A RIVERLAND sporting legend has spoken of his memories of Hawthorn Football Club legend, the late John Kennedy Sr, who passed away recently.
Malcolm Hill played under Kennedy at Hawthorn in the early 1960s, including the club’s break through premiership in 1961.
Hill, who played 22 games over three years for Hawthorn, said he was sad to hear the news of the passing of his former coach.
“John was 91 years old and the past 12 months he hasn’t been in great health,” he said.
“It is a great loss when you have a person of his magnitude pass away.”
Hill, who currently resides in Berri, said the pair stayed in touch when possible.
“We would go down to reunions and we would catch up then,” he said.
“He was always the same Kennedy, he was a great personality.
“He will be sadly missed, not only by the Hawthorn Football Club, but also North Melbourne and the AFL.
“The game evolves, but the Kennedy name will live on forever.
“He was the heart and soul of Hawthorn and he was a person who contributed hugely towards our game.”
Hill said his former coach’s recent elevation from AFL Hall of Fame member to legendary status was well deserved.
“We often wonder why the AFL were a bit slow in inducting John as a legend, because he contributed so much to the game of football as we know it,” he said.
Hill believes Kennedy was ahead of his time as a coach.
“I started with Hawthorn back in 1959 and Jack Hale was coach, before John took over in 1960,” he said.
“John was an unproven coach, but a great Hawthorn champion, winning a couple of best and fairests and representing Victoria, all as a great ruckman.
“He could see a deficiency in the fitness of players, so he wanted to make sure Hawthorn were a very fit team.
“He had unusual training methods, which all the players enthusiastically went into.
“He was one of the early coaches responsible for changing quite a few of the rules because of the way he coached the team.
“He always thought that two players could beat one player and that the fittest side will always win eventually and he proved this to be right.
“Although, in 1960, his first year coaching the Hawks, he lost the first five games and the media were on his back, being a first-time coach and they didn’t like the way Hawthorn played.
“They thought that it was a pretty unattractive style, because it was using big flat punts, running on as quick as you possibly could and handballing.
“Eventually the game came together and I think we won the next 12 games after losing the first five, just to miss out on the final four by percentage.
“But it put us in pretty good stead for 1961, which was a big year for the club.”
Hill, a ruckman himself, who also played at Sturt in the SANFL later in the 1960s, said a number of factors played a role in Kennedy’s success as a coach.
“He was a very intelligent person.” he said.
“Not only that, he was also a great mentor to many of his players.
“He had a booming voice and certainly was a very strong personality.”
Hill recalled his memories of the Hawks’ triumph in 1961 as some of his favourite from his time at the club.
“I only played a handful of games with Hawthorn, but 1961 was the standout, because it was the first time that Hawthorn won the premiership,” he said.
“I certainly remember some of those games, particularly the second semi-final against Melbourne.
“They were the premiers and had been a very strong club over many years and even though we’d finished on top of the ladder, the journalists all thought Melbourne were favourites for that game.
“It has often been said that it was one of the toughest semi finals ever recorded and Hawthorn was able to get through and win by a small amount, which put us in pretty good stead for the grand final.
“Melbourne had to play Footscray in the preliminary final and Footscray were too fast for them, so we played them the next week.
“That was fantastic, because I remember going back to the Hawthorn club after winning the grand final and the whole Glenferrie Oval was just packed with supporters.
“That was a great night and we had a terrific time.
“It was certainly something to celebrate, because we had come from nowhere.”
Hill highlighted some of Kennedy’s training methods, which led to a certain nickname from the media at the time.
“I think it was Lou Richards, a journalist at the time and a former Collingwood premiership captain, he named Hawthorn back in those days as the Kennedy Commandos,” he said.
“We had unusual training methods, we used to have to carry bricks around the ground, which was about 400 metres around just to toughen us up a bit.
“We used to have to swim across the Yarra River and we did a lot of running and that strength building sort of stuff.
“In those times players used to only train two times a week, but at Hawthorn we trained three times a week.”
Hill said a number of the rules we see in football today are as a result of Kennedy’s coaching back in the 1960s.
“There was no such thing as a centre square back in those days, so players could congregate in the middle and the idea was that we had so many players up there, so then we could just have our full forward in attack,” he said.
“We had a very good full forward that year, but it was highlighted later when Hawthorn recruited Peter Hudson from Tasmania and he averaged six goals a game, and kicked 150 goals one year.
“So, the journos thought it was a bit unsightly having all these players around the centre circle, so they brought in the square.
“That was one thing they did to try and stop the Kennedy Commandos.
“Another one was that John used to like to test the opposition, with things like kicking in danger, which wasn’t a rule back then, but they had to bring it in and then kicking the ball out on the full, that was one of Kennedy’s tactics if we needed to slow the game up a bit.”