the same game that Gary Ablett kicked nine and won the Norm Smith Medal in a losing team.
Since finishing football he has hardly been a shrinking violet and has been front and centre with Fox Footy and various television appearances — including Channel Nine’s Getaway and (not everyone may remember this) Torvill and Dean’s Dancing on Ice.
While Brereton’s stories will no doubt mostly have the crowd smiling and laughing, he last year delivered a much more serious message when he had a skin cancer scare.
He has even experienced the challenge of being a football dad, son Devlin, a star junior player.
All this, plus just why he did kiss Essendon’s Billy Duckworth on the lips and maybe even an insight into his role on the 2002 Australian comedy film Trojan Warrior.
May be worth asking him exactly what the role of Kid Callaghan entailed in the movie.
The lead role in that film was former Australian heavyweight world kick boxing champion Stan Longinidis.
Also in the film were Footscray legend Doug Hawkins, Wilbur Wilde of Hey Hey It’s Saturday fame, renowned chef Gabriel Gate, Test cricketer Greg Matthews, Mark “Chopper“ Read and, as if it couldn’t get any weirder, you guessed it — Mark “Jacko” Jackson.
Three-time Carlton premiership player and former Echuca premiership coach, Ken Sheldon will compere on the evening.
He played against a teenage Brereton in the 1982 preliminary final, a week after the then red haired forward (wearing guernsey number 47) had kicked five goals in his VFL debut.
Sheldon and Carlton won the game, going on to beat Richmond in the grand final — making it back-to-back flags for the Blues.
- Brereton will head to Tongala via Shepparton, with the superstar set to headline the Rotary Club of Shepparton Central’s annual charity golf day as guest speaker.
The event — at Shepparton Golf Club — raises tens of thousands of dollars each year, with the majority of funds directed to Goulburn Valley Health to help provide post-graduate scholarships for nurses.
In 2023 six scholarships were funded from the $30,000 donation the event generated.
For more information about the event, phone Kelvin or Sue at Tongala Hotel on 5859 0204.