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Fundamentals of Yoda

There had been a condition stipulated in our initial phone call, answered within two rings by a man who announced himself as Allan ‘Yabbie' Jeans not only to me but to the four people standing behind me waiting to use the phone. Yabbie told me he wasn't a funny man. I decided then that I wouldn't tell him about my Yoda trick.

His was a different time; a time slower, more stylish than today. I stockpiled what I knew about Yabbie Jeans: dour player cut down by a chest injury at only 27. At 28, the youngest coach to take on St. Kilda, leading the Saints to their first finals appearance for 22 years, and to their one and only flag five years later.

Jeans' no nonsense approach panacea to the restless club torn apart by the departure of super coach, Allen ‘Killa' Killigrew. Later, Jeans takes on Hawthorn, winning flags in 1983 - having only arrived at Glenferrie Road two years before - and 1986. While a brain tumour put Jeans out of business for the 1988 season (in which Hawthorn, coached by Jeans' assistant Allan Joyce, recorded the greatest winning Grand Final score, against Melbourne), Jeans returned to secure the Hawks back to back premierships.

The 1989 grand final, with the Goliath Hawks taking on the David of Malcolm Blight's Geelong, has passed into footballing folklore; the bookend images of Stephen Yeates' brutal shirtfront on Hawthorn forward Dermott Brereton, and the opposite stories of victory and loss in the body language of Geelong's goalkicking machine Gary Ablett and Hawthorn full back Chris Langford upon the final siren.

There is a story of Jeans' half-time address that Grand Final day, a story that has spread across football Australia like butter on fresh toast. A simple anecdote, willed into the seventeen fit Hawthorn players (concussed Brownlow Medallist rover John Platten wanders around the crowded rooms asking what time the Grand Final parade is due to begin; the parade having been the day before; wingman and fellow Brownlow Medallist, Robert Diperdemenico breathes heavily, every breath inhaled into his punctuated lung like molten lava): Jeans, typically acerbic in his understated brown club pullover tells the story of a boy whom walks away from a shoe store after having bought a cheap pair of shoes, shoes which were soon to fall apart. A simple anecdote, perhaps perceived as even twee by some in the charged, liniment-laced space. Yet the moral of the story, lost on none of the players: one must pay the price to achieve something worthwhile.

Images of Yabbie Jeans reverberate: a close-up photo of the young St. Kilda coach, handsome in police crew-cut, staring down the man behind the man behind the man behind the camera. And earlier, player Jeans, sitting to the left of coach Killigrew, taking in Killer's instructions during some pre-game or half-time respite. And the Hawthorn Jeans, older, wiser, his handsome shock of hair thinner, his face wizened but not without the solid stare and taciturn hints.