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Australian football icon Ron Barassi is being remembered as a “gentleman” as Victoria farewells him with a state funeral.
Thousands of people are expected to descend on the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Friday morning where one of the most important figures in Aussie football history will be mourned, and celebrated.
Barassi died in September at the age of 87.
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”Just a lovely man, he was a gentleman,” Nine’s Tony Jones told Today of Barassi.
“It didn’t matter who you barracked for, everybody loved Ron Barassi.
“We will hear from rivals – and I put them in inverted commas – Leigh Matthews, Kevin Sheedy.
“He was very much a humanitarian, too. He worked with Legacy, because he lost his dad when he was five. That was his greatest loss, losing his dad.”
You can watch the Ron Barassi State Funeral on 9NOW from 10.30am AEDT here.
One of the best players and coaches of all time, Barassi won six premierships with Melbourne in the club’s glory years.
He played in the 1955, 1956, 1957, 1959, 1960 and 1964 flags, at the same time pioneering the role of a ruck-rover.
He was later named at ruck-rover in the V/AFL’s team of the century.
He shocked the sport in 1964 by leaving the Demons and joining Carlton, in a move later likened to the Australian prime minister switching political parties.
Jones said that move was “heartbreaking” for Barassi, particularly given his deep connection to his father who died in the battle of Tobruk when Barassi was just five years old.
You can watch the Ron Barassi State Funeral on 9NOW from 10.30am AEDT here.
“Norm Smith, his coach at Melbourne, very much became a father figure to him,” Jones explained.
“That is why it was so hard when Ron Barassi, at the end of the 1964 season, up and left Melbourne. It was unthinkable, but it happened and he went to Carlton.
“It would have been such a heartbreaking decision for him.”
After hanging up his boots, Barassi moved into senior coaching, which proved almost as fruitful for him.
He coached the Blues to two premierships, including a famous victory over Collingwood in front of a still-record crowd of more than 120,000 fans. That 1970 grand final became known as “the birth of modern football”.
All up he featured in a record 17 grand finals as a player and coach.
Barassi would go on to coach North Melbourne and the Swans, and was inducted as a Hall of Fame Legend.
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