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As a schoolboy, I could always drum up a laugh out of bored classmates, with a doodling pencil and picture of Allan Jeans in the daily paper. All it would take was a shade of pencil under the eyes and a sharpening of the ears, then I'd nudge the bloke next to me and say, "Ever seen Yabbie Jeans and Yoda in the same room?" Whaa la! Instant Yoda, that knee-high guru given the task of imbuing the Force into Luke Skywalker. And it is not only with my bored, pencil touch-up that Jeans' and Yoda's similarities end. Allan Jeans, guru for decades and decades of footballers, positively flows with the Force. Only a cursory glance at the list of current AFL coaches highlights the Jeans influence. Each team under the tutelage of Jeans' progeny plays that same type of Yabbie footy: Terry Wallace, Best and Fairest in Hawthorn's 1983 Premiership year and now coach of the Richmond Tigers. Rodney Eade, Western Bulldogs coach and five time Hawthorn premiership member, has his players play a Jeans' style carry-and-run game Jeans' tenant of the game's fundamentals - to gain possession of ball or minimise opponents use of ball, by applying pressure to him in a controlled manner. There is Leigh Matthews, a four-time premiership coach himself; former coaches in Ken Judge, Peter Schwab, Gary Ayres. Drawing a longer bow to illustrate Jeans' far reaching effect, Richmond's return to competitive form in season 2000 was due largely to the appointment of Danny Frawley. Frawley's coaching technique shows shades of Jeans, who coached Darryl Baldock; 1966 premiership captain, who coached Frawley at St. Kilda in the mid-80's.

Two things strike you about Allan Jeans upon meeting him for the first time: his physical presence, and the power he carries in his voice. Using the Star Wars analogy, Yabbie Jeans is more Darth Vader than Yoda. He is virile in his movement; light on his feet for such a big man. More than once, he was off the chair, explaining to me an action in point. His voice comes and goes like a tide; the ebb and flow illustrating a point, carrying an opinion, rolling with an assertion. There is something too about Yabbie that reminds me of Willy Wonka, that dotty confectioner. I swear Allan Jeans pretends not to hear a tough question or two I pose him.

He occupies his spare time now with lawn bowls, and our interview is interrupted at one stage to accept a telephone call from the president of the Sebastapol Lawn Bowling club. "What I like about the sport," I overhear him, "is that the skipper is something of a playing coach." Jeans, it seems, almost ten years out of the coaching caper, is still hot property, has still wisdom to impart.

While he takes the call, he leaves with me a collection of letters; age-old maps to the treasure of the gentleman's game before the ‘entertainment industry' that football has seemed to become. Hints of the past waft up from the paper as I unfold them. One from Killigrew, written to Jeans upon Jean's coaching appointment at St. Kilda, 1961.

Yabbi me old mate,
You are the strong one amongst the jellyfish...

And another, from Len Smith, famous coach of Fitzroy, Collingwood, Nth .Melbourne, expressing his disappointment in Bill Stephenson's knee injury, 1963. And the old boy meant it, you could tell. When Jeans returns, I query him about the letters. "That's why I went out to Len Smith's. Len and Norm. They sorta took me under their wing; I was only a young bloke. I mean, that's what I said to Norm, "Well, you've been in a lot, you show me how to win..." And he said, ‘Oh, go and see Lenny, he's got more brains than I have.' So I went out to Len's house and he had an old exercise book and I took all the notes out of it in relation to confidence'.